Fellows

Shannon Baley, Visiting Assistant Professor, University Studies
Innovation Fellow | American Dilemmas/ Living Newspaper

Patricia J. Baynham, Professor, Biology
Global Innovation Fellow | Embedding Australia into Biology 1305

Lisa M. Goering, Professor, Biology
Global Innovation Fellow | Evolution Down Under, Capstone with Australia topics

Jennifer Jefferson, Visiting Assistant Professor, University Studies
Innovation Fellow | The American Experience

Katherine Lopez, Assistant Professor, Accounting
Innovation Fellow | Intermediate Accounting

Jack Musselman, Associate Professor, Philosophy
Innovation Fellow | Legal Ethics

Georgia Seminet, Associate Professor, Spanish
Innovation Fellow | Mexican Literature of the XXth and XXIst Centuries

Amy Nathan Wright, Visiting Assistant Professor, University Studies
Diversity Innovation Fellow | Domestic Academic Travel Experience

 

Abstracts

Shannon Baley, Visiting Assistant Professor, University Studies, EDUC
American Dilemmas/Living Newspaper
Currently students are required to take CULF 2321, American Dilemmas, which is moving towards a more civic-‐‐engagement-‐‐focused model. While the civic engagement portion of the course is rewarding and valuable for students and instructors alike, I struggle with integrating it with the other purpose of the course: the investigation of contemporary American social problems. To this end, I would like to propose a Living Newspaper section of American Dilemmas. For this course, students will choose a single contemporary American social problem to investigate as a group, inside and outside of class via careful library research and via their civic engagement project(s). While in current model of Dilemmas students are required to write a paper (or papers) and present on their chosen social problem, in this pilot students will write and perform a living newspaper, a uniquely American theatrical form that originated during the Depression-‐‐era Works Project Administration and which pulls from naturalistic and agit-‐‐prop theatrical styles. In collaboratively creating a living newspaper, students will dramatize the social problem they have researched and engaged with in the larger Austin community by using a variety of theatrical techniques including dialogue, image work, and the use of multimedia. Like the original living newspaper performances, this project will also advocate for social change. It is my hope that this project will make the best use of the living newspaper genre to help students dramatize their chosen social problem in a way that is both relevant and wide-‐‐ reaching in terms of individual and community impact.

Patricia Baynham and Lisa Goering, Professors, Biology, NSCI
Embedding Australia into Biology 1305 and Capstone 4360
This project seeks to apply best practices to two classes with an embedded study abroad component in Australia.  BIOL 1305: Education Down Under (science in depth) and Capstone 4360: Australia Topics will travel together to Australia for two weeks in summer 2016 and then hold regular class meetings during fall 2016.  Students will travel together and complete many of the same activities while abroad.  The BIOL 1305 course focuses on the evolution of animals and plants so this travel will introduce students to species found in no other place and illustrate the effect of isolation on species diversity.  The Capstone course allows students to design projects that focus on Australia such as the effects of climate change, sustainability, the tension between development and conservation and how Australia attempts to minimize antibiotic resistance.  The fall courses will be offered at the same time in the Monday and Wednesday 5:00-6:15pm time block to allow for interaction with people in Australia (since it will be the following morning there).  The instructors would like to determine the most effective ways for these classes to interact and support each other, the best practices in interacting with those abroad before and/or after the visit and how to build capacity in the department/school/university to offer embedded abroad classes to a particular region in the future.

Jennifer Jefferson, Visiting Assistant Professor, University Studies, EDUC
The American Experience
My goal with this Innovation Fellowship is to redesign the American Experience course around the central idea of “memory”: what gets remembered and memorialized; how those memories shape the present moment; and whose memories are privileged over others in the diverse history of the American experience. This approach builds on key components of my existing course—a book group and an oral history project—and provides continuity throughout the course curriculum. My goal is to reconsider the day-‐‐to-‐‐day life of the classroom to be focus on the idea of memory and to integrate a digital component into the final stage of this class, through either blogs or short documentaries that are grounded in critical reflection. I bring to this project experience in curriculum development, a desire to experiment in my teaching, and a strong commitment to diversity. I have a plan in place to guide the necessary changes to the curriculum in advance of the Spring 2017 semester, and I have several approaches to dissemenating information on campus and within the larger academic community: by participating in the American Experience faculty meeting; by presenting at the Center for Teaching Excellence symposium; and by submitting my materials to Syllabus, a peer-‐‐reviewed journal on teaching materials. Ultimately, my approach to this course, or components of it, could be adopted by my colleagues teaching American Experience or, should the new general education curriculum be adopted, be a part of the Re-‐‐Imagining America course offerings.

Katherine Lopez, Assistant Professor, Accounting, SMBX
Intermediate Accounting I
The project is to flip Intermediate Accounting I. Traditionally, Intermediate Accounting courses are taught in a lecture style and have a low grade average. In order to cover the vast amount of material in the course, a lecture-based format is fast-paced and leaves no time for in-class activities. This combination does not allow time for students to reflect on the course material. Typically, students cram for the exams and do not retain the material past the current semester. The course is also harder for foreign students who often need more time to translate the lectures. Taking the current Intermediate Accounting I class taught in a lecture-based format and flipping it will allow students to cover the lecture material at their own pace, replaying lectures on subject areas they find more difficult. It will also allow for the incorporation of in-class assignments and group work that will aid the students in making more in-depth connections for the material, resulting in increased student critical thinking and leading to increased long-term retention of the subject matter. This technique can be applied more broadly to other heavily fact-based, problem oriented classes, allowing for added application of the concepts during class time. With the rise of online courses, the value added during the in-class meetings will be a means of distinguishing the course.

Jack Musselman, Associate Professor, Philosophy, HUMX
Legal Ethics
As a part of a Council of Independent Colleges Online Humanities Consortium, Jack Musselman will be creating a version of Legal Ethics that can be taught online and enroll both St. Edward’s students and students from multiple CIC member institutions. Legal Ethics examines the moral, legal and political justification for the neutral partisan advocacy model (or NPA model) that informs the American lawyer’s main ethical duties. That is, lawyers claim they must not be held responsible for their clients’ legal goals even as they zealously argue for their clients in ways we would not tolerate outside the courtroom.This course examines the moral, legal and political status of that claim about rights and truth. Dr. Musselman will incorporate video elements developed over the previous 7 years of teaching this course in face-to-face formats. He uses a variety of current media to connect course subjects to current events and to enrich students’ understanding of the concepts. Our high-definition video conferencing classroom will enable Professor Musselman to give live lectures and hold synchronous interactive discussions including students on campus and those at other campuses–a pedagogy we have been experimenting with at SEU and with which he has prior experience. He will also facilitate a guest lecture and dialogue with Dr. Ekaterina Lukianova at St. Petersburg State University, Russia, using the Global Digital Classroom. This course may also employ online collaboration tools for students working in groups and peer editing papers and projects and online discussion tools such as blogs, discussion boards, and sharing essays, to facilitate interaction among students and with the instructor.

Georgia Seminet, Associate Professor, Spanish, HUMX
Spanish 4303 | Mexican Literature of the XXth and XXIst Centuries
As a part of a Council of Independent Colleges Online Humanities Consortium, Georgia Seminet will be creating a version of Mexican Literature of the 20th and 21st Centuries that can be taught online and enroll both St. Edward’s students and students from multiple CIC member institutions. This course will introduce students to major authors of Mexican narrative fiction of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, covering the most distinctive traits of Mexican literature, significant authors, and important trends and developments of the period. Beginning with the historical roots of the Mexican Revolution and the text that exemplifies the revolutionary period, Los de abajo (Mariano Azuela, 1915), and ending with the narconovela by Elmer Mendoza, Balas de plata, 2008, this course will survey some of the most important aesthetic and ideological movements that characterize Mexican literature. Students will learn about the historical, cultural, and literary contexts of this period and engage in textual analysis of the novels and short stories chosen for the course. The course will be taught in Spanish and all class discussions will be conducted in Spanish. The course will utilize digital tools for supporting discussions, collaborative activities, and small-group meetings to facilitate interaction among students and with the instructor, and will also utilize digital tools for allowing students to collaboratively edit one another’s writing and to annotate literary texts collaboratively.

Amy Nathan Wright, Visiting Assistant Professor, University Studies, EDUC
Domestic Academic Travel Experience
My goal is to design a domestic academic travel experience, in particular a civil rights tour. I hope that by developing this course, to also provide the University with a model for other faculty who are interested in leading substantial, academic, domestic-based travel and class experiences. My vision is for students to participate in a week or more long trip in mid-to-late May throughout the Deep South stopping at key sites related to the civil rights and black power movements. While this is a common practice for civil rights scholars like myself, and a common option for students at all levels at many universities, including some of our peer institutions, St. Edward’s currently has no viable model for this sort of U.S.-based travel and academic experience. I hope to develop an academically rich 1-hour course to provide students an elective or General Education credit for going on the civil rights tour and completing a range of related assignments, such as daily readings and journal reflections, an oral history project, a service project, and a culminating, multi-media project. The Diversity Innovation Fellowship would provide the necessary support to research both the logistics of the trip and to prepare the assignments and related assessment for students’ academic enrichment beyond the trip itself. This course would also be useful as an option for the proposed new General Education curriculum’s requirement for Integrations focused on Experiential Learning for Social Justice and on Social Identities, if the curriculum is to pass.