» Office of Academic Affairs » Office of Undergraduate Education » Faculty Development Grants » 2007-2008 Awards

"Developing Effective Teaching throughout the University"

To download the Request for Proposal (RFP), click here.
Click the titles for a brief description of each grant.

Writing Across the Campuses: Faculty Perceptions of Student Literacy and the Teaching of Writing
Cheryl Smith (Baruch) and Marian Arkin and James Wilson (LaGuardia)

"Conquer the ACT, Conquer the World!: Using Diplomacy to Improve Student Performance in Developmental Writing Courses"
Joseph Bisz and Carlos Hernandez (BMCC)

Using Case Studies and Inquiry-Based Instruction to Facilitate STEM learning
Brahmadeo Dewprashad and Dennis Robbins (BMCC)

Fostering STEM Faculty Professional Learning Communities Through Applications & Learning Theories
Laurel Cooley and Scott Dexter (Brooklyn College)

Community College Campaign for Student Success Initiative: Social Sciences Forum
James Freeman (Bronx Community College) and Ronald Hayduk (BMCC)

Mathematics Teaching-Research Journal (MTRJ) on Line
Vrunda Prabhu (Bronx Community College), Anne Rothstein (Lehman College), and Bronislaw Czarnocha (Hostos Community College)

Explore the Role of Computer-based Graphic Art in Teaching Programming, Mathematics and Molecular Science Peter Brass and Yuying Gosser (City College) and Adrienne Klein (CUNY Graduate Center)

Freshman Academy : Language and Math through the Quest of Sciences
Amanda Bernal-Carlo, Zvi Ostrin, and Nieves Angulo (Hostos Community College)

Identification and Remediation of Challenges in the Transfer from Community to Senior College for Early Childhood Education Students: A Study of the Transition in the Jointly Registered program between Kingsborough Community College and Brooklyn College
Barbara Weiserbs and Laura Kates (Kingsborough Community College)

An Inquiry into Learning: A CUNY-wide seminar on ePortfolio Research & Practice
Bret Eynon and Max Rodriguez (LaGuardia Community College)

Strategies for Integrating Reading Instruction into Disciplinary Curriculum
Jan Ramjerdi and Nancy-Laurel Pettersen (Queensborough Community College)

Green Brooklyn: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Enviromental Studies
Mark Noonan, Monica Berger, Reginald Blake, Anne Leonard, Robin Michaels, Susan Phillip, Peter Spellane (New York City College of Technology)

The CLASP Retreat and Colloquium: Creating a Forum for Exploring Speech Communication Education Pedagogy and Outcomes
Shauna Vey (NYCCT), Gordon Young (KBCC), and Patricia Sokoloski (LaGuardia)

Caribbean and African Creole Languages and Education: A CUNY Faculty Development Symposium
Coleen Clay, Charles Coleman and Rick Lezama (York); Eleanor Armour-Thomas (Queens) and George Irish (Medgar Evers)

Conducting Research into Teaching and Learning
Janine Graziano-King, Loretta Brancaccio-Taras, and Franceska Smith (Kingsborough Community College)

Role-playing as Writing Pedagogy
Andrea McArdle (CUNY School of Law)

Study of Student Writing
Jason Tougaw (Queens College)

Writing Across the Campuses: Faculty Perceptions of Student Literacy and the Teaching of Writing

This project is designed to increase faculty awareness of reading and writing in the classroom: how it can be used to increase student learning and how students understand and respond to course texts and writing assignments. It aims to deepen awareness of these issues by bringing together faculty from a community and a senior college to talk about student literacy, faculty perceptions of student's abilities, and methods for teaching reading and writing. Building on two successful CUNY initiatives, Bridging the Colleges in the Bronx and Queens College's Faculty Partners program, the project will implement a faculty development series that builds a bridge between LaGuardia and Baruch Colleges, bringing interdisciplinary faculty together to explore the place of writing in their classes. Writing Across the Campuses will unite participating faculty four times over the academic year to talk about their students' literacy challenges, how they try to address them, what most concerns them about student learning, and their expectations in the classroom. Further, faculty will share and discuss their own developing course materials in order to gain a better grasp of where and how their challenges, goals, and approaches intersect and diverge. The participants will also visit one another's classes once during the year to experience the dynamics and processes of a college class on the other campus. The year will culminate in the group attending the Bard Institute for Writing and Thinking in May.

 

"Conquer the ACT, Conquer the World!: Using Diplomacy to Improve Student Performance in Developmental Writing Courses"

We will use Diplomacy in our Spring 2008 English 095: Intensive Writing courses to combat two significant obstacles to learning:

1) MOTIVATION, including general class preparedness and attendance; taking responsibility for homework assignments; and exhibiting behavior that is conducive for success in the classroom.

2) PROBLEM-SOLVING, including creating arguments; understanding how literature provides solutions and theories for real life; how logic and critical thinking skills add value to education; and how to get one's point across through effective, audience-based communication.

Diplomacy is a "cooperative" board game (Hsi, et. al 2006); to win, players must collaborate with each other by forming military alliances and strike out on their own at the strategically appropriate times (Johnson, 1976). Simple to learn, it takes clear, convincing argumentation to win the game, just as clear, convincing argumentation determines students' scores on the ACT. Once each week, students will be playing Diplomacy and mastering the same skills needed to succeed on the ACT in an appealing, nontraditional manner. The process of writing down their strategies will help students who have trouble thinking or sequencing their ideas onto paper. Afterwards, students will convene and advance the game board.

 

Using Case Studies and Inquiry-Based Instruction to Facilitate STEM Learning

Case studies and inquiry-based learning have been shown to be effective and engaging methods of promoting active learning. However, almost all of the current STEM textbooks and their accompanying instructional materials are designed to facilitate instructor-centered instruction. There is need for STEM faculty to be able to develop and use case studies and inquiry-based learning instructional material. This project seeks to provide such training to CUNY STEM faculty members. This project will train nine STEM faculty members such that they can develop/modify, and effectively use case studies and inquiry-based lessons and laboratory exercise in their classes. Six workshops will be held over the winter intersession of 2008 and a follow-up session will be held in Spring 08. In addition, a website will be set up in which participants can access resources for classroom use, communicate with each other and share case studies and inquiry-based lessons developed. All CUNY STEM faculty members would be invited to apply to attend. Participants selected to participate will be required to commit to developing and using case studies and inquiry-based instructional material in their classroom, evaluating the effectiveness of the same, and sharing the results.

Fostering STEM Faculty Professional Learning Communities Through Applications & Learning Theories

How people learn math has received a great deal of scholarly attention. However, there is a noticeable lack of integration of mathematical learning theories and undergraduate mathematics teaching. We believe this is one of the reasons that sustained change in teaching and learning math has been difficult. As part of a larger project dedicated to integrating learning theory more fully with math classroom practice, we will develop 3-4 curriculum modules for an undergraduate linear algebra course. These modules will be designed with three purposes: (1) to allow students to explore some mathematical ideas behind several computer science applications, such as watermarking and image processing; (2) to draw on well-established theories of how people learn math, using these theories with the students so that the students may also reflect on their learning as it occurs; and (3) to provide a framework within which faculty may reflect on themselves as learners and teachers. The integration of mathematical content, applications, and math learning theories will provide an enhanced experience of learning not only linear algebra content but also about students' own learning processes.

 

Community College Campaign for Student Success Initiative: Social Sciences Forum

A seminar series is proposed for community college faculty in the Social Sciences to "look with fresh eyes at our practices, policies and routines", share classroom experiences, professional development, innovative teaching strategies, research agendas, and learning experiences. The seminars will emphasize effective teaching strategies, curriculum development, general education and learning communities, transfer protocols to social science degree programs at the senior colleges, and professional development of faculty. Building on the Campaign for Student Success message from EVC Selma Botman, we wish to critically assess progress in the social sciences across CUNY campuses, and disseminate effective practices to faculty and students alike. Our anticipated audience includes a wide range of community college faculty from the social sciences across CUNY. This is a rare opportunity for a broad constituency of CUNY community colleges social science faculty to convene in order to further our common interests, and bridge the gap between the junior and senior colleges within CUNY. The proposal seeks to create on-campus colloquia hosted by faculty at Bronx Community College Department of Social Sciences and Borough of Manhattan Community College.

 

Mathematics Teaching-Research Journal (MTRJ) on Line

The aim of the project is to further develop the Mathematics Teaching-Research Journal (MTRJ) Online as a medium through which the results of new initiatives of CUNY can be made public and scrutinized in the open forum throughout the university and beyond. MTRJ Online was created by faculty of Lehman College, Bronx Community College and Hostos Community College as an outcome of the NSF-ROLE #0126141 with the purpose of informing instructors and teachers of mathematics of CUNY, and especially of the Bronx colleges and public schools, about the process of developing the craft of Mathematics Teaching-Research, a component of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Consequently it fits excellently the purpose of CASTL. Its focus on mathematics and related disciplines responds to one of the major priorities of CUNY's Campaign For Student Success. In the subsequent issues of MTRJ, we will publish reviews of literature summarizing the present state of knowledge about these three domains, formulate new research hypotheses and propose the Teaching-Research questions that could be investigated through Teaching-Research methodology.

An Inquiry Into Learning: A CUNY-Wide Seminar on ePortfolio Research & Practice

ePortfolios are emerging as a valuable tool for supporting student success and empowering faculty to gain new insight into teaching and learning. Meeting monthly from September to May, the seminar will engage up to 20 faculty from across CUNY in a sustained intellectual discussion that will advance the educational use of ePortfolio at CUNY. Participants will be selected through an open-call application process, conducted with the assistance of campus Centers for Teaching and Learning. Questions to be discussed include: What is the state of the research literature on ePortfolio? What are effective instruments for studying the impact of ePortfolio on student learning? How can faculty use ePortfolio in their own classrooms? How are institutions evaluating ePortfolio? What does it mean to involve students in an inquiry into learning?

Led by the experienced ePortfolio Leadership Team from LaGuardia, this interdisciplinary seminar will engage faculty from across the university, from campuses where ePortfolio is only a possibility to campuses where it is a well-established initiative. It will draw on questions, insights, and experiences from CUNY campuses as well as the growing national literature. Participants will share their findings with their local campuses, through departments, Centers for Teaching and Learning, and campus ePortfolio projects. They will offer sessions at CUNY-wide conferences, such as the annual CUNY Gen Ed conference and the CUNY IT conference. Creating opportunities to link inquiry and scholarship directly to classroom practice and to broach College initiatives, the seminar will be a valuable resource for faculty, students, and the university as a whole.

 

Strategies for Integrating Reading Instruction Into Disciplinary Curriculum

The purpose of this project is to develop and disseminate a set of strategies in the form of a manual for faculty in all disciplines to use in integrating reading instruction into their curricula. The project draws on our participation in the 2006/07 QCC Task Force on Reading and Writing, and on our experience of teaching a Spring 2007 Learning Community pairing Basic Skills Reading with College Composition (funded by a 2006/07 Faculty Development Grant titled, "Bridging the Gap between Basic Skills and College Composition with the Study of the Local Cultures of Queens." In this class, we identified several specific areas in which student reading proficiencies were below the level required to succeed in EN 101, and developed methods for successfully addressing these deficiencies in integrated reading/writing assignments. Our goal in the proposed project is to document our pedagogy, expand it to be applicable to courses in all disciplines, and make a manual for faculty to use in their classes to improve student access to course readings.

 

Green Brooklyn: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Urban Enviromental Studies

For this project, seven City Tech faculty will implement an interdisciplinary research project for undergraduate students. Collaborating classes will investigate and document environmental issues in downtown Brooklyn. Teams comprised of students from the sciences, humanities, communication design, and tourism will work together in a virtual collaboration to build an online document to share the results of their combined scholarship. Green Brooklyn will culminate with a physical walking tour given by students in May 2008. Local environmental issues will be presented in a broader context for the CUNY community and the general public.

The CLASP Retreat and Colloquium: Creating a Forum for Exploring Speech Communication Education Pedagogy and Outcomes

The CUNY League of Active Speech Professors (CLASP) was formed in 2004 by speech communication faculty seeking to improve their teaching through formal/informal exchange. CLASP organized annual colloquia in the spring of 2005, 2006, and 2007 (upcoming) as well as a seminar series devoted to innovative educational techniques and important pedagogical issues held during the 2006-07 academic year (see descriptions at http://itssphp.jjay.cuny.edu/~clasp/coll-sem-registration/index-frame.htm).

CLASP proposes a year-long program. This includes a fall 2007 faculty retreat on scholarship of teaching and learning, a CUNY-wide student public speaking competition, development of an online resource center to disseminate their findings and teaching resources, and a spring 2008 colloquium where faculty will present projects/studies resulting from the fall 2007 retreat. This program is a logical progression of CLASP's previous work and will ultimately improve the quality of oral communication education at CUNY.

The CLASP Retreat will take place in two four-hour sessions tentatively scheduled with one session each for the dates of Saturday, September 29 (1-5pm) and Sunday, September 30 2007 (9-1 pm) at The Mariandale Retreat Center in Ossining, NY (http://www.mariandale.org). Dr. Connie Schroeder, who serves as the Assistant Director of the Center for Instructional and Professional Development, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee, has been approached to facilitate this retreat. Dr. Schroeder will utilize facilitated discussion, writing, reading, and analysis exercises conducted individually and in small groups to help faculty members reflect on their praxis in teaching oral communication.

Caribbean and African Creole Languages and Education: A CUNY Faculty Development Symposium

In many educational situations, the significance of language and identity and language loyalty and ideology is often overlooked because achievement is often measured according to one's ability to conform to the Standard, dominant language model. The population that is particularly overlooked in most educational contexts, especially in college level language learning and literacy situations are the speakers of a Creole variety. Academic English is not the home-community variety for many students of the Commonwealth Caribbean and Francophone Caribbean background. This student population is now considered to be English as Second Dialect (ESD) learners. Until linguists, especially creolists, discussed Creoles as structurally defined language varieties they were considered adulterations of their lexifiers and low or inferior from a socio-cultural perspective. More recently a consensus has emerged among linguists that recognition of the autonomy of Creole language varieties as distinct systems from the lexically official languages is a basis for reform of educational policies and literacy practices. The presence of large numbers of student of Caribbean background in all levels of the educational system in New York inclusive of CUNY colleges challenges us to a critical reexamination of the nature of English Language teaching and learning and the support needed for literacy skills mastery. The project funded by this grant comprises two components: One component will be a symposium, to be held at the York College campus, where linguists from the United States and the Caribbean, researchers and educators working with Creole dominant student populations will offer perspectives on language and identity, power and loyalty as important factors in understanding and explaining Creole language situations as well as effective language and literacy learning practices. The other component is a follow-up seminar to further explore the implementation of instructional approaches to enhance language and literacy skills development especially in the General Education courses.

Conducting Research Into Teaching & Learning

Designed to encourage and support up to ten faculty in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), this project has been organized into five phases. Phase 1, Reading, Thinking, Observing, & Reporting, offers faculty materials and workshops to help them locate, read, and discuss SoTL literature; frame research questions based on observations of their own teaching and their own students' learning; explore a variety of classroom assessment techniques, and create their own Carnegie KEEP Toolkits, where they will keep weekly logs of their SoTL work throughout their project. In Phase 2, Designing and Planning a Research Project, faculty will explore research methodologies that are appropriate for their question but might not be those favored in their own disciplines. Data Collection begins in Phase 3, during which faculty will form cohorts to support each others' work in data collection as well as their work in Phases 4 and 5: Analyzing and Interpreting Data, and Making Work Visible. Throughout these five phases, faculty will have the support of workshops, peer groups, and one-to-one meetings with seminar facilitators. Faculty who submit proposals will be given one hour of reassigned time to collect and analyze data; faculty who submit a draft of their findings will receive an additional hour to complete their work and submit it to an appropriate journal or make it public through a KCC in-house publication or Faculty Forum. With faculty consent, facilitators will examine the success of this model through the participants' weekly Keep Toolkit entries.

 

Role-Playing as Writing Pedagogy

In summer 2007 the School of Law's Director of Legal Writing, Prof. Andrea McArdle, launched a curriculum development project for the writing-intensive Lawyering Seminar, taught to all first-year students in eight sections of approximately 20 students each. The project is a vehicle for engaging students in a variety of lawyering roles to which writing tasks are organically connected. Designed to approximate authentic lawyering tasks, this year-long exercise will develop through an extended role-play that casts students as lawyers for an estranged husband or wife having different interpretations of a provision in a prenuptial agreement. Interacting in role with faculty and others who portray clients and judges, students will engage in client counseling, alternatives to litigation for problem solving, and advocacy. These role-based tasks, in turn, form the basis for professional writing: law office memoranda and a client advice letter requiring predictive legal analysis on issues of contract interpretation and enforceability, and, in Spring 2008, a multiple-issue advocacy brief on the right of a non-biological parent to court-ordered visitation with a developmentally delayed step-child. Working in conjunction with Prof. McArdle are various faculty members and a cohort of student assistants who have provided legal research, piloted the proposed assignments, and offered feedback on how the assignments would work as teaching vehicles for entering law students. The role-play and writing assignments developed through this project will be introduced in Fall 2007. The Spring-semester course development work will continue during the Fall 2007 semester.

 

Study of Student Writing

The Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) program is a resource for all faculty and students at Queens College with the goal of encouraging, stimulating, and supporting a culture of writing on campus. Our assessment plan is designed to identify both process and outcomes objectives for the program, in order to examine both what changes have occurred as a result of the work of the WAC program and how these changes might impact student writing (as well as students' experiences learning writing and faculty's experience teaching it). To this end, we are proposing a series of linked assessment and faculty development projects that move toward: a) identifying correlates of improvements in student writing, and b) training faculty to include these components in their courses.

Our Phase I assessment involves a cross-sectional design, in which we gather data on current practices in selected W courses and evaluate student writing in these courses, in order to identify potential correlates of better student writing. What effect do W courses have on student writing-and how do particular teaching practices influences outcomes?

We hypothesize that a significantly greater proportion of students in a given course will demonstrate improvement in these areas when faculty:

• articulate specific goals for their students' writing
• design assignments that give students practice working toward articulated goals
• require significant and substantive revision
• offer feedback closely linked with stated goals
• give significant attention to writing in class
• make use of informal "writing to learn" practices
• demonstrate links between rhetorical and disciplinary elements of course reading materials and student writing assignments