April 23, 2005
Ryan Sennett Wins Foundations Award
Congratulations to Ryan Sennett, second year TA, for winning the Foundations Award for
teaching and curriculum at the LGBT Rainbow Banquet on April 21, 2005.
He was nominated by one of his students this semester, and the award is
a tribute to his ability to engage students with challenging questions
about sexuality, gender, and masculinity in WRT 105. It is also a
tribute to the assignments and course designs developed by the 670 team
(led by Anne Fitzsimmons) and the diversity initiative (led by Margaret
Himley), and funded by the Vice Chancellor's Fund for Diversity.
Posted by mryonker at 09:07 PM | Comments (1)
February 07, 2005
The Student Advisory Board Gears UP
Superbowl Sunday is all about eating pizza, right? Superbowl Sunday THIS year for the SAB was about, sure, getting a slice of pizza. But along with some pizza, there also was much planning. For this, SAB members are getting disposable cameras to document diversity around SU from their perspective. As the project shapes up, we'll post progress here.
Posted by mryonker at 03:35 PM | Comments (0)
November 07, 2003
Diversity as Signature (Revised Grant Proposal)
Writing and Diversity in a Globalized World
Fund for Diversity 2003
Vice Chancellor’s Curriculum Innovation Initiative
Margaret Himley
November 7, 2003
Diversity as a Signature
Writing in a globalized world requires starting from an assumption of difference, of limited knowledge, of perspective. Writing teachers prepare writers to produce written and electronic texts that take that assumption into account. We ask students to learn more about the geographic and historical contexts in which they write, analyze audiences, listen to others’ points of view, recognize the limits on their perspectives and their knowledge, and be self-reflexive about their particular history and language experiences.
With this grant, the Writing Program commits to this assumption of difference integral to WRT 105 and WRT 205 (and also to WRT 307, a course focused on professional and technical writing that by definition now has to take a transnational perspective on writing and document design).
Students will come out of these courses with a much richer understanding of the many ways communication is cross-cultural, as they learn to ‘translate’ a press release from US to British English, or analyze the rhetorics of different racial or ethnic groups, or conduct critical research, or write for particular audiences, or help urban teens publish a literary magazine.
By the end of the grant period, the program will have made this work a signature of the curriculum. We will require that teachers demonstrate in each section of WRT 105, WRT 205, and WRT 307 imaginative, exciting, and explicit ways they have made this assumption of difference a fundamental feature of the course. It will be a criterion of evaluation when we review syllabi, evaluate teachers, and design course evaluations.
Working Groups
Given that there are many points of entry into this very large topic, we propose that the grant fund seven to eight working groups over the next three years. The main task of these groups will be to produce teaching materials to be disseminated throughout the program. The groups will:
• be composed of representatives from the main constituencies in the Writing Program (full time faculty, professional writing instructors, CCR graduate students, and possibly English graduate students);
• be given a budget (up to $5000) which they could use to develop teaching materials in whatever ways they find useful (e.g., they may use the money to pay teachers stipends for developing materials, or to bring in speakers, or to purchase films or other texts, or to sponsor a student conference);
• make these teaching materials public by posting them to the diversity website, by presenting them at Fall Conference and Spring Conference, and by other means such as student conferences or publications;
• develop ways to assess what happens (e.g., each year we do a descriptive study of student writing produced in the new TA version of WRT 105).
Spring 2004:
• Working Group #1: the service learning coordinating group will use their funds to develop literacy initiatives at one of the elementary or middle schools near the campus as a site for students to work with these school kids in a host of ways – tutoring, drama productions, publishing literary magazines, etc. We will approach Levy Middle School first, because it is within walking distance and because there is a clear need and a new principal. (Appendix A)
• Working Group #2: the coordinating group exploring visual rhetorics and literacy will use their funds to develop teaching materials on transnational approaches to visuality (e.g., document design, websites, graphics, etc.). (Appendix B).
Summer 2004:
• Working Group #3: The 670 team (those who prepare materials for the new TA version of WRT 105 and WRT 205) will use their funds to develop the assignments we have begun to teach in this course, based on critical geography’s concept of spaces of exclusion and inclusion. (Appendix C).
Each semester new groups will form and develop teaching materials. Given interest in the program, groups might form around issues of gender and sexuality, race and ethnicity, globalization and work, and World Englishes.
By the end of the grant, we will have designed and field-tested teaching materials that approach diversity through multiple points of entry, and as students make their way through WRT 105, WRT 205, and WRT 307, they will have learned to take diversity into account as a key component to successful communication, from audience analysis to document design.
Note: We will designate internships for CCR PhD students to do support work for the grant – such as updating and maintaining the website, alerting teachers to related events across campus, creating flyers and publicity materials, and helping with organizing events. These internships come out of the budget in the Writing Program.
Diversity Speakers Series
The grant will also fund the Diversity Speakers Series for the next three years. Each spring we have brought in a speaker with expertise in some aspect of diversity and developed a one-credit Masters class around that visit.
Forums: Integrating Diversity
The purpose of these forums is look at diversity from a local perspective by organizing conversations with the campus. We have two planned for the fall, and will do two or three each semester:
• Interrogating Diversity Forum 1: Freshman Orientation-Who Owns Diversity? Nov. 3, 2003 at 9:30 am in HBC 239
Invited to initiate the conversation: Adrea Jaehnig, Director of the LGBT Resource Center; Mariana Lebron, Director of Orientation and Transition Services; Monica Roberts, Co-Chair of the Team Against Bias (TAB); and James Duah-Agyeman, Director of the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Students from WRT 105 will respond.
• Interrogating Diversity Forum 2: Whiteboards/Blackboards
Tuesday, Nov. 18, 4:00 pm, HBC 239
How much student “empowerment” is too much? When does “fun” speech become “hate” speech? When does safety and accountability override creativity and anonymity? How do we approach these questions in the dorms and in the classrooms?
Students will discuss the controversial effects of recent bias-related incidents, including anonymous messages written on dorm whiteboards, on relationships in/outside dorm life. Respondents will include representatives from the Office of Residential Life, Judicial Affairs,
and Public Safety.
Assessment
Assessment will take different forms, and each working group will develop its own assessment procedures. For the forums and other events, we will ask participants to fill out evaluation forms. When diversity becomes one of the learning outcomes and part of course evaluation, we will be able to calculate the effect of these initiatives numerically.
Dissemination
We have started a special website for Writing and Diversity in a Globalized World, which makes course designs, assignments, readings, and student writing available to teachers in the program. Teachers (and others) can turn to the website for teaching resources and ideas.
We are also focusing our Fall and Spring Conferences on this topic, so that teachers, faculty from across campus, and students will have a public site for discussing diversity, writing, and pedagogy.
We will also sponsor sites for students to talk – conferences, weblogs, focus groups, etc.
Posted by mryonker at 04:30 PM | Comments (0)