Spring 2010 Cycle
Seven proposals were funded in the Spring 2010 cycle.
ePortfolios: Electronic Pasta
A Collaborative Event to consider the use and assessment of ePortfolios on college campuses.
- Coe College (Lead institution): Christy Wolfe (Teacher Education) and Lisa Wiebenga Stroschine (Academic Technologist)
- Workshop website
Led by Christine Wolfe and Lisa Wiebenga Stroschine, this event will gather ACM faculty practitioners of electronic portfolios to present and talk collectively about their experiences. Kerry Bostwick (Associate Professor and Dept. Chair of Teacher Education, Cornell College) will lead discussions and demonstrate Cornell's ePortfolio model. A key point of discussion will be how portfolios are used to enhance teaching and learning in a variety of disciplines while still speaking to the core values of a liberal arts education.
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Fostering Best Practices in Mentoring Advanced Undergraduate Research
- Andrew Civetinni (political science, Knox College)
Under the leadership of Andrew Civetinni, a steering committee will be convened in September to investigate the feasibility of an ACM-wide conference on faculty mentoring of advanced undergraduate research. The goals of such a conference would be to model an annual conference for ACM undergraduates engaged in advanced research and to foster best practices among faculty members engaged in mentoring such students.
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Global Citizenship
- Luther College (Lead Institution): Deborah L. Norland (Professor of Education) and John Moeller (Professor of Political Science and Director, Center for Ethics and Public Life)
- Coe College (Partner institution): Kimberly Lanegran (Assistant Professor of Political Science)
- Cornell College (Partner institution): Tori Barnes-Brus (Assistant Professor of Sociology)
- Ripon College (Partner institution): Linda Clemente (Professor of French, Department of Romance and Classical Languages)
Faculty from Luther, Coe, Cornell, and Ripon Colleges will work together to explore the feasibility of a short-term study abroad course on the island nation of Malta. The course, Global Citizenship, will look at issues of poverty, migration, culture, and nationhood, among others and would be offered through Luther College as soon as June 2011. Deborah Norland and John Moeller are the project leaders. They propose Malta as an “ideal country” for such a short-term experiential course. Although Malta is part of the European Community, it continues to be a developing nation with a rich history of cultures intermingling, most recently receiving northern African refugees who see Malta as their entry into the European Community.
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Making Critical Connections: Workshops on Teaching International Development in the Liberal Arts
- Beloit College (Lead Institution): Rachel Ellett (Political Science), Jennifer Esperanza (Anthropology), and Diep Phan (Economics)
- Colorado College (Supporting Institution): Pedro de Araujo (Economics) and Takeshi Ito (Political Science)
- Workshop website
Faculty members from Beloit and Colorado Colleges will organize two inter-linked workshops on teaching international development. The first workshop, to be held in January 2011, will bring together 10-12 ACM faculty from various disciplines to discuss and share their strategies on and experience with teaching development. The second workshop, scheduled for May 2011, will build upon the initial group of 10-12 by inviting the international education directors and/or service-learning liaisons from each of the partner institutions. Project leaders Jennifer Esperanza and Rachel Ellet identify the goals of both workshops as discussing how a liberal arts education can best be used to critically examine, approach, and engage in development topics/projects at both local and global levels; to examine effective means of providing students with an understanding of development that integrates various disciplinary perspectives and innovative teaching practices; and to find ways to integrate students' "venture" and hands-on experiences with theoretical issues of international and community development.
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- Dennis Barnett (Theatre, Coe College), primary contact
- Shawn Womack (Theatre and Dance, Grinnell College)
- Elizabeth Carlin-Metz (Theatre, Knox College)
Under the leadership of Dennis Barnett and with support from colleagues from Grinnell and Knox Colleges, this event will bring together ACM faculty for sustained discussion about the ways in which theatre and dance are taught in the liberal arts college. The work of the DAH Theatre group from Belgrade, Serbia, will serve as the catalyzing force for this conference. DAH’s performances are based in a combinative dance/theatre/multi-media approach which should offer a strikingly different way of thinking about the traditional roles of text, director, actor, dancer, choreographer, and musician — and how these are taught in liberal arts colleges.
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Quantification of Famine Genes in the Bacteria Acinetobacter Baylyi
- Phoebe Lostroh (Biology, Colorado College)
- Bruce Voyles (Biology, Grinnell College)
Phoebe Lostroh and Bruce Voyles will collaborate on a common research interest in "bacterial physiology during starvation conditions that mimic some aspects of the typical feast and famine conditions bacteria encounter in nature." The FaCE grant will allow them to share NSF-funded equipment for cutting-edge research in this area and will eventually help them to enhance the laboratory experience of their undergraduates.
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Teaching Islam in the Liberal Arts Curriculum
- Peter Matthews Wright (Assistant Professor of Religion, Colorado College)
Peter Wright has organized a working group to share individual teaching strategies for presenting Islam in the light of current theories of religion, and to address related questions that arise in the course of teaching Islamic history and civilizations to U.S. college students. He will be joined by Robert F. Shedinger (Associate Professor of Religion, Luther College), Brett Wilson (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies, Macalester College), and Noah Salomon (Religion Dept., Carleton College). Shedinger's recent book, Was Jesus A Muslim? Questioning Categories in the Study of Religion, will provide a theoretical focus for the project.
For more information about the working group, see the article on "ACM Professors Will Use FaCE Grant to Advance Islamic Studies."
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