Books and Performance Tickets for Big Ideas
Awarded to: Bryna Siegel Finer, Lynn Botelho, Melanie Holm, Tami Whited, John Marsden, Amanda Poole, Kimberly Bressler, Dawn Smith-Sherwood, Dana Driscoll
Our teaching circle is proposing funding for copies of The Book of Form and Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki. We are all members of a working group for the Certificate in Big Ideas: Transformative Culture and the Professions, which aims to enhance students' humanities awareness and skill-set as a compliment to their majors in sciences and other disciplines. We plan to use it as a framework for our teaching circle conversations.
Pedagogy Reading Group Readings
Awarded to: Mimi Benjamin, Dawn Smith-Sherwood, Elaine Little, Julie Ankrum, Sadie Miller
The purpose of this teaching circle is to provide opportunities for faculty to engage with teaching literature and discuss uses of the pedagogical information in practice. For our monthly meetings, faculty identify a selected reading (article, book chapter, etc.) to review and share with the group. The goal is to also share how we have used the information in our classrooms along with the successes and challenges so that others may attempt the new techniques as well.
Brighter Explanations with Lightboards
Awarded to: John Chrispell, Channa Navaratna, Gary Stout, Tim Flowers, Francisco Alarcon, Mavis Pararai, Veronica Paz, and Azad Ali
The pandemic forced classroom teaching to be delivered completely online. This abrupt change meant that
most institutions lacked the tools and training to deliver content to students with a minimum disruption to their education. Popular software such as Zoom, MS Team, and Google classroom filled some of the gap; however, it was evident that students missed the classroom experience. A different method of teaching uses an illuminated transparent board (lightboard) where instruction can be seen simultaneously with written content. In this proposal we seek funding to construct a low cost lightboard to enhance the remote teaching experience provided to students.
Self-Care Practices for College Professors
Awarded to: Theresa McDevitt, Edel Reilly, Rachel DeSoto-Jackson, Meigan Robb, Elaine Little, Dawn Smith-Sherwood, Sandra Janicki and Mimi Benjamin
Faculty lead challenging lives and self-care often is not given priority, resulting in burnout and other health issues, and undermining their ability to provide highest quality instruction and model work/life balance and positive self-care practices for students. The goal of this project is to review books which address faculty wellness in general and/or specific self-care related practices to assist teaching circle members in developing personal self-care practices and plan for future wellness workshops designed to support the wellbeing of IUP faculty and the students they mentor.