NCSCE Elects Six Educators to Leadership Fellows Program
Six alumni of the SENCER project who have extensive experience working with the program on a local or national level were recently elected to the SENCER Leadership Fellows Program following application review and recommendation by the National Fellowship Board. The new Fellows are also alike in their intentions to further disseminate the SENCER approach to colleagues by engaging in mentoring, outreach, or workshop development. NCSCE welcomes and congratulates Prabha Betne, Alix Fink, Denise Konan, David Rosen, Julienne Thomas-Hall, and Bonnie Williams. Brief summaries of their past involvement and fellowship plans are included below.
Prabha Betne, LaGuardia Community College (NY)
Prabha Betne has been a faculty leader and project director in LaGuardia's Project Quantum Leap (PQL), an initiative supported by the U.S. Department of Educations FIPSE (Fund for Improvement of Postsecondary Education) grant from 2006-2009. The goal of the PQL program is to adopt the SENCER approach of teaching to high-risk, urban community college students in basic skills mathematics classes. Through the PQL Prabha leads faculty development workshops to develop curricula and instructional approaches for three math courses, Introduction to Algebra, Elementary Algebra, and College Algebra and Trigonometry, based on SENCER model. More than 25 faculty have been involved in the seminars and all of them are teaching their basic skills classes using SENCER approach. A website in the college contains several activities and lessons created through the seminars by the participating faculty, available for use by non-participating faculty.
As a Fellow, Prabha will expand these activities beyond her campus to the four-year institutions where La Guardia students transfer upon completing their Associate degree. She will continue to present the PQL team's work and insight as the project persists and train 8-10 faculty each year to adopt SENCER. Support is available to help participating faculty publish their work in adopting the approach. She is currently preparing a complete curriculum for a math basic skills course that will be based on SENCER model, and plans to publish a paper on her own work with PQL and SENCER.
Alix Fink, Longwood University (VA)
Alix has been involved with SENCER since 2002. After organizing the first team's participation from Longwood, and then developed a course that has become the SENCER model, The Power of Water. In the spring semester (2010), The Power of Water will be offered for the eleventh time. In its own development, the POW effort has spawned other interdisciplinary projects.
As a Fellow, Alix plans to focus her efforts in three key areas: (1) she will work with colleagues to encourage and facilitate their involvement in SENCER courses. (2) Continue to develop the "LU at YNP" (Longwood University at Yellowstone National Park) program, a capstone course that integrates writing for citizenship, science education, and civics. At the core of our students experience is a one-week trip to Yellowstone National Park, where students are immersed in contentious issues of natural resource management. Students connect with stakeholders, and they try to balance their own enthusiasm for watching wolves in the park with the real issues faced by the people who live with the animals (as one example). That is when students realize that making decisions as informed citizens is about much more than understanding food web dynamics. (3) Extend SENCER efforts into other courses in Longwood's teacher preparation program.
Denise Konan, University of Hawaii
Denise directs the Energy and Greenhouse Gas Solutions (EGGS) project, which analyzes and tailors energy and climate change policy by assessing technology options and the associated environmental and economic impacts. Detailed data on Hawaii's economy, energy infrastructure, and environment are the base for computable general equilibrium models of business as usual and alternative carbon reduction policies. Technological solutions, such as bioenergy and sea water air conditioning, are among the systems that are analyzed. Denise and Leadership Fellow Mary Tiles designed a new interdisciplinary course that integrates scientific knowledge, economic analysis, and ethical principles in the study of global climate change. Ten top scientists from Oceanography, Geology, and Atmospheric Science were invited to present and advise the class. Student teams integrate this knowledge to devise policy solutions to climate change. Results are presented in a white paper, a policy brief, press release, and a governors speech. Five students from that class are currently conducting undergraduate research under her direction in a sustainability internship experience.
As a SENCER leadership fellow, Denise will work to promote undergraduate research and education by developing curriculum that links scientific inquiry to economic reasoning and engaging students in consequential scientific issues facing our communities. She will develop a vibrant undergraduate student internship program that provides financial support for students to conduct research under the direction of University of Hawaii faculty in science and economics. Beginning with undergraduate and graduate education, she will plan outreach activities that would strengthen Hawaii's K-12 curriculum and awareness in local business and the public sector. The SENCER affiliation will also support efforts to build a network of University of Hawaii faculty from Economics, Oceanography, Geology, Philosophy, and Engineering that will support student engagement in scientific inquiry around societal problems. Programs at the University of Hawaii will inform public decision making over the economics and environmental consequences of Hawaii energy policy, greenhouse gas emissions reduction, and other relevant legislative initiatives.
David Rosen, Woodbury University (CA)
David led the strategic planning initiative that led to the founding of the Institute of Transdisciplinary Studies and of SENCER activities as the central mechanism for cross-disciplinary collaboration inside and outside the classroom. His office [Senior Vice President] has supported teams to attend the SENCER conferences, has helped sponsor on campus and off-campus workshops, including participation in the Lily-West Conference and an upcoming regional SENCER meeting. Recently, he helped to author a HUD grant for Woodbury's Arid Lands Institute, which uses the SENCER model for education that draws together the fields of architecture, science, and the humanities.
As a Leadership Fellow, David will reach out to other leaders on campus to broaden and deepen the use of the SENCER approach as a model of learning on campus. Specifically, he will set up on-campus workshops to encourage SENCER as a model for teaching and learning that has a strong problem-based and experiential component and that allows students to develop tools for collaborative problem solving that draws on and respects the contribution of multiple disciplines. In particular, he will work to make the contribution of the STEM disciplines important to all students, regardless of discipline and to both appreciate their general education and make that appreciation grow into a commitment to lifelong learning that gives important to knowledge of the STEM discipline in both their professional and personal lives. He will encourage and support deans, chairs, and faculty to carry their knowledge to conferences in their disciplines and to share the paradigm through professional development activities, including publications that report on college programs and learning achievements.
Julienne Thomas-Hall, Kennedy-King College (IL)
Julienne has been involved with SENCER since first participating in SSI 2005 as a team member. She has been a leader in disseminating SENCER on the Kennedy-King campus, leading small groups and teams to participate in SENCER events and incorporating the approach into her courses. Her tenure project focused on asthma and the urban environment, with a focus on the social justice aspects of the issue.
As a Fellow, Julienne plans to promote SENCER to all Kennedy-King faculty during the college's professional development week and to coordinate poster and informational sessions to familiarize administrators with the approach and campus-based results. She will also introduce the program and its benefits to members of the Undergraduate Research Collaborative, a partnership with four-year colleges and universities in the Chicago area. Kennedy-King currently works with Illinois Institute of Technology, Chicago State University, Hope College, and Illinois State University.
Bonnie Williams, University of Akron (OH)
Bonnie has been a leader in adopting the SENCER approach on the University of Akron campus. As director of the First-Year Learning Communities Program, she is responsible for curricular integration, learning community faculty development, marketing, and oversight of a program that annually has participation by 20% of first-year students. She has coordinated team participation in several SENCER symposia and has served as principal investigator on a post-Institute implementation award that focuses on introducing the SENCER approach into courses meant for first year students. The project has since been supported by an award from the National Science Foundation.
As a Leadership Fellow, Bonnie will lead UA SENCER team members in implementing SENCER into learning communities on two urban campuses and in an Early College science course. A UA faculty learning community will be developed in encourage interest and increase the number of SENCER-related learning communities at the University. Additionally, the team will offer workshops on SENCER to area colleges and develop a multi-disciplinary, civic issue project on campus.
