» Office of Academic Affairs » Office of Undergraduate Education » Faculty Development Grants » 2006-2007 Awards

Facilitating STEM Teaching and Learning in Community Colleges

Brahmadeo Dewprashad and Dennis M. Robbins--Borough of Manhattan Community College

Community colleges play a key role in educating and diversifying the scientific workforce. The literature suggests that the teaching of science by lectures, textbook readings and recipe/verification laboratories is limiting the access to and quality of STEM education. The aim of this proposal to provide faculty development to CUNY?s community colleges faculty members in order that they can better engage and motivate students to persist and succeed in STEM education.

It is proposed to hold six workshops in 2006/7 in the following areas:

(a) Reform Efforts in Undergraduate STEM Education

(b) The Nature of Learning in STEM Fields

(c) Understanding Reasoning

(d) Inquiry-based Instruction

(e) Computer Use to Promote Student-Centered Instruction

(f) Assessment of Learning and Evaluation of Teaching:

A cohort of twelve applicants would be selected for training. Priority will be given to applicants with the least training and experience in instruction at community colleges, a commitment to adapting strategies learned in the workshop and a willingness to dissemination the training. The effectiveness of the workshops will be evaluated and the results will be disseminated. 

 Curriculum Design and Authentic Assessment for Cross-discipline Courses: A Workshop

 Eleanor Miele, Wayne Powell, Theodore Muth, Juergen Polle, Fabio Girelli-Carasi--Brooklyn College

Over the past decade Prof. Barbara Tewksbury has developed a 4-day workshop entitled "Designing Effective and Innovative Courses in the Geosciences" as part of the NSF-funded "On the Cutting Edge" program. The "Designing Effective and Innovative Courses" workshop stresses a backward design approach out of which authentic assessment naturally develops. Ninety percent of past 4-day workshop participants have followed through, and implemented their newly designed courses. Tewksbury will lead a 4-day workshop at CUNY for approximately 30 participants over two weekends in Fall 2006. Professor Tewksbury will be assisted in her work by the team of four Brooklyn College faculty members trained in the Cutting Edge backward design approach. Priority will be given to teams of two or three faculty working together on a common project, with further priority going to teams with faculty from different divisions. Priority will be given to science faculty, although a few spots will be reserved specifically for faculty in the social sciences, humanities, and arts. Faculty applying to the workshop will be required to submit a brief proposal that outlines the theme of the course that they intend to develop, the audience to which the course will be aimed, and their expected goals.

Approaching the Gateway to Allied Health

Seher Atamturktur, Carlos Liachovitzky, Shylaja Akkaraju, Maureen Gannon--Bronx Community College

Gateway science courses are extremely challenging for most students, who often have little science background. As a gateway course for many allied health programs, Human Anatomy & Physiology I (A&P I), has one of the highest enrollments in Bronx Community College (BCC) and yet, student performance is poor, with only about 30% of students achieving the required standard in A&P I (C+ or greater). Four faculty members of the Biology and MLT department at BCC, Carlos Liachovitzky, Seher Atamturktur, Shylaja Akkaraju and Maureen Gannon have received a CUNY Faculty Development Grant to conduct a two-week student development workshop that focuses on helping students (pre-allied health majors) to develop strategies that will help them to master scientific content, including basic medical vocabulary, while maximizing opportunities for students to develop comprehension and critical thinking skills. According to their plan, learning will be accomplished via writing-to-learn exercises, oral communication, computer-based interactive exercises, visual interpretation of graphs and flow charts, and regular critical-thinking exercises. The overall format of the workshop will be drawn from a pedagogical signature known as LETME (Link, Extract, Transform, Monitor and Extend) developed by Prof. Harriet Shenkman of the Education Department at BCC. Student performance will be evaluated by means of two full-length examinations (entrance and exit), homework assignments, learning journals, and quizzes. This workshop would serve CUNY by providing options for incoming allied health students during advisement and freshmen orientation.

Interdisciplinary Approaches to Preparing & Professionalizing Underrepresented Undergraduate Students: Integrated Academic Literacies from General Education to Graduate and Professional Educ ation

Vicki Garavuso, Kathlene McDonald & Irina Carlota Silber--City College, Center for Worker EducationCity College, Center for Worker Education

This project will provide underrepresented undergraduate students opportunities to participate in those academic processes that focus on writing and oral presentation of professional work to an audience in their chosen discipline. As a “testing ground,” students will present their work at the Women and Work conference, part of CWE’s 25th anniversary celebration to be held in March 2007. Full time faculty members, Garavuso, McDonald, and Silber, will work together to design and coordinate integrative literacy assignments. Selected students will be guided to present their work at other conferences in their fields.

We will also design a series of faculty development workshops that integrate academic literacies such as critical reading and writing, qualitative and quantitative reasoning, and communication skills. These workshops will focus on designing interdisciplinary writing assignments and alternative presentation formats such as poster presentations and projects using media and technology.

Improving Undergraduate Success in First Semester Calculus at City College

PIs Edward Grossman and Zeph Landau--City College

The proposed project is intended to build a learning support system to significantly enhance student achievement and success in the first calculus course. The proposal addresses the following three questions:

• What are the prerequisite mathematical concepts and techniques in which student preparation for calculus is not yet adequate?

• Which of these concepts and techniques are absolutely essential for success in calculus?

• What learning resources and interventions effectively prepare students for success in calculus?

To begin to answer the first two questions, all students enrolling in Math 20100/Calculus I will be required to complete a computer-based proficiency test just before or within the first two weeks of the semester. The aggregate data from the testing will be used to identify the most common skill learning needs and will serve as guides for the development of a series of instructional modules, to be delivered online, each targeting one of the identified skills. The results of the skills proficiency analysis also will be used to train math tutors, preparing them to detect and respond to the noted deficiencies.

To study the third question posed above, student performance on the proficiency exam and the related instructional modules will be correlated with results of the final examination.

Training New Teachers to Teach CUNY Undergrads

Polly Thistlewaite & Julie Cunningham--CUNY Graduate Center Mina Rees LibraryCUNY Graduate Center Mina Rees Library

With the rise of the internet and the growth of new media, educators must teach strategies through which students become intellectually, politically, and socially engaged. Developing intellectual frameworks for identifying, finding, understanding, evaluating and applying ideas constitutes “information literacy,” and it is a standard goal for meaningful undergraduate education.

Over the summer 2005, Graduate Center librarians developed a presentation for Graduate Teaching Fellows’ (GTFs) mandatory 5-hour orientation. This collaboration is designed to help CUNY GTFs, nearly all of whom are new classroom teachers teaching core undergraduate courses to teach research skills to CUNY undergraduates.

We plan to develop this presentation into a program that provides support for new Teaching Fellows. We will:

• Enhance the package of information-based assignments

• Include information about effective pedagogies for teaching undergraduates

• Expand the theoretical component of the presentation

• Design and conduct a current survey of CUNY undergraduate research skills

• Integrate information literacy goals thoroughly within the GTF orientation

A Model Framework for Integrated Language and Academic Development of Non-Native English Speaking Students

Jose Luis Morin, Kate Szur, Luisa Paulino & Cheryl Comeau-Kirchner--John Jay CollegeJohn Jay College

This joint proposal by the ESL Resource Center and the Puerto Rican/Latin American Studies Department at John Jay College is designed to create a framework for the concentrated language and academic development of Non-Native English Speaking (NNES) students. The current proposal emerged from a 2005-2006 collaboration to develop on-line Faculty Development Resources on identifying NNES students in content classes and adapting teaching practices to meet their needs. As part of the project, participating NNES students enrolled in an ETH 125 class also received supplementary tutoring from an ESL Resource Center instructor. The outcome confirmed that a coordinated focus on language development and core content will accelerate the acquisition of academic English and literacy skills and enhance academic achievement in core courses.

The objective of the 2006-2207 project is to develop a scalable model of best practices for campuses that enroll large numbers of NNES students in core courses. The project pairs a core curriculum course (Ethnic Studies 125) and an English for Academic Purposes 131 reading/writing course, which will allow NNES students to improve their academic literacy skills and content knowledge in a supported environment. To allow for the replication of this model, the coordinators will document the planning and the implementation of the project and will publish this document, together with the annotated syllabi, on the John Jay Center for Teaching and Learning website. 

Creating the Conditions for Students to Succeed in Public Administration

Judy-Lynne Peters, Roddrick Colvin & Robert Hong--John Jay CollegeJohn Jay College

A recurring or continuing refrain we hear from our undergraduate public administration majors upon graduating or near graduation is this: When I graduate with a public administration degree what can I do? Or where can I find a job? Clearly, upon graduation or the year before graduation is not the appropriate time to assess your major and the impact it has on your career objectives. These issues and the marketability of a college degree should have been discussed way in advance of graduation. In an attempt to answer these questions, this grant will address how to make our students succeed in becoming public administrators or becoming marketable for work in the public sector.

Mentoring as a concept has shown positive results. However, our grant takes mentoring one step further. We want to link our students with a faculty mentor who is engaged in public sector research so that the students will become research assistants and acquire the necessary skills to do research in support of the faculty member and by example to do public sector research later on their own. What is often missing in our curriculum is the nexus that shows how the knowledge and skills acquired as a student can be applied to a job in the public sector. If a student’s objective is to obtain a job in the public sector, then he/she must see that his/her studies and the learned acquired skills can lead to a good job and career. For that reason students will work hard academically to ensure that they will achieve that objective.

The CLASP Seminar Series: Continuing Conversations of Speech/Communication Faculty

Martin Wallenstein – John Jay College, Timothy Gura – Brooklyn College, Shauna Vey - NYCCT

The CUNY League of Active Speech Professors (CLASP) was formed in 2004 by and for the speech communication faculty at CUNY. Its goal is to improve student communication outcomes through the sharing of skills, problems, and solutions of speech faculty. Each year the CLASP Colloquium brings faculty together from throughout the university to stimulate conversation about our discipline and establish an audience and feedback for pioneering approaches. For the 2006-07 school year, CLASP inaugurates a monthly seminar series that draws on the best ideas presented at colloquia from the past two years and energizes CUNY faculty for the Third Annual CLASP Colloquium in April 2007.

The CLASP Seminar Series creates opportunities for CUNY faculty to focus, in depth, on a single topic in a way not possible in a multi-pronged conference. Each seminar will take place on a different CUNY campus. Each of the 6 seminar topics grows out of a need expressed by CUNY Speech faculty /CLASP members over the past two years. The seminars are open to all CUNY faculty --in speech or any other discipline. They will provide pedagogical aids and the skills needed to implement them. After each seminar, participants can opt to continue working on the topic, under the auspices of the seminar leader, during the year and present their results at the spring Colloquium. For information, check our website http://web.jjay.cuny.edu/~clasp/ or email us at mailto:clasp@att.net. The CLASP Seminar Series and the Third Annual CLASP Colloquium are made possible by a CUNY Faculty Development Grant.

Reflective Practice – Medium and Message

Rick Repetti, Kate Garretson, Holly Krech Thomas--Kingsborough Community College

This faculty development project involves a community college ESL learning community for incoming students at Kingsborough Community College. The high-intermediate ESL students take courses that are linked in a 25-hour per week program: classical philosophy (PHI 71), speech (SPE 11), reading/writing (ESL 91), and student development (SD 10 & 11). The innovative features of this link include an interdisciplinary focus on knowledge and identity that is deepened through contemplative and metacognitive practices across the curriculum, including meditation as self-regulation, thinking about thinking, and reflections on processes of learning. Students will share reflective writing on BlackBoard, participate in meditative and confidence-building exercises, and explore classical philosophical texts about knowledge and self identity. We are interested in learning more about reflection as both object and method of study.

Humanistic Mathematics: A Scholarly and Pedagogical Exploration

Karlyn Koh & Marina Dedlovskaya--LaGuardia Community College

This collaborative project aims to make mathematics more accessible and relevant to students at the college, and to stimulate students’ interest and confidence in mathematics by approaching the issues of curriculum and pedagogy from an interdisciplinary perspective. To counter the effects of math anxiety and the lack of connection with mathematics that we often see in our mathematics classrooms, our project aims to demystify mathematics for students by helping them make sense of the subject not only in the context of their lives, but also in its historical and cultural*indeed, humanistic*contexts.

The literature on humanistic mathematics suggests that the presentation of mathematics in an integrated manner with a humanities discipline helps students to grasp mathematics as one way of seeing, describing and making sense of reality. In this way, students will be introduced to mathematical ideas in their historical, socio-political and cultural contexts, and better appreciate the sense and art of mathematics. The goal of this project is thus to undo the experience of mathematics as an alienating, seemingly purposeless endeavor; instead, by integrating Mathematics and English Composition, we hope to make the applicability of mathematics more apparent, and to deepen students’ appreciation of the power and limits of the human imagination.

Development and Assessment of an Experimental Freshman Seminar

Vincent Prohaska, Robert Whittaker, & Steve Wyckoff--Lehman CollegeLehman College

This project refines and assesses a new, 3hour/3credit freshman seminar we have developed at Lehman College: LEH 100/101. This course, first piloted in 2005-06 and continuing in 2006-07 is designed to introduce students to the concept, history and development of the liberal arts; introduce students to the specific degree requirements at Lehman College; improve reading, writing, and critical thinking skills; and, improve information literacy and library research skills. The project has two main goals: The first is to refine the course content based on systematic surveys and interviews of faculty and students and to produce a “faculty guide” to aid faculty teaching the course. The second is to use a variety of methods, such as faculty and student surveys and interviews, student writing, and objective measures to assess the value of the course and to compare it to students enrolled in our current 1 hour/0 credit freshman seminar that continues to be offered.

The Minds of Leondardo da Vinci

Mary Sue Donsky, Annette Saddik, Jonathan Natov, Candido Cabo & Walter Brand--NYCCT

During the past two years, General Education at City Tech has introduced the idea of bringing “core texts” (great works typically studied in the Liberal Arts and Sciences) to the specific majors and professions within the schools of Professional Studies and Technology and Design. Faculty were asked to select excerpts from a core text of their choice that had relevance for one of their courses. The text was then used as a springboard for a variety of low stakes reading and writing assignments.

Through continued support from CUNY, our “core text” initiative will shift from a disparate array of texts selected by individual faculty to a single, core text that can be approached from multiple disciplines, The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci.

Twenty-one faculty will be selected both experienced in working with core texts and faculty new to the project, and all will select their excerpts from Leonardo’s Notebooks.

By drawing from a single text, faculty will achieve a higher degree of integration and collaboration across disciplines. Approximately seven hundred students will be affected by the project.

Faculty will be selected across City Tech’s three schools; Liberal Arts and Sciences, Technology and Design and Professional Studies and each will receive the two-volume Notebooks of Leonardo, compiled and edited from the original manuscripts by J.P. Richter. Faculty will excerpt selections that have relevance for one of their courses during the spring term, 2007. During Fall 2006, faculty will read, research, select and meet periodically to discuss their selections and how they will be integrated into their courses. Here is an instance of a common reading with diverse areas of inquiry as Leonardo was not merely liberally educated but was the source of much of our liberal education today. Given the scope and depth of Leonardo’s work, it is fair to assume that every major, profession or technical field will find something of relevance in the Notebooks. An outside speaker will be invited to speak on Leonardo’s contributions in the areas of technology and invention. City Tech’s new student publication, City Tech Writer, will publish a collection of students’ work on their writings and projects about Leonardo.   

The Pathways for Success in Science (PPS)

Monica Trujillo, Samita Ghoshal & Tracy Gaines-Jeffries--Queensborough Community College

The Pathways For Success in Science (PSS) proposal is designed to address the specific challenges community college students face when taking Anatomy and Physiology I (API). PSS primarily targets API students at Queensborough Community College. API is required class for most health-related programs. This course has been identified to have a history of low pass rates and high attrition. This program is designed to provide academic preparation for this course to improve students’ success rate.

The program will consist of academic workshops developed by participating faculty. Peer-tutoring sessions and academic support will be offered to the students throughout the semesters, as well as monitoring students’ academic progress. Any student who is not making satisfactory progress will be identified and advised to attend a mid-semester strategy session for further academic support. The effectiveness of the program will be assessed by measuring the success rates of students participating in the program vs. non-participants.non-participants.

The goals of the program are to increase the success rate for students taking API and to develop innovative pedagogical practices in the Biology Department at QCC. This pilot program will serve as a model for supporting early intervention programs in the teaching of Anatomy and Physiology in other CUNY campuses. 

Bridging the Gap between Basic Skills Education and Freshman Composition  with the Study of the Local Cultures of Queens

Jan Ramjerdi, Jean Murley, Nancy-Laurel Pettersen--Queensborough Community College

This project will develop collaborative curriculum between basic skills reading and writing courses and freshman composition courses using ethnographic techniques. This cross-disciplinary curriculum is focused on the study of the local cultures of Queens and uses ethnographic research and writing methodologies in a series of project-based assignments. The intent of the project is to improve the success rate of ESL and non-ESL basic skills students by bridging two major gaps which can impede student success: the gap between students’ experiential knowledge of their own communities and the knowledge necessary for college success, and the gap between basic skills and freshman composition courses. The ethnographic methods have been used very successfully in freshman composition courses by Drs. Ramjerdi and Murley for two years, as the pedagogy rapidly increases students’ abilities to participate in academic discourse by engaging them in rigorous academic research and writing that relates to their own knowledge of the diverse cultures of Queens. The overall goal of the project is to bring the successes of this curriculum into basic skills courses and to bring the experience and knowledge of basic skills faculty into the design of the 101 curriculum, thereby creating a smoother transition for students between basic skills courses and English 101.  

Faculty Development Seminar Series

Jason Tougaw, Sarit Golub and Donald Scott--Queens College

The Faculty Development Seminar Series is designed to enrich and enhance the Queens College Writing Across the Curriculum Faculty Partners program through a collaboration with Bard College’s innovative and highly successful Institute for Writing and Thinking (IWT). At the core of the Faculty Partners program is a group of eight faculty recruited to foster Writing in the Disciplines, develop college-wide and departmental writing goals for students, and establish the crucial link between assessment research and classroom practices. The Faculty Development Seminar Series will:

a) Introduce our faculty to national and international conversations about reflective pedagogies, student literacies, and teaching with writing strategies;

b) Facilitate the development and implementation of classroom practices designed to improve student learning and literacies;

c) Develop connections across Coordinated Undergraduate Education programs—including Writing Across the Curriculum, the Academic Support Center, and the Center for Teaching and Learning;

d) Prepare Faculty Partners to assume leadership positions in conversations about writing and learning in the College’s four Divisions about writing and learning; and

e) Promote awareness of the importance of writing as a pedagogical tool in itself, both across General Education and in the disciplines.

Understanding Disciplinary Differences and Commonalities in General Education Gateway Courses

Debra Swoboda--York College

This faculty development proposal addresses how gateway courses prepare students for comparison of and entrance into majors and professional programs. The York College General Education Mission Statement states that general education introduces students to “the content and methodology of diverse academic disciplines and …their interrelationship” to “help them formulate goals regarding future careers and graduate study.” Nonetheless, connections between knowledge and skills learned in gateway courses and the use of these skill sets in majors and professional programs are often more implicit than explicit. Moreover, charting a map of the commonalities and shared boundaries among disciplinary approaches in general education courses is often the student’s responsibility.

Faculty teaching general education courses will participate in an eight (8) hour, four (4) week faculty development seminar on disciplinary and interdisciplinary contexts in gateway courses. Participants will read texts that explore differences among academic disciplines about how knowledge is organized, ways of understanding discipline commonalities, and research on the development of student learning and intellectual development related to discipline knowledge. Participants will strive to uncover principal course concepts, why learning demands differ from course to course, and how gateway courses can be more explicitly connected to major and professional programs.