CETL GRANTS

Through the Faculty Learning Communities and other initiatives, CETL has successfully provided several opportunities for faculty to talk about and enhance their teaching and learning.  Our overall objective has been to promote excellence in teaching focused on student learning and based upon knowledge of current trends in the science of curriculum and instruction. In essence of this mission, CETL also provides different grants to support faculty projects as well as travel in and out of state.

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Important Grant Documents:

1. Guidelines for Final Report and Presentation

2. Procedures for Disbursement of Funds

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2012-2013 CETL Teaching and Learning Grants - RECIPIENTS

 

• Title of Project: Beyond Brick and Mortar: Diversity in Aviation

Recipient: Angela Olson, University Honors Program

The purpose of this project is to add a flight experience to HONS 221: Diversity in Aviation. Students will learn how the passion for aviation for many men and women in the United States, particularly minorities, was sparked by an actual experience in a small plane or at a local airport. Dr. Olson hopes to duplicate this experience for the students by allowing them to participate in a short flight at the St. Cloud airport. Grant funds will be used to purchase flights for students and to support data assessment of the project.

• Title of Project: Women in School Leadership: A Conference

Recipients: Nicholas Miller and graduate assistant, Manda S. Goldsberry, Educational Leadership

The purpose of this project is to provide a networking and educational experience for current and future women educational leaders in PreK-12th grade schools across the state of Minnesota through a one-day conference. The focus of the conference is on building leadership excellence through collaboration, sharpening of leadership skills, and improving practice by sharing solutions to the complex and unique issues women face in the field.

• Title of Project: Incorporating DNA Based Forensic Studies into BIOL 151 Laboratory Curriculum

Recipient: Michelle L. Wagner, Biology

The purpose of this project is to introduce a forensic DNA fingerprinting experiment into the BIOL 151: Cell Function and Inheritance laboratory. An inquiry-based approach will be utilized to allow students to learn about the use of DNA evidence in criminal investigations, to perform an experiment with actual DNA samples, to evaluate the results of the experiment, and to identify the criminal. Funding for this project will be used to purchase supplies required to allow students to participate in this activity.

• Title of Project: Enhancing Students’ Awareness of Auditory Assistance Needs

Recipient: Rebecca Cromwell, Communication Sciences and Disorders

The purpose of this project is to create an auditory assistive technology lab to enable students in Communication Sciences and Disorders enhance their knowledge and awareness of the assistive technology equipment that professionals recommend for individuals with hearing loss.  It is hoped that the lab will also help them gain the skills to transition from theoretical knowledge to a practical “hands-on” experience. 

• Title of Project: Maximizing Psychomotor Skills through Collaborative Student-Student Interface

Recipients: Jane Bagley, Laurie Crane, Joyce Simones, Marcia Scherer and Mary Zelenak, Nursing Science

The purpose of this project is to provide first through fourth level/semester nursing students with tutoring and support from senior nursing students. Senior students will be hired as weekly tutors to assist their junior peers in classwork and in mandatory psychomotor skills testing to increase their success rates.

• Title of Project: Integrated Staff Development Experience for SCSU Summer Program

Recipient: Christine Metzo, University College

The purpose of this project is to pilot an integrated professional development experience for faculty teaching in and the student staff assisting in the Summer Program. This Integrated Staff Development Experience will be designed to cultivate a cadre of staff who can create an integrated student learning experience.

• Title of Project: Increasing Hands-on-Learning Opportunities in Gerontology

Recipients: Rona Karasik and Phyllis Greenberg, Gerontology

The purpose of this project is to purchase classroom materials which will allow gerontology students a more visual, physical, and interpersonal learning experience.  These materials will include items which (a) stimulate normal and pathological processes of aging (e.g., vision, hearing); (b) allow students to experience the use, challenges, and social implications of assistive devices (e.g., wheelchair, walker); and (c) help them visualize the inner workings of the human body in 3 dimensional fashion (e.g., models of the human skeleton, heart, brain, normal and pathological bone).

• Title of Project: Mental Health Stimulations

Recipients: Darlene Copley and Peggy Fossen, Nursing Science

The purpose of this project is to assist mental health nursing students prepare to develop therapeutic relationships with their mental health patients, with the outcomes being to increase empathy and self-efficacy. This will be accomplished through the use of the ‘Hearing Voices That Are Distressing’ voice simulation exercise and training/curriculum package.

• Title of Project: Visual Chemistry

Recipients: Ruth Robinson and Sarah Petitto, Chemistry

The purpose of this project is to create kits for chemistry demonstrations that can be used to visually show many of the basic concepts in chemistry. These types of demonstrations engage students, help the visual learning process, and provide concrete examples for abstract concepts. Chemistry students will be enlisted to organize and test the kits. Funds will be used to purchase materials for 6 new kits.

• Title of Project: Teaching and Learning Intercultural Communication through Service Learning

Recipient: Soumia Bardhan, Communication Studies

The purpose of this project is to introduce a service learning component into CMST 330: Intercultural Communication. Students will work in groups to collaborate with elementary schools in St. Cloud. The primary goal will be to raise awareness and appreciation of elementary school students about issues and challenges of intercultural adaptation of immigrant children through the use of children’s literature. This project is conceived to promote compassion, empathy, mutual respect, and understanding among elementary school students.

 

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2011-2012 (Round 2) CETL Teaching and Learning Grants - RECIPIENTS

 

• Title of Project: Library Games; Using QR codes in game play to utilize an informational system

Recipient: Keith Christensen, Art Department, College of Liberal Arts.

The purpose of the project is to help students in a senior level course on Advanced Graphic Design learn how to design games using QR (Quick Response) scanning codes which expose, attract, engage an audience in order for the SCSU library to better serve its constituency. They will do this through collaboration with each other and under the guidance of the instructor and an external consultant. Grant funds will be used to pay for student assistants and an external consultant.

• Title of Project: iPAD3

Recipient: Plamen Miltenoff, IMS, Learning Resources.

The purpose of the grant is to enable IMS to provide the necessary support to CETL’s Faculty and Professional Learning Communities, and all faculty, staff and students in the multiple and appropriate uses of mobile devices and other learning technologies to enhance their learning. According to the Horizon Report, the use of a tablet, the iPAD in particular, places providers of support not on the cutting edge, but rather amidst people with a “necessary” tool.

• Title of Project: Turning Green Fluorescent Protein Blue

Recipient: Nathan Winter, Chemistry and Physics

The purpose of the project is to develop a new laboratory experiment for a senior level Chemistry and Biochemistry courses in which students will mutate green fluorescent protein (GFP) so that it glow blue. GFP was first isolated from the jellyfish A.Victoria by Osamu Shimoura in the 1960s and 1970s. In 1994 Roger Tsien first showed that the color this protein glows could be changed by changing its DNA. These researchers won the Nobel Prize in chemistry for their work in 2008. The work of the students would be similar to Tsien’s. They will use recently developed techniques to alter the DNA of GFP to change the color that the protein glows.

• Title of Project: Creating a Linux based environment

Recipient: Dennis Guster, Information Systems, Herberger Business School

The purpose of the project is to prepare students to function effectively as professionals in work place contexts where Linux is used widely. The grant will provide software and student support to give students in their current educational programs access to and support for Linux as a problem solving tool and a learning platform.

 

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2011-2012 CETL Teaching and Learning Grants - RECIPIENTS

• Applied Principles of Learning (ApPLe) Laboratory

Recipients : Sarah Smits-Bandstra, Communication Sciences and Disorders, School of Health & Human Services

The grantee intends to develop an ApPLe lab to train students in Communication Sciences and Disorders more effectively in their roles as speech therapists and hearing professionals. The objective is to provide an integrated and transformational learning experience.  Grant monies will be used to purchase materials, software, equipment and student helps.

• Central Minnesota Immigration Stories
  

Recipients : Isolde Mueller, Foreign Languages and Literature, College of Liberal Arts; Ann Finan and Sandrine Zerbib, Sociology, College of Liberal Arts and Anal Shah, Theater and Film Studies, College of Liberal Arts

This will be a cross-disciplinary project involving several classes from Film Studies, German and Sociology departments. College students will collaborate with faculty members and help students from a local school in making digital films on their immigration experiences as well as those of their family members. The college students themselves will learn from real-life scenarios to supplement classroom learning. The funds will be used to procure digital cameras and memory cards to capture the stories and to fund a social gathering with school students.

• Co-Teaching at Doctoral Level

Recipient : Christine Imbra, Educational Leadership and Higher Education, School of Education

This grant is intended to allow a doctoral student to co-teach a Master’s level class with a seasoned professor. The course will be restructured and the doctoral student will gain first-hand experience in teaching. Upon completion of semester, the outcomes would be assessed and if the results are good, this may be adopted as an annual practice in the doctoral program.

• Comparison of Learning Techniques in Developmental Mathematics

Recipients : Stephanie Houdak, Stacy Martig, Kathy Tasto, Virginia Winter and Laurie Yourk, Mathematics and Statistics, Math Skills Center, College of Science & Engineering and Student Support Services

The Math Skills Center has transitioned from offering “traditional” lecture sessions to six different classroom instructional options in their developmental mathematics courses.  Faculty implementing those options will analyze the results of each approach and determine which strategies are most effective in improving the chances of student success. This grant is being funded in collaboration with the Office of Strategy, Planning, and Institutional Effectiveness.

• Mindfulness in Higher Education

Recipients : Beth Berila, Women’s Studies, College of Liberal Arts and Steve Hoover, Community Psychology and Counseling, School of Health & Human Services

The grant will help in partially defraying the costs of attending the inaugural International Symposia for Contemplative Studies. The attendees hope to learn about relevant practices in mindfulness education and apply them to their courses and classes at St Cloud State University. Knowledge of new practices and the opportunity to network with others with the same interest will also help their ongoing engagement with CETL’s Mindfulness Education Initiative, an interdisciplinary group of faculty and staff who have been discussing and implementing a variety of such approaches.

• Pedagogical Approach to Promote Reflective Skills

Recipients : Choonkyong Kim, English and Elena Kurinski, Foreign Languages and Literature, College of Liberal Arts

This is a collaborative project between two professors from different, but related disciplines and is intended to promote student centered peer work to help develop reflective skills and facilitate the transformation of the students into autonomous learners.

• Tackling Problems in Calculus II and Multivariable Calculus

Recipients :Stephen Walk, Mathematics and Russel Lidberg, Physics, College of Science & Engineering

The project aims at improving the classroom experience and success rates among learners of calculus in two courses, both of which are prerequisites for majoring in many programs. Two faculty members from Mathematics and Physics will collaborate in identifying and posing a number of relevant problems from multiple disciplines to students for them to investigate and discover mathematical truths and methods for themselves. The faculties hope this will help students realize “the “why” of mathematical theorems rather than just the “how” of specific calculation techniques, and, through the process, take ownership for their learning of those topics.

• Technology Travelling Kiosk

Recipients : Christopher Stanly, Casey Gordon and Phil Thorson, Informational Technology Services

Each month, the grantees will set up a kiosk inside a college or school to demonstrate the latest innovations in technology, such as mobile devices, Web 2.0 services, etc. The conversation and tools will be tailored to the needs of that specific college or school. Faculty will be invited to host and participate in each session. In addition, a website will be created for follow up with attendees or others.  The objective is to provide an open forum for exploration and discussion of new technologies within the college. The grant money will be used for supplies and equipment.

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2010-2011 GRANTS

I. Travel Grants

 

• MnSCU Faculty Developer Travel Grant

The CETL sponsored Faculty Learning Community “Learning and the Brain” has received a Faculty Developer Travel grant of $9,000 from MnSCU’s Center for Teaching and Learning to attend the conference “iGeneration: How the Digital Age is Altering Brains, Learning and Teaching.”

For details click on MnSCU CTL

• “Engaged STEM Learning: From Promising to Pervasive Practices” CETL Travel Grant

Recipients: Dr. Debra Japp (Communication Studies), Dr. Matthew Julius (Biology), Dr. Chaturi Edrisinha (Counseling and Community Psychology).

See Best Practices Document submitted by recipients.

For an mp3 podcast of the plenary "STEM and the Liberated Mind" at the conference by Dr. Lewis Duncan, President, Rollins College, please visit
http://www.aacu.org/Podcast/podcasts.cfm?id=155

For general information on this grant click on "STEM Learning" Grant

To learn more about the Association of American Colleges and Universities visit www.aacu.org

• "Creativity Workshop" CETL Travel Grant

For the recipients and more information of this grant click on "Creativity Workshop" Grant

Visit the web site to learn more about the Creativity Workshop (March 18-21, New York City).

II. 2010-2011 CETL Teaching and Learning Grants

CETL is very pleased to announce the recipients of the 2010-2011 Teaching Learning Grants!

Click here to see detailed result.

Congratulations to the winners!

Read what they said about the grant!!

• "Unplugged" -- Wendy Bjorklund and Paula Tompkins

"The grant provided us with a venue to collaborate with other faculty in exploring how our students use digital communication technology, so we can better understand them as learners."

• "Collaboration in the Classroom: Development of a Wiki" -- Peter Van Mullem

"The grant from CETL was instrumental in assisting us from start-up to completion. It helped us find new methods to capture and engage student learning.

• "Creating Community Partnership – Play Therapy Training and Implementation" -- Tina Livingston-Sacin, Niloufer Merchant, Debra Carlson

"The grant helped us to provide additional training to students in an area of specialty that is not typically included in our coursework. It provided a wonderful collaborative initiative between the child care center and the Community Counseling program to pilot an idea for future possibilities to provide both teaching/training and community services to the families serviced by the child care center."

• "What Color is Your Personality?"-- Patricia Thielman

"Because of this grant, I can now educate others on how to better understand themselves... and how to enhance their relationships with others!"

• "Creating community Partnership: Play Therapy Training and Implementaion" -- Tina Linvingston-Sacin, Niloufer Merchant, Debra Carlson

"The grant allowed for the Community Counseling program expand community partnerships..."

For guidelines and application, please click on TchgLngGrants2011-12.