Working Together to Teach Students: Course Enhancement Grants
Last year, the SU Libraries began a grant program to encourage faculty to partner with librarians to develop in-depth assignments that would take advantage of the Libraries’ resources and teach students more advanced research skills. We are pleased to award Course Enhancement Grants to the faculty and projects (with partner librarians) listed below for the 2019-20 academic year. We are delighted that these courses represent a range of departments from the sciences to the humanities to professional fields and from introductory-level to graduate-level.
- Mara Chen for GEOL 405: Environmental Geology for an interdisciplinary project in which students will research how particular national parks inspired artists and then deliver a creative presentation on their topic. She will work with Susan Brazer, science librarian.
- Jennifer Liston for ART 201/311/391: Introduction to Art History Online/Pre-Columbian Art History/Special Topics in Art History (Baroque Art) to create interactive online and in-person information literacy activities for art history research papers. She will work with Caroline Eckardt, research/instructional services librarian.
- Sherry Maykrantz for HLTH 260: Health Literacy and Communications to revamp a semester-long assignment of a health communications media campaign that advocates for a health topic, promotes a health behavior or launches a prevention campaign. She will work with Caroline Eckardt, research/instructional services librarian, and they will co-teach several sessions related to the ethical practice of health communications and the enhancement of information literacy skills.
- Michael McCarty for HIST 364: Modern Japan to guide students through interpreting visual sources, particularly woodblock prints from early modern and modern Japan, including using Special Collections’ sizable collection of woodblock prints depicting the Sino-Japanese War. He will work with Ian Post, history liaison and local history archivist.
- Ellen Schaefer-Salins for SOWK 475: Disabilities Studies: Culture and Practice, an online course, for in-depth, multi-disciplinary research about particular disabilities for two major assignments, including creating an interactive presentation. She will be working with Mou Chakraborty, director of External Library Services.
- Isabel Quintana Wulf for a 500-level English course: Immigrants, Refugees and Other (Un)Assimilable Americans: Contemporary Multiethnic Literature in the U.S., to create a series of assignments to help students develop research strategies, map out the contours of this field of study, and understand the academic journals that present and foster intellectual conversations on the subject. She will work with James Parrigin, coordinator of library instruction.
Student Use of Library Resources
In 2018-19, David Burns won an SU Libraries course enhancement grant to develop an assignment for his advanced multimedia journalism and media production students to use resources from the Nabb Research Center to create historical documentaries. One of the documentaries, focusing on the great fire in Salisbury in 1883 and its aftermath through the present day, is available on YouTube. See “Salisbury Rises from the Ashes” (by students Benjamin Brunner, Sean Foy and Gabriel Vera), here: