Colonial Academic Alliance

Creating intercollegiate connections to challenge the status quo.

W.E. Do! Women Entrepreneurs & Our Stories

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W.E. Do! Women Entrepreneurs and Our Stories
April 12, 2017 | 9:00AM – 2:00PM
McKinnon Hall, Moseley Center, Elon University

 Join us for a day of inspiration and networking as we celebrate women’s entrepreneurship and innovation!

W.E. Do! is an event dedicated to empowering women entrepreneurs. Featuring several fantastic speakers, a panel session, and a roundtable working session, W.E. Do! will help women entrepreneurs (and aspiring student entrepreneurs) expand their networks, interact with inspiring role models, and identify important resources to support the achievement of their entrepreneurial goals. 

Cost: $30.00 (Free for students) 

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2017 Undergraduate Research Conference @ Elon

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The Alliance’s 2017 Undergraduate Research Conference (URC) was held at Elon University. March 31 – April 1, 2017. Approximately 65 students from Alliance institutions participated in the conference, which included opportunities to showcase their research and attend “Lunch and Learn” professional development sessions. 

Participants were selected by the Undergraduate Research Directors on each campus.

Abstracts from the 2017 URC are available here.

Pictures from the event are coming soon!

Keynote Information

Opening Keynote
“Magnetic Nanoparticle Solutions for Hyperthermia Therapeutics and Smart Materials”
Dr. Ben Evans, Associate Professor of Physics

Ben_EvansBen Evans is a physicist by education and a biomedical engineer by mistake. He earned his PhD in Physics at UNC Chapel Hill where he built an artificial ciliary system which mimicked the dynamics of human lung cilia. The flexible magnetic materials which he engineered for this project form the basis for much of his current work as an associate professor at Elon University. At Elon, Evans has worked with undergraduate colleagues on projects spanning the sciences, including ligand-targeted magnetic microspheres for drug delivery, magnetic nanospheres for in vivo hyperthermia therapeutics, and structured magnetic materials for soft robotics. He will discuss current work in these areas and highlight his collaborations with undergraduate researchers.

Closing Keynote
“Untold, Unheard, Unexpected: Ethnography and The Challenge of Powerful Stories”
Dr. Amy Allocco, Associate Professor of Religious Studies
Dr. Tom Mould, Professor of Folklore and Anthropology

amy_allocoAmy L. Allocco is Associate Professor of Religious Studies at Elon University in North Carolina. Allocco earned her PhD from Emory University in 2009 and also holds degrees from Harvard Divinity School and Colgate University. She is the 2012 recipient of Elon’s College of Arts and Sciences Excellence in Teaching Award and previously held the University’s Distinguished Emerging Scholar professorship in Religious Studies. Trained both as an ethnographer of South Asian religions and in approaches to Hindu textual traditions, Allocco specializes in performance and ritual studies as well as gender and religion. Her research focuses on vernacular Hinduism, especially contemporary Hindu ritual traditions and women’s religious practices in the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu, where she has been studying and conducting ethnographic fieldwork for more than 20 years. Allocco’s publications to date have concentrated on South India’s snake goddess traditions and the repertoire of ritual therapies performed to mitigate nāga dōṣam, a malignant horoscopic condition that causes delayed marriage and infertility. In 2013 she received The Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion’s Elisabeth Schüssler Fiorenza New Scholar Award for an article focused on the narrative strategies and ritual authority of a female Hindu healer. Along with Brian Pennington she co-edited a volume titled Ritual Innovation: Strategic Interventions in South Asian Religion, which will be forthcoming from SUNY Press this year. With fellowship support from Fulbright-Nehru, the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the American Institute of Indian Studies, Allocco spent the 2015-16 academic year in Chennai working on a new research project, titled Domesticating the Dead: Invitation and Installation Rituals in Tamil South India. Her ethnography investigates the ongoing ritual relationships that Hindus maintain with their dead and focuses on ceremonies to honor deceased relatives called pūvāṭaikkāri (“the woman wearing flowers”), including both those performed annually to seek generalized blessings and occasional, elaborate invitation rituals in which ritual drummers summon the spirit, convince it to possess a human host, and beg it to “come home” as a protective family deity.

Tom_Mould11Tom Mould is Professor of Folklore and Anthropology at Elon University and Director of the Honors Program. He is the author of three books—Choctaw Prophecy: A Legacy of the Future (2003), Choctaw Tales (2004), and Still, the Small Voice: Revelation, Personal Narrative and the Mormon Folk Tradition (2011)—and co-author of two more—The Individual and Tradition (2011) and Latter-day Lore: Mormon Folklore Studies (2013). His research areas include oral narrative, sacred narrative, American Indian studies, Mormon studies, ethnography, performance studies, and contemporary legend. He has produced video documentaries for public television on folk art and culture in Indiana, Kentucky and North Carolina. His newest book Overthrowing the Queen: The Real Stories of Welfare in America is due out in 2018.

 

New Best Practices Blog Post

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Best Practices Blog | Professional Learning Clubs for Faculty

By Jessica T. Smith, Ph.D., Instructional Technologist, Teaching and Learning Technology, College of Charleston

When it comes to teaching, many college faculty are untrained and unprepared. Unlike our fellow educators in K-12, most college faculty were never taught how to teach. Perhaps you were solely a research assistant during grad school or, like me, you were handed a roster and a textbook and told to “go teach.”

Exacerbating this problem is a lack of professional development opportunities (when compared to K-12 teachers) and the absence of supportive communities faculty can turn to when they are struggling with their teaching. Furthermore, especially for non-tenured instructors, taking pedagogical risks is often discouraged because of its potential negative impact on course evaluations.

All of this means that many faculty fall back on what they know and mimic how they were taught — lengthy lectures, Powerpoint slides full of text, one midterm, and one final exam. This pattern is repeated with each new cohort of PhDs. As an instructional technologist, I’ve repeatedly heard instructors lament that they are not effectively engaging their students but they don’t know how else to teach. One way faculty can improve their teaching and develop a supportive network of colleagues is to establish a Professional Learning Club (PLC).

PLCs are small groups of faculty members who meet to collaboratively reflect on and improve their teaching practices. These groups provide faculty with a much-needed space to share struggles and successes while asking questions about how students learn and how we can help them learn more effectively.

At the College of Charleston, participation in a PLC involves one academic year of exploring, implementing, and evaluating empirically-grounded instructional strategies with the goal of improving student learning and engagement. Anyone who teaches at least one class per semester is encouraged to participate. Groups are formed based on interest in a particular pedagogical strategy or philosophy, such as flipped classroom, interactive lecture design, Universal Design, or standards-based grading. An effort is made to ensure the groups are interdisciplinary so participants can benefit from multiple perspectives.

Once groups are formed, participants establish expectations, goals, and a meeting schedule. Typically, the first semester of a PLC involves researching pedagogical strategies and instructional technologies while the second semester involves implementation and evaluation. Each month, PLC members meet to share the strategies they tried, work through challenges, and brainstorm ways to improve.

At the end of the year, each PLC produces a report that details how they accomplished their goals (or why they didn’t), what they learned from the process, and how they intend to move forward outside of the PLC. Participants also share their experiences with the larger campus community through roundtable discussions and presentations at our annual conference.

Our assessment of the program indicates it has made a significant positive impact on participants. All PLC members reported benefiting from the opportunity to examine what is working and not working in their classes while exploring new approaches. A few participants noted that the PLC forced them to prioritize self-reflection, which is otherwise put on the back burner. Here’s what a few of our PLC members have said about the experience:

“Your students will thank you for participating in TLT’s PLC. This is a terrific (and cost effective) way to improve your teaching. I love the fact that faculty can share best practices and have the opportunity to implement them over an entire year.” – Lancie Affonso, Lecturer, Computer Science, Management and Marketing

“My best teaching ideas are often stolen from others. PLC was like a thief’s playground! I am very grateful to my colleagues for sharing their best strategies.” — Cindi May, Professor, Psychology

“Join a PLC because it offers great opportunities to reflect on your teaching, which so many of us struggle to find enough time for! I also really enjoyed the sense of community it provided us as we worked together to discuss individual issues we were struggling with in our classes.” – Kelley White, Associate Professor, Teacher Education

This fall we will start our second cohort of PLCs. Interest has grown from our inaugural offering of two groups to four groups of faculty. We are encouraged by the feedback from our past participants and believe the program will continue to be successful. If you’d like to learn more about College of Charleston’s Professional Learning Clubs or offer a similar program at your university and want to share ideas, we’d love to chat! Email us at TLT@cofc.edu.

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Jessica T. Smith is an Instructional Technologist and Adjunct Professor at the College of Charleston. She enjoys sharing her passion for tools and applications that will enhance engagement, deepen learning, increase efficacy, and empower both students and professors.

To learn more about Professional Learning Clubs at the College of Charleston, please visit http://tlt.cofc.edu/faculty-services/plc/.

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Faculty, staff, and students at Alliance institutions: interested in sharing your best practices, innovative ideas, or recent success on the CAA Academics blog? Email Lindsey Interlante at li@caa-academics.org for more information!

Alliance Office Moves to Elon

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The Colonial Academic Alliance office will move to the campus of Elon University in Elon, N.C. beginning July 1, 2016. The Colonial Academic Alliance was most recently headquartered at Towson University, and the offices have been located on several different campuses over the past decade.

“We’re excited to work with the Colonial Academic Alliance,” said Steven House, Provost and Executive Vice President of Elon University. “Under the leadership of Lindsey Interlante, the Alliance is working on several new initiatives to advance innovative teaching and entrepreneurship across institutions. Elon is proud to provide the resources to support Lindsey, as well as the future Associate Director of the Alliance.”

“We look forward to being a part of the Elon community and continuing to build relationships across the Alliance to implement impactful programming for faculty, staff and students,” said Interlante, who has served as Executive Director of the Colonial Academic Alliance since December, 2014. “We appreciate Towson University’s generosity in hosting us for the past couple of years.”

The Colonial Academic Alliance recently held its annual Undergraduate Research Conference on the campus of the College of William and Mary. The event allowed more than 80 students to present their research projects, network with faculty and staff members, and take part in a variety of activities around Colonial Williamsburg.

The Colonial Academic Alliance will conduct its Pedagogy Summit at Drexel University on October 27-28, 2016. New programming in the field of entrepreneurship is also being established.

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