2008 Series

Summer 2008 Pedagogy Roundtable Series:

Location for Week One Event: Library Classrooms

Contemplative Pedagogy Carole Cavanaugh, Claudia Cooper, Rebecca Gould, John Huddleston, Gus Jordan, Laurie Jordan, Jonathan Miller-Lane, Andrea Olsen, Cynthia Packert, Ira Schiffer, John Spackman

Thursday, May 22 • 11:00 a.m. • Library 230

What role does silence play in the practice/process of learning and knowing? How can we bring our students’ deepest attention into our classrooms? This roundtable will explore the ways that faculty across the disciplines integrate contemplative practices into their coursework, and provide an opportunity to share information, ideas and stories about contemplative inquiry.
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

Location for Week Two Events: Library Classrooms

Focus on First Year
Ray Coish, Jessica Holmes, Michelle McCauley, David Macey, Kathy Skubikowski, Allison Stanger

Tuesday, May 27 • 11:00 a.m. • Library 230

A relatively new feature of the First-Year Seminar Program is the use of resource teams (a librarian, educational technologist, peer Ace, and peer writing tutor). In fall 2004 nine faculty experimented with a team; by fall 2007 nearly all seminar faculty requested a team. This roundtable, especially useful for next year’s FYSE faculty, asks how we are using these resources. Are they changing what we do in our seminars? What can they add? What are the challenges?
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

Feminist Pedagogy
Laurie Essig, Cheryl Faraone, Roman Graf, Heidi Grasswick, Antonia Losano, Sujata Moorti, William Poulin-Deltour, Marion Wells, Linda White

Wednesday, May 28 • 11:00 a.m. • Library 230

What is feminist pedagogy, and how does it differ from traditional ways of teaching? In courses that seek to shift paradigms, how do we position ourselves as teachers? This roundtable will reflect upon teaching and learning processes in feminist classrooms across the disciplines, and investigate notions of power and inclusiveness in higher education.
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

Foreign Language Pedagogy
Hang Du, Roman Graf, Ana Martinez-Lage, Nancy O’Connor, Carrie Reed, Carol Rifelj, Tatiana Smorodinskaya, Tom Van Order, Patti Zupan

Thursday, May 29 • 11:00 a.m. • Library 230

This roundtable will explore priorities and teaching practices across the languages, with attention to the question: “how do we integrate culture into the teaching of language and literature?” Faculty are invited to pose problems, explore solutions and share stories of their teaching as they discuss learning goals in the foreign language classroom at Middlebury.
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

1:00 Teaching & Multimedia
Joe Antonioli, Carole Cavanaugh, Kirsten Ernst, Maria Woolson

Increasingly, multimedia is making its way into the curriculum, both as a presentation tool and in the form of student projects. Come and talk with colleagues about the range of ways to use multimedia in your courses. Share experiences and discuss strategy, implementation and results.

Location for Week Three Events: Robert A. Jones House

Assigning the Research Paper
Natasha Chang, Jessica Holmes,Tom Moran, Amy Morsman, Caitlin Myers, Jeremy Ward

Tuesday, June 3 • 11:00 a.m. • Robert A. Jones House

As Middlebury increases its focus on senior independent work, the research paper/project becomes ever more important as a training ground for young scholars. What kind of guidance do students need to conduct solid research, identify their audience and argument, and compose such papers? At what point do we step back and encourage students to lead the way? In this roundtable faculty are asked to share past experiences in assigning research papers and to discuss what works, what doesn’t, and where we and our students might go from here.
12:15 Lunch in RAJ

1:00 Authors’ Rights
Dave Colander, Noah Graham, Jason Mittell, Carrie Miyoshi, Jeff Rehbach, Andy Wentink

This roundtable will focus on what happens when scholars sign a contract prior to getting articles published, and why one might want to do things a little differently in the future. Bring your questions to our resident experts, learn from your colleagues’ experiences, and share your own.

Preparing Competitive Grant Proposals
Timothy Billings, Michael Kraus, Erik Bleich, Franci Farnsworth

Wednesday, June 4 • 10:00 a.m. (note early time) Robert A. Jones House

This workshop will focus on writing grant proposals for humanities and social science research projects, but the general advice about proposal preparation will apply to all types of grant proposals. The faculty panelists have received grants to support projects ranging from NEH summer institute participation and archival research to major awards for leave support such as the NEH Fellowship, Fulbright-Hays, and American Philosophical Society Sabbatical grant; they will provide advice and insights about the process based on their varied experiences. Franci Farnsworth, Coordinator of Sponsored Research, will discuss grant-writing in general and efforts.
12:00 Lunch and discussion in RAJ

12:30 Grant Proposals from the Other Side— What do Reviewers Look For?
Franci Farnsworth, Sunder Ramaswamy

Based on positive response in past years, we will once again offer a Mock Proposal Review exercise. This year it will be a separate workshop, beginning with lunch at 12:00 p.m. This exercise is designed to illuminate the ins and outs of good grant-writing. This is a workshop that has value even if you have done it before because the experience (and thus what you learn) depends on large part on the participants. A comment about this workshop from a participant last year: “This was the most valuable exercise I’ve ever participated in.”

12:15 Lunch
Thursday, June 5 • 12:15 p.m. • Robert A. Jones House

1:00 “Did Your Students Understand You?” Personal Polling Devices in the Classroom
Suzanne Gurland, Dave Guertin

This roundtable will explore the use of personal polling devices or “clickers.” These devices enable teachers to ask students a question and then see the distribution of responses. “Clickers” have been useful in allowing faculty to immediately assess how many students grasp a particular topic in the classroom. Because responses are anonymous, the devices are also potentially useful for assessing opinions about sensitive topics which students might be reluctant to express publicly.

Location for Week Four Events: Library Classrooms

Social Justice Pedagogy Seminar*
Gloria Gonzalez-Zenteno, Roman Graf, Nadia Horning, Sujata Moorti, Shirley Ramirez, Kathy Skubikowski, Linda White, Catharine Wright

Tuesday, June 10 • 9:00 a.m. (note early time) Library 230

Barbara Love, Graduate Professor of Education at UMass Amherst, will lead a three-hour seminar that examines assumptions and norms in higher education and that challenges our notion of what is appropriate in the classroom. The seminar will address ways to respond to the changing demographics of our student body, taking into consideration race, class, culture, sexuality, gender, religion, ability and learning styles. Love will invite participants to investigate their own social positions, educational histories and disciplinary conventions in relation to how and what they teach and will present a range of possible new directions for educators across the disciplines. The seminar will draw upon recent literature and studies pertaining to social justice issues in higher education and will encourage faculty to outline individual and disciplinary-specific goals and practices. This is an unusual summer opportunity for Middlebury; Love leads institutes on pedagogical and curricular change at colleges across the country. Her visit here stems from the work of the Diversity Curriculum Committee and is co-sponsored by the Office of Institutional Diversity.
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

Faculty-Student Research Collaboration
Sunhee Choi, Kim Cronise, Pat Manley, Jonathan Miller-Lane, Mark Stefani

Wednesday, June 11 • 11:00 a.m. • Library 230

Faculty in the sciences have long collaborated with students on research projects, but this is not true across the disciplines. What are the existing models for student-faculty collaboration, and what kinds of innovations have emerged? This roundtable will explore student faculty collaborative relationships and the expectations, practices, and outcomes of collaborative projects. Come with stories of success and failure, ideas and questions to share.
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

Games, Simulations or Leading Discussion
Nick Muller, David Rosenberg, Shel Sax, Thierry Warin

Thursday, June 12 • 11:00 a.m. • Library 230

In some disciplines, the use of games and simulations plays an important role in the curriculum. This session is for faculty who have used these tools in their courses and for those who are interested. Discussion will focus on the issues related to the effective use of games, formulating appropriate teaching strategies and assessing learning outcomes.
12:15 Lunch in CTLR

1:00 How Students Learn
Jonathan Miller-Lane

Do recent advances in cognitive psychology and pedagogical research imply a change in the way that we should think about teaching? This roundtable discussion will address the topics of learning styles, student engagement, activist learning and their implications on teaching strategies in higher education.

* A copy of Barbara Love's handout on Social Justice Pedagogy is available from CTLR, upon advance notification.