Author: kvlss

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Scholarly Writing Retreat for Hampshire Staff and Faculty

Join the CTL for a Scholarly Writing Retreat for Hampshire College Faculty and Staff on Monday, June 3 – Thursday, June 6, 2019, 9:30am to 12:30 pm in the FPH Lounge.

Facilitated by local writing coach, Cathy Luna, each three-hour writing session will begin with goal setting and end with a short debriefing and a look ahead. Participants are invited to sign up for a 30-minute individual consultation with Cathy, to take place during one of the morning sessions. Consultations can focus on writing process and/or time management questions, or on your scholarly writing, fellowship applications, reappointment and promotion materials, or any other writing you would like to discuss.  Please sign up at https://www.signupgenius.com/go/30E0B4CABA62CA5F85-scholarly

Please direct questions to Kristen Luschen at kluschen@hampshire.edu.


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CTL Teaching Workshops in August

Inclusive Pedagogy:
Digging into Full Participation and Holding Space for Different Viewpoints

Thursday, August 30, Kern 202, 10am-12pm

AND

A Balanced Approach to Accommodations

Thursday, August 30, Kern 202, 2pm-4PM

 

Lunch will be provided at noon

To register for one or both workshops, email Shannon Thorin, Assistant Dean of Faculty.

Inclusive Pedagogy:
Digging into Full Participation and Holding Space for Different Viewpoints

The first month of class is a critical time to set the tone for the semester and foster student participation in critical discussions. In this session, we will review key inclusive practices that assist with this. Then, we will take a closer look at what it means for students to be full participants in the course, with an eye toward how we hold space for different viewpoints. In this session, we will reflect on our own syllabi and projects, with a full participation lens, and work through particular dynamics that may arise in whole class and small group discussions, from both our vantage points as faculty and from the viewpoints of students.

This workshop will be facilitated by Becky Wai-Ling Packard, professor of psychology and education at Mt. Holyoke College and author of Successful STEM Mentoring Initiatives for Underrepresented Students: A research-based guide for faculty and administrators. Packard has served as the Director of the Teaching and Learning Initiative program, Associate Dean of Faculty, and Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership at Mt. Holyoke College.

A Balanced Approach to Accommodations

Before the fall semester begins, come explore the issues involved in negotiating and holding clear expectations and requirements around student accommodations. Be prepared with a system that meets student need without compromising your course or overly taxing your time. We’ll have a general discussion and include uncovering your concerns, articulating your standards, writing a syllabus statement, and developing strategies/using the OARS Holistic Learning Program toolbox for contingency planning with students.

The  workshop will be facilitated by:

Milo Bezark, Holistic Learning Project Alumni Fellow

Aaron Ferguson, Director of Accessibility Resources and Services, Office of Accessibility Resources and Services

Kristen Luschen, Dean of Multicultural Education and Inclusion and Co-Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning.

 

 

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Apply NOW for Summer Online Writing Fellowships!

Apply now to work with Cathy Luna, an experienced faculty writing coach, for a six week online writing fellowship (May 19-June 30th). There is an option to continue through July and August. Contact Kristen Luschen at kluschen@hampshire.edu for more information.

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Planning for Reappointment and Promotion – a CTL sponsored series

Session #1: The art of file-building for reappointment and promotion
Thursday, April 14th, 5:00 p.m. in FPH 108

File-building involves much more that compiling the necessary documents and writing a statement. Come learn about what makes a reappointment & promotion file stand out as well-crafted, engaging, and user-friendly. This session features recent CCFRAP committee members discussing their insights about how to create a robust and well-organized reappointment/promotion file. This session will be relevant for all faculty – from new faculty who are eager to know more about the process to senior faculty who are preparing for a promotion to full professor!

 

Session #2: Fall 2016 Reappointment Information Session
Thursday, May 5th at 2:00 p.m. in Cole 101

This informational session focuses on the timeline and process for those individuals who will be standing for reappointment and/or promotion in Fall of 2016. While any who are interested may attend, this session will specifically benefit those who would like to consider their preparation and timeline for the upcoming academic year.

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Sylvia Hurtado to speak on inclusive teaching & advising on Tuesday, March 22nd.

Dr. Sylvia HurtadRM_Hurtado imageo, one of the foremost researchers in higher education on diversity and student learning (particularly with regard to STEM), will be visiting Hampshire this Tuesday to give the Race Matters Lecture at 4pm. The lecture will address campus-wide conditions that support student learning, critical dialogue, perspective-taking, campus participation and belonging. In addition, Professor Hurtado agreed to give a lunch talk (noon-1:30pm) specifically focused on classroom teaching and advising. I encourage you to take this opportunity to learn about specific strategies and classroom conditions that would support critical and engaged dialogue.

Space is limited to 30 and lunch will be served. If the session becomes full and you would like to be placed on a waiting list, please email me at kluschen@hampshire.edu. You can register at:

www.SignUpGenius.com/go/5080D48AFAD2EA57-inclusive

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Navigating Challenging Discussions with Students: Providing and Receiving Critical Feedback

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FRIDAY, NOVEMBER 13th, 10:30am – 12:30 pm in the Faculty Staff Lounge in FPH.

If you have ever written a letter of recommendation when you wanted to say no, have struggled with “telling the truth” even when it would deflate a student’s goals, or have bristled at your own course evaluations, this session will have something for you. Critical feedback is difficult to provide and receive. Join us for lunch to talk about why that is and strategies to improve the experience.

Becky Packard, Professor of Psychology & Education, is responsible for Teaching and Learning Initiatives at Mount Holyoke College and is the Director of the Weissman Center. Her research focuses on mentoring, with an emphasis on the experiences of first-generation college students, women, nontraditional-aged students, and persons of color in higher education.

RSVP to Jackie Jeffery at jmjDO@hampshire.edu are not necessary but appreciated.

The Challenging Discussions Series is sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Multicultural Education and the Center for Teaching and Learning.

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Navigating Challenging Discussions in the Classroom Wednesday, September 2, 10:00am-11:45am FPH Lounge

Navigating Challenging Discussions in the Classroom 
Wednesday, September 2, 10:00am-11:45am, FPH Lounge

Building on the significant interest in this topic at May’s Celebration of Teaching, this workshop will engage faculty in sharing and developing strategies for inclusive teaching that involve inviting and facilitating discussion across different perspectives and experiences.

This workshop will be led by Becky Wai-Ling Packard, professor of psychology and education and the Director of the Weissman Center for Leadership at Mt. Holyoke College.  At the Weissman Center, Dr. Packard is responsible for Teaching and Learning Initiatives and new faculty mentoring. Packard’s research focuses on mentoring, with an emphasis on the experiences of first-generation college students, women, nontraditional-aged students, and persons of color in higher education.

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The Power of Goal Setting for Educational Equity

While educational inequity is a structural issue that requires institutional and policy changes, there are micro-level interventions that can support students’ success and achievement involving visioning and personal reflection.  If you get a chance, take a look at this 2015 study by Schippers et al. The authors argue for the significance of structured goal setting and reflective writing on student academic performance and retention. The authors note that, “overall, the results indicate that a comprehensive goal-setting intervention implemented early in students’ academic careers can significantly and substantially reduce gender and ethnic minority inequalities in achievement.” While you might find the intervention in the study to be too involved, it’s worth considering how we involve students in academic goal setting and detailed planning very early on in their college experience.  Please share your strategies!

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Congratulations to Deb Gorlin, winner of the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for her poetry collection, Life of the Garment.

 
Deborah Gorlin Wins Prize For Poetry Book

Deborah Gorlin

Hampshire College professor Deborah Gorlin received the 2014 May Sarton New Hampshire Poetry Prize for her poetry collection, Life of the Garment. The award honors the poet, novelist, and essayist May Sarton (1912-1995) who has long been an inspiration to Gorlin. As winner of the prize, Gorlin’s book has been published by the independent press Bauhan Publishing. Her first book, Bodily Course, won the White Pine Press Poetry Prize in 1997.

Life of the Garment is arranged into three sections. The first third is comprised of elegies to the people and places in Gorlin’s life that are now gone. “It’s a monument of words to them,” Gorlin says, describing how she wrote to commemorate her family. She wanted to do the same for the place where she grew up, an industrial suburb in New Jersey. She calls the poems about her hometown “a belated love song to an unlikely place.”

The second part of the book is from the point of view of dolls from around the world. Gorlin became interested in this particular perspective when she realized how dolls can be perceived as a type of medium—not just as inanimate objects, but as “a bridge between the visible and the invisible.” These poems allowed her to explore outside of her own experience and to imagine the lives of people living in different places, cultures, and time periods.

The final section of the book addresses Gorlin’s spiritual struggles. “It’s about the perpetual work required to summon and to engage those divine energies and mysteries in the everyday world and within myself,” she says.

She describes how she enjoys “figuring and feeling things out” for herself, so that writing rarely seems like a task or an obstacle. “It only becomes difficult when I allow those awful demons—external judgment and comparisons with others—to discourage me. That’s the stuff that’s poison.”

Gorlin says writing is not about measuring up to others, but about “the joy of difficulty in the act of writing itself”––and when you “give up the desire to compete or achieve, your work will have its own rewards.” Her advice is to trust your intuition instead of trying to control where your writing goes: “In the end, there will be a poem, and it will be a discovery and a surprise.”

By Brigid Gorry-Hines 11F