Summer Workshop Interest Form

We invite faculty to share ideas for preparing first semester students to gain skill in critical thinking, effective writing, discussion participation, and academic honesty. In addition, we will discuss objectives and resources for advising first year students. This workshop is encouraged for faculty who have recently taught, or who are planning to teach Tutorial in the fall. Led by: Erik Simpson, Karla Erickson

This workshop is part of the Portfolio Pilot Project, in which the Writing Lab staff have recruited and worked with a sample of students to accumulate papers associated with courses across the curriculum, the assignments to which their papers responded, their reflections on those papers, and their assessment both of their progress as writers and of the writing instruction they have received from faculty at the College. The Project follows these students for all four of their college years; this year’s portfolios will include papers from tutorials, 100, 200 and 300 level courses. By reading student writing from a variety of courses and considering the assignments, audiences, and purposes for which students are asked to write, workshop participants can improve their own pedagogy to help students write more persuasively and eloquently in all disciplines. Led by Janet Carl

This workshop will be devoted to conversations about how Grinnell College can further develop assessment plans and practices. Participants will examine surveys and other data available at the college to ascertain what this tells us about various aspects of student learning. We will share the assessment experiences and plans of departments, majors and programs, considering what we have learned, along with commonalities that will be helpful across the college or in closely related disciplines. We will discuss how to move from assessment data collection and analysis to implementing change at various levels. Looking ahead, we will consider how assessment can facilitate the new Pathways accreditation process. The workshop will help participants familiarize themselves with resources that are available to support assessment at Grinnell College and with assessment planning materials available from national sources. Led by Wayne Moyer, Sam Rebelsky, and Phil Jones.

This workshop will be held Commencement week, from 9:00-Noon Tuesday-Friday, May 22-25.

The purpose of this workshop is to discuss various models for employing student peer mentors across the educational program. We will consider various models for using peer mentors successfully to advance learning goals in classrooms, interdisciplinary programs and other co-curricular programs. We will discuss evidence of educational benefits to the students who are mentored as well as to the students who act as peer mentors. We will hear from faculty and staff who have employed peer mentors and who can share ideas for teaching in partnership with student mentors. This is a followup to the successful workshop held last summer on this topic to continue to explore these issues and introduce new faculty to the peer mentoring programs on campus. Led by Tim Arner and Minna Mahlab

What is Europe? Who is a European? What does Europe’s past tell us about current developments on the continent, and how do current developments ask us to reconsider Europe’s past? How can Grinnell re-imagine a Western European studies concentration in a way that reinvigorates the breadth of investigations into Europe's historical, intellectual, political, and cultural legacies. Our goal is to reinvigorate an imaginative inquiry into Europe’s place in the world today, and in doing so create a more vibrant intellectual and curricular community through which to explore European studies. Through a series of carefully selected readings from various fields, along with information from other successful programs in European Studies at various colleges and universities, the workshop hopes to explore these and many other questions to deepen the participants' both curricular and research interests in Europe. Led by Daniel Reynolds

When faced with something that doesn’t seem to work in a student’s writing, what do you do? Can you put your finger on exactly what’s wrong with, say, that sentence or this paragraph or that section of the argument? Or do you rely on your instincts about what works and what doesn’t? If the latter, can you explain those instincts so that a student understands the problem in general terms and can therefore avoid or remedy it in the future?

If you want to be confident in identifying particular writing problems and also explaining them to students in a way they can take to their next writing assignment, this is the workshop for you. In a series of explanations and exercises about writing, Dr. Syntax presents a structural approach that can be either incorporated in a course or used in pieces as the instructor sees fit. It builds on the idea of syntax, literally and analogically, by working from the relations among units of language (word, phrase, and clause) to those among units of writing (topic sentence-individual paragraph; thesis statement-set of paragraphs). The workshop will take faculty through detailed instruction and practice in the idea behind the method and in the use of these exercises. It is appropriate for any faculty member teaching student writing, but especially for Tutorial instructors. Led by Elizabeth Dobbs

Representatives from the Academic Resources Centers will facilitate a workshop on strategies for designing effective assignments that integrate two or more core academic skills such as writing, quantitative literacy, visual analysis and presentation, information literacy, and library research. This workshop will help faculty clarify and articulate learning goals, provide examples of effective and innovative assignments, and offer tips for writing clear assignments that help students understand expectations and goals. Participating faculty will be expected to arrive at the workshop with one or more specific courses in mind for which they want to develop assignments and to end the workshop with assignments ready for use. Led by Richard Fyffe and Janet Carl

This workshop will be held August 13, 14, and 17.

This workshop will discuss practical techniques faculty can use to make their classrooms more inclusive and effective learning environments for all students at Grinnell. Diversity exists in many areas, such as diverse identities that include race, ethnicity, culture, class, ability, LGBTQ, nationality, and religion to areas of diverse perspectives manifested in personality, previous knowledge of subject matter, political opinions, opposing viewpoints, and previous life experiences.

Students and faculty members alike negotiate these differences in the classroom on a daily basis. Attendees will engage with teaching and learning experts, as well inclusive classrooms literature, to better understand how these differences affect student experiences in the classroom and to learn best practices for skillfully overcoming challenges and utilizing the learning opportunities afforded by diverse classrooms. Tapping into differences and ensuring we all are skilled at negotiating many differences is a requisite of an excellent 21st century education. This workshop may include a mix of morning and/or afternoon sessions, according to guest speakers’ availability. Led by Tammy Nyden, Elena Bernal (Chief Diversity Officer) and Marlene Jacks (Intercultural Engagement & Leadership Associate)

This workshop will consider concerns specific to intermediate level students in the sciences. We will review the intermediate level science curricula and identify areas of perceived challenges, consider issues particular to intermediate level students, analyze data related to enrollment and success in 200-level courses, and discuss related pedagogy. Hopefully the discussions will improve participants' effectiveness as teachers and advisors of intermediate level students and provide feed back to departments and concentrations to inform curricular and pedagogical development in the sciences. Led by Leslie Gregg-Jolly

This workshop will provide participants with an opportunity to explore the use of several technologies, including but not limited to tools for visualizing information, to facilitate data-driven learning. The workshop will focus particularly on potential uses of these technologies in humanities and social studies classes: helping students visualize historical events in time and in space; allowing students without a background in statistics to ask and answer meaningful questions with public opinion data; and using software to facilitate and organize qualitative analyses of texts, images and videos, for example. The workshop will include both hands-on sessions where participants will get to test-drive various software packages and discussions about pedagogical uses of the software. Workshop Leaders: Julia Bauder, Mike Conner (CTS) and Kathy Kamp (DASIL)