GSC Faculty E-News for February 2020
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What Drives Your Love of Teaching?
As we move through the winter term and enter the shortest month of the year, I ask that you think about what internally motivates you to be an educator. Please take a moment to relive the time when you first realized you were able to facilitate learning (knowledge generation) and the love of learning in your students. Some educator described this proverbial point in time as being when they witnessed the “AHA Moment” in their students. The point when their students had a moment of clarity on the topic being explored. Reflecting on these “Aha Moments” is essential to the practice of good teaching and the process of learning.
Each one of us brings our respective expertise to the classroom but with that expertise comes a passion to facilitate learning in our students. Your willingness to engage in the art of teaching and the science of learning makes each of you great educators.
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Granite State College continues to encourage and support teaching excellence through faculty development opportunities and collaborative spaces to share and learn new ideas. The newly introduced “Engaging Online Teaching Practices” is evidence of GSC’s commitment to create a collaborative space and foster learning within our faculty community. Since the November 2019 launch of the first-ever faculty development micro-credential, we have had 30% of our faculty engaging in the learning experience and over 50 faculty earning the micro-credential.
We will continue to offer faculty development workshops, Monthly Matters newsletter, Two-Minute Tuesdays, and continuation of the Engaging Online Teaching Practices at Granite State College micro-credential. If you have ideas for other future faculty development opportunities I encourage to share them with us by completing the
GSC Faculty Feedback and Suggestion Form
My sincere thank you for all you do for Granite State College and our students!
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With regards,
Dr. Scott Stanley, Provost & Vice President of Academic Affairs
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Welcome to the GSC Neighborhood!
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Meet our Undergraduate Studies Team!
Find out more about this team by using the QR code below or accessing through the following URL:
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What is the Faculty Flash Flipgrid Series?
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What’s inside this awesome Rick & Morty cup? Only fellow faculty member and Granite State College alum Ted Smarzynski will find out as the winner of our first GSC Faculty Flash Flipgrid Series!
What is the Faculty Flash Flipgrid Series? When you least expect it, and for limited times only, join your fellow Granite State College faculty for an online asynchronous dialog on a specific topic using Flipgrid (
learn more via the GSC Faculty Lounge).
Share your voice and connect with other faculty. But wait - there's more! Faculty who participate in the dialog automatically enter a drawing for something fun. When is the next one? You’ll have to read the next Faculty Matters E-newsletter to find out – stay tuned!
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FACULTY DEVELOPMENT OPPORTUNITIES
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REMINDER
The deadline for submitting your teaching practice and completing the Engaging Online Teaching Practices at Granite State College Micro-credential is February 15th to take effect for the summer term.
Not currently enrolled in this class? No worries! We are working on new micro-credentials that will be introduced later this year! Stay tuned for more information!
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Dr. Rita Kondrath became Director of Undergraduate Writing and Communication in September 2019. She is currently conducting a comprehensive review of the Communication Studies program, and has several exciting updates planned, all of which are designed to more closely align the program with employer demands, in order to prepare students to successfully enter the workforce, or to excel professionally if their careers are already underway.
One course at the center of the redesign, offered for the first time in the Spring of 2020, is COMM605: Professional Communication, which will give students ample opportunity to practice and refine their writing skills, design compelling presentations, devise meeting agendas, and lead meetings using web-based meeting tools (like Zoom!). Additional new courses and revisions of existing courses will offer a deeper dive into these skills so that majors and minors alike can develop expertise in verbal, written, visual, presentation, and interpersonal communication.
To this end, the newest course in the current curriculum, COMM543: 21
st Century Communication, is now part of our General Education Curriculum, and has been received quite favorably by the first cohort of students to complete it in the Fall 2019. The course familiarizes students with various aspects of visual communication: how to analyze and critique it, how to curate and ethically document it, and how to construct and present arguments utilizing visual media.
In addition to Communication, Rita also oversees the English curriculum, and new developments are underway here as well. The first is ENG630: The Graphic Novel, which uses comics as a basis to explore visual narrative, challenges students to design their own, and to think about how meaning is made through images and text. Another new course is ENG550: War Writing in the 21
st Century: Literature of Combat, the Homefront, and Homecoming, which will be offered for the first time in the Spring term. The course will explore representations of war writing across several literary genres, including: fiction, poetry, memoir, drama, and blogs. It also provides insight to those who work with veterans and/or military families in the fields of behavioral health, health care, business, or education, and to anyone exercising their civic duties in a democracy.
In her free time, Rita enjoys volunteering and spending time with her family. She lives in Medford, New Jersey, with her husband, Kevin, and their three children, Brendan, Caileen, and Rory.
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Student Progress Reporting
Reminder
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We encourage you to re-report on all students, but most importantly, those who are not earning at least a C after the withdrawal date of this term. As a reminder, all progress reports will be sent directly to the student, and should include appropriate messaging.
You can re-report Student Progress Reporting information for your students within the Faculty Services page in WebROCK:
granite.edu/webrock
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New Interdisciplinary Course Under Way in Undergraduate Studies!
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The new interdisciplinary course is underway with great success so far! Two sections are running, taught by Sarah Batterson, Director of Liberal Arts, and Caitlyn Veenstra, Academic Advisor. The course, which is a new requirement for all students, has the dual purpose of examining complex problems from a general education interdisciplinary perspective while also further preparing students for their final integrative capstone projects. Currently, the course explores the history of epidemics in the United States and will eventually run several sections at a time with different topics for students to choose from. Academic Affairs is currently developing a process by which faculty may submit ideas for new topics that they can develop and teach.
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Feedback Forum from our Faculty!
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As our faculty share high-impact teaching practices, we share them with our teaching community. Stay tuned this summer for a repository of shared teaching strategies on the Online Teaching & Learning Collaborative website. In the meantime, here is one strategy to help students understand course resources and expectations:
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"I have created a Course Orientation Video that walks students through the key areas of our course including the syllabus, final capstone project components, sample student work, etc. Rather than "hoping" students review these items, I'm finding that a directed overview of the course resources is helping students to feel more informed from the start of the course. "
-Kelly Duggan
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"Teachers have three loves: love of learning, love of learners, and the love of bringing the first two loves together."
— Scott Hayden
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