UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON
UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS BOSTON
CENTER FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF TEACHING
ANNUAL CONFERENCE ON
TEACHING FOR TRANSFORMATION
FRIDAY, JANUARY 20, 2006
PROGRAM
8:30 AM Coffee & Registration Ryan Lounge, McCormack Building, 3rd Floor
9:00-10:15AM Concurrent Presentations: -SESSION BLOCK I-
Suzanne Buglione and Jennifer Safford, CommunityBuild (Worcester State College)
Changing demographics and a changing society mandate a workforce that is culturally competent. How do we build this competence in our students? Can we address issues of race, class, gender and sexual orientation with strategies that will increase students’ cultural competence? How will our own cultural competence impact this process? To address these challenges, we will share pedagogical approaches grounded in the theoretical frameworks of social justice and liberation education that have engaged students in classroom and project-based activities to build cultural competence.
Binnur Ercem, Sociology and Susan Hutchinson, Elementary and Early Childhood Education (Middlesex Community College)
This paper is an analysis of a survey conducted with 100 community college students about the following questions: What knowledge or skills will students need to be effective citizens of our world in the future? What were the unique qualities of the “greatest” teacher you have ever had? If you were teaching a course in which you could only teach one “thing” a concept, a bit of knowledge, or a skill, what would that be?
Michael LeBlanc and Meesh McCarthy, Tutors, Reading, Writing, and Study Strategies Center, and Consultants, Graduate Writing Center (UMass Boston); Mary Lou Horn, Ingrid Hungerford, Onyinye Malo, and Carlos Maynard, Tutors, Reading, Writing, and Study Strategies Center (UMass Boston)
In this interactive workshop we will develop strategies that can be used to help members of the academic community understand the benefits of perceiving tutoring as a continuing process rather than as a one-time quick-fix.
Heidi Burgiel, Mathematics; Elaine Bukowiecki, Education; Ruth Farrar, Education; Kathryn Evans, English; Helena Santos, Academic Achievement; Peggy Smith, Academic Achievement; Julia Stakhnevich, ESL; and Lee Torda, English (Bridgewater State)
While other institutions place at-risk students in non-degree credit courses, this panel discusses a collaborative approach that places these students in college-level courses with embedded academic support. Our institutional data demonstrate an increase in retention and overall GPA for these freshmen, many of whom come from underrepresented populations.
David Areford, Art; Ann Blum, Hispanic Studies; Chris Bobel, Women’s Studies; John Duff, Environmental, Earth, and Ocean Sciences; Susan Gore, Sociology; Ellie Kutz, English; Adugna Lemi, Economics; Patricia Raub, American Studies; and Janet Farrell Smith, Philosophy (UMass Boston)
Drawing on the results of a survey on student access, participants in the CIT Faculty seminar will explore implications for the ways in which we might choose, introduce, and structure various technology-related teaching practices, such as using a learning management system (Web CT) or class website, working with visual media, using textbook supplements and enhancements, inviting online discussion and collaboration, and using presentation software (PowerPoint) for our own and our students’ presentations in the classroom. (Session Block I continues on next page)
Lorna Rivera, Celeste Chudyk, Jesse Edsell-Vetter, Alicia McKinney, Tamara Trejo, Pricilla Walker and Leah Wentworth, College of Public and Community Service (UMass Boston)
Faculty and students in Community Planning classes at the University of Massachusetts Boston will discuss how they worked collaboratively with community groups to address problems, issues, and needs affecting diverse communities.
10:30-11:45 Concurrent Presentations:-SESSION BLOCK II
Developing Students: Examining Reading, Writing, and Oral Communications in a Developmental Program
Denise Paster and Jackie Cornog, Humanities & Social Sciences (Benjamin Franklin Institute of Technology)
The first presenter will discuss a developmental reading and writing curriculum that invites students to look critically at education and academic success and will question this approach, using student-writing samples as a way of assessing the effectiveness of the course. The second presenter will focus on the activities undertaken in an Oral Communications course, exploring and assessing how these activities highlight the link between oral and written communication and promote critical thinking.
Collective Inquiry: Students and Teachers Talking, Reading and Writing Together
Barbara Jo Krieger, English (Bentley College) and Paul Saint-Amand, English & Communication (SUNY-Potsdam)
This session is based on the premise that students can best learn to develop and refine their thoughts and to write with increasing complexity and sophistication when they are exposed to genuine dialogue that is sensitive to their expectations and aspirations. The intent of this session is to explore ways of building this sort of dialogue in our classrooms.
A presentation of a video prepared during a field study trip among a group of cave dwellers in South of India, and its use in teaching research methodology in anthropological science.
Developing a Progressive Pedagogy of Self-Empowered Learning for Social Change
Julie Frechette, Women’s Studies and Leontina Hormel, Sociology (Worcester State College); Nina Huntemann, Communication & Journalism (Suffolk University)
This panel will demonstrate ways to develop and implement a progressive pedagogy of social interaction and activism in today’s educational environment. Using classroom lessons and curricula from Communication, Journalism and Sociology, the presenters will explain how teachers and students can learn to challenge some of the overarching dominant discourses pertaining to contemporary socio-cultural issues as a means toward social empowerment and change.
Infusing Change in Course Design
Mohammad H. Tamdgidi, Sociology (UMass Boston)
I will explore how creative, unpredictable, open-ended, and flexible instructional elements can be infused into otherwise rigid and predictable course designs in both small and large classroom settings.
Oscar Gutierrez, Jean-Pierre Kuilboer, Pratyush Bharati, Jeffrey Keisler, Peng Xu, and Wei Zhang ,College of Management (UMass Boston)
Recent curriculum innovations that cut across traditional departmental lines will be described. Key issues in their development and implementation will be discussed.
Norman L. Barber, Director, Residential Educational Programs & Assessment (UMass Dartmouth) and African American Studies Program (University of Rhode Island)
This interactive workshop will review findings from a recent qualitative study of the experience of academic integration and give voice to an understanding of the inclusive nature of African American teaching pedagogy.
Samantha DeSaulnier, Christine Dinsdale, Dana Kletter, John Murphy, Jefferson Riordan, Abdu Wahab, English Department Writing Tutors (UMass Boston)
A panel of writing tutors will discuss the discoveries they made and the insights they gained as they worked with students in composition classes.
12:00-12:50-LUNCH Ryan Lounge, McCormack Building, 3rd Floor
1:00-2:15 Concurrent Presentations:-SESSSION BLOCK III
Heart of Darkness, Then and Now: Teaching Conrad in Conjunction with Abu Ghraib
Scott Maisano, English (UMass Boston)
This presentation discusses a writing assignment that asked students who had read Conrad’s Heart of Darkness to also read the transcripts from a discussion on PBS’s NewsHour about the abuses committed by US military personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. In addition to inviting students to join an academic discussion already in progress, it also charged them with showing the relevance of literature to an understanding and appreciation of current events.
Reading Autobiographies: An Innovative Approach to the Teaching of Writing
Mark Earley, Gretchen Moore, Tanya Rodrigue, English (UMass Boston)
As first-year teachers, we conducted an experimental assignment that ask students to use writing as a way of recording their reading and rereading processes. Calling this a reading autobiography, we asked our students to map how they read Raymond Carver’s short story, “Cathedral.” In our panel presentation, we will discuss the theory, practice, and outcomes of this assignment.
Elizabeth Henshaw, Mustafa Ozcan, Elizabeth Rowell, Carol R. Shelton, Daniel Weisman (Rhode Island College)
In this presentation a group of faculty engaged in a cross-disciplinary faculty seminar will share their experiences as they worked together. Over a period of a semester, the group launched a project leading to the publication of their “Pedagogical Autobiographies.”
Raymond Puchot, Speech Forensics & Debate (Bristol Community College)
This interactive presentation will focus on the research, design, and performance of an art form that engages minority students in and out of the classroom and that has been proven to increase literacy among all students but especially students of color.
Peter Chidester, Randall Cream and Will Eggers (University of Connecticut and Manchester Community College)
Responding to the specific rewards and difficulties that lie in teaching a challenging curriculum in an open-admissions environment, this panel proposes a dialectical relationship inherent in the challenge that self-transformation as learning entails for our students.
Wayne-Daniel Berard, Jeff Pugliese and Leigh Ann Cuccaro (Nichols College)
For educators in secular colleges or universities, examining texts sacred to faith traditions can present unique challenges. This session offers a simulated class in Biblical literature, and discusses such issues as students’ religious commitment and unfettered inquiry, responding to “testifying” in class, and grading when matters of faith are involved.
2:30-3:45 Concurrent Presentations-SESSION BLOCK IV
Katherine M. Corcoran, Rebecca Lewis, and Jennifer Soberal, Literature Teaching Interns, English (UMass Boston)
This panel will explore classroom strategies in the teaching of literature that encourage student participation. In addition to discussing some of the strategies we used--for example, the use of technology, group presentations, and journal assignments--we will consider which strategies were successful, which were unsuccessful, and why this was the case.
Ellie Kutz and Christian Pulver, English (UMass Boston) McCormack-2nd fl-207
We will demonstrate some ways in which we’ve used an interactive class website to make both student writing and our responses to it (as well as student responses) public within a class. We’ll consider the ways in which that process has affected our practice in responding to student writing and how it connects to an assessment process
Peter Taylor, Critical & Creative Thinking, Arthur Millman, CCT and Philosophy and Chris Bobel, Women’s Studies (UMass Boston)
Members of the 2004 and 2005 Interdisciplinary Faculty Seminar in Humanities and Sciences at UMass Boston will briefly describe their experience and then coach session participants in formulating their own proposals for interdisciplinary faculty seminars.
What I Learned about Teaching Writing in Japan
Thomas Recchio, Director of Freshman Writing (University of Connecticut Storrs)
The presenter will explore issues that emerged for him when he taught academic writing in English in Japan. He will focus on the political and aesthetic dimensions of teaching English to speakers of other languages.
Teacher, Transform Thyself
Lucia Bryant (University of Connecticut Storrs)
The presenter will discuss how her experiences as a high school English teacher provided a set of teaching assumptions that she had to overcome as she began the work of teaching writing as a mode of academic inquiry.
A Reflective Method for Preparing to Teach ESL
Kathryn Good, Janet Isserlis and Elizabeth Jardine (Brown University)
This presentation will discuss the ways in which a course built around teacher reflection contributes to student development. In addition to describing some of the reflective exercises designed for TESOL students, observe the presenter will discuss ways in which the active method of reflection can be used in courses to increase learning outcomes for students.
Gail Bouknight-Davis, Director, Multicultural Center (Williams College); Aaron Bruce, Director, Unity Center (Rhode Island College); Tony Johnson, Director, Multicultural Affairs (RISD); Melvin Wade, Director, Multicultural Center (University of Rhode Island); Mercedes Sherrod Evans, Director, Civil Rights Compliance & Diversity (Mass College of Art)
Members of the NERCHE Multicultural Affairs Think Tank will present examples of how directors of multicultural center directors and individuals in charge of multicultural programs have worked with colleagues on their campuses to increase the level of cultural competence of individuals responsible for student success.
Thank you for joining us.
We look forward to seeing you next year.
For further information on The Center for the Improvement of Teaching and our ongoing forums and seminars please visit our website: www.cit.umb.edu or contact Anna Tsui 617-287-6500, Anna.Tsui@umb.edu.