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President Davenport awards summer 2006 Teaching Scholar Fellowships

Ten Teaching Scholar Fellowship Awards have been awarded by President Davenport for Summer 2006.

2006-04-09

President Davenport has awarded Teaching Scholar Fellowships for Summer 2006 to 10 faculty members.

The purpose of the Fellowships is to provide support for faculty in their commitments to learning at Minnesota State Mankato.  Each fellow will be engaged in an eight-week project and outcomes that will involve both teaching and scholarship in some specific relationship. As fellows enhance their own learning as teaching scholars, so, too, will students enhance their learning in partnership with the faculty.

The fellowships are awarded on a University-wide, competitive basis. Each fellow will receive a $6,000 stipend, plus $300 for related expenses. The Teaching Scholar Fellows for Summer 2006 are:

Candace Black (English): "Writing Time and Research in Support of Absent Without Leave, a Creative Nonfiction Project." Candace Black is an assistant professor in the Dept. of English, where she teaches creative writing and literature classes. Black's project is to continue researching, writing and shaping a book-length memoir about growing up in the U.S. Marine Corps. Her father's 22-year career--and especially his two tours in Vietnam--shaped her childhood and her relationship with him, and this memoir examines the mixed messages (of obedience, personal freedom, respect, defiance, loyalty and rebellion) she absorbed while coming of age as a military dependent in the 1960s and 70s.

Alisa Eimen (Art): "Straddling East and West: The Contemporary Packaging of Turkey's Past" Eimen's project will investigate the ways in which Turkeyıs leaders are presenting the nation's past through its architectural monuments, state rhetoric, and tourist packages. The coincidence of Turkey's overtures toward the European Union and the seeming rise of militant Islam suggests a critical juncture, recalling Istanbulıs long history as a symbolic site in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. The three religions have a shared heritage--cultural and eschatological--that has been built in particular into Istanbulıs architectural history, including Jewish synagogues, Byzantine basilicas, and Ottoman mosques. The aim of this project is to assess the governmentıs current strategies of preserving and re-presenting this complicated past to todayıs transnational public.

Nancy Fitzsimons (Social Work): "Revision of the Taking Charge Curriculum."

Diana Joseph (English): "Developing Love in the Land, a Novel" Diana Joseph teaches fiction in the MFA program.  Her first book, a collection of short stories titled Happy or Otherwise was published in 2003 by Carnegie Mellon University Press. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize,  listed in Best American Short Stories and appeared in literary journals including Threepenny Review, Mid-American Review, Puerto del Sol, Colorado Review and elsewhere.  Her current project, a novel, centers on the multi-generational Prine family of the fictional Reynold's Creek.  This book explores how family dynamics, gender, class, and place influence identity. A chapter titled "Love in the Land of Sweet Tomorrow" was published in the Spring 2005 issue of Passages North.

Mika Laidlaw (Art): "Unknown Mediterranean Craftsmen from Past to Present: Documenting and Learning From Their Art." The project is designed to develop, prepare for, and conduct a research trip to study historical and contemporary ceramics in Mediterranean countries, and to catalog and edit acquired materials such as slides, photos, notes, and videos to prepare as teaching materials intended for ceramic art courses.

Randall McClure (English): "Electronic Portfolios for All: Providing Students with a Lifelong Resource" McClure's project aims to equip Minnesota State Mankato students with their own electronic portfolios in order to enrich their academic, professional and personal lives. The mechanism for delivering e-portfolios to MSU students will be English 101-Composition, the only course required of all MSU undergraduates in all programs. In addition to selecting the appropriate e-portfolio resource, Dr. McClure will develop two web-based interactive tutorials that assist MSU faculty and students in using the e-portfolio resource.

Jeffrey Pribyl (Chemistry and Geology): "The Redesign of Chemistry 104 to Incorporate Guided Inquiry Learning."

Susan Schalge (Anthropology): "They Eat the Money: Analyzing the Impact of Aid in Tanzania" Schalge's research will explore and examine whether aid to Africa and Tanzania in particular, has or is likely to substantially alleviate poverty for the average citizen and will evaluate the effectiveness of development initiatives using specific Tanzanian case studies. The project builds upon her prior research and writing on Tanzania's urban informal sector, with the purpose to update and expand prior research and to evaluate the success and impact of macroeconomic reforms in the lives of the poor.

Gina Wenger (Art): "Teaching the Documentary Photography of the Japanese American Internment Camps." Wenger intends to create a study unit on the documentary photographs of the Japanese American internment camps for her Secondary Art Teaching Methods course. The study unit will include an introduction to the topic, readings, presentations, a series of cohesive lesson plans with samples of production pieces, appropriate assessments for learning objectives, active learning exercises, as well as illustrations of state and national standards. She hopes to create a model that will help her students better understand curriculum building and that may be used in their future classrooms. Wenger also hopes to propose this topic as a new course in the Honors program.

James Wise (Recreation, Parks and Leisure Services) "Creating a MSU Student-Run Summer Camp for Area Residents with Disabilities" Wise's project involves planning opportunities for MSU students to interact with community members who have disabilities, with the idea of having students create, facilitate, and evaluate a variety of recreation activities specifically designed for people with disabilities.

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