Grants

Funded Projects
Faculty Development Fund (FDF)
Project Title Overview of the Project
Compassionate Conversations Curriculum for Michigan Medicine: Building a core communication curriculum for medical students, postgraduates, and faculty
Michael Mendez
Medical School
Nathan Houchens
Medical School
John Osterholzer
Medical School

$10000.00

Ineffective physician communication leads to increased stress for families related to treatment decisions and the condition of patients. Many families do not understand basic information about their loved ones’ illnesses and treatments, and physicians frequently miss opportunities to address family concerns and attend to family emotions. While communication guides and conversation roadmaps have been published, Michigan Medicine lacks a program common to medical students, post-graduate trainees and faculty that provides our trainees the necessary communication skills and practical tools to navigate these conversations. CRLT funding will provide key support to assist the program in its initial phase of growth.

This proposal describes the development of a dynamic family meeting simulation model that engages learners with improvisational actors and highly trained faculty-facilitators in a manner that optimizes achievement of the following goals:

1) To develop a sustainable communication training program that enhances the ability of trainees to compassionately and effectively conduct conversations which identify the values, goals, and life-sustaining treatment decisions of patients with serious illness.
2) To recruit and train communication education champions to create a network of Compassionate Conversation Facilitators at Michigan Medicine
The Recording Studio is the World's Best Practice Room; creating an environment for student violinists to grow into professional musicians by learning to really listen and transform their concert sound.
Danielle Belen
Music, Theatre & Dance

$4725.00

The ability to easily and regularly record oneself is an absolute necessity for a violinist, and especially for a college student at the brink of what is hopefully a lifelong career in music. An even more important skill is learning how to honestly and proactively listen to oneself.
I propose to enhance my violin teaching studio with two professional quality microphones, installed semi-permanently to transform the space into an ad-hoc but quality recording studio, on-demand when needed. I dream of creating a culture of self-empowerment among our violin students at the University of Michigan, where they will learn and understand not only how to record themselves, but how to listen back in an engaged way, using this tool to push and lift their level and standard of playing.

Initially, this process would take place under my guidance, already working one-on-one with them weekly as their private instructor. No words of mine would ever be more powerful than listening back together to a just-recorded phrase, positively but critically analyzing it and trying again, and again. This resource of instant-recording would be embraced and maximized in an educational way that isn’t possible under the current infrastructure of our school. Hiring a professional audio engineer is expensive, reserving a hall is limited, and both simply can’t be done often enough to realize the student’s professional potential. Recording on one’s phone is convenient but never has the same quality or gravitas as the real thing.

Finally, for each student, this educational exercise could gain the momentum needed to end up with a tangible high-level recording for professional use as well. Self-promotion through one’s online presence is vital for the modern musician. I believe the impact and execution of this project is unique and I appreciate your consideration.
Exploring the Art of Japanese Papermaking and Water Printing in Interdisciplinary Collaborative Context with artists Hisashi Kano and Tomomi Kano
Endi Poskovic
Art & Design

$6000.00

I intend to bring two distinguished master papermakers Tomomi Kano and Hisashi Kano from Japan to Stamps School and the University of Michigan as visiting artists during September and October 2019. During the period of approximately five weeks, Tomomi Kano and Hisashi Kano will be working at Stamps School printmaking and fibers studios collaboratively teaching Japanese paper making with me, and producing a large scale artwork in partnerships with UM students and faculty. Upon completion, the final artwork will be presented in art exhibitions in Ann Arbor and Japan in 2020 and onwards. Furthermore, this collaborative effort and the research conducted in the sustainable development of kozo, mitsubara, and gampi fibers for paper making and printmaking would be presented at conferences, panels, workshops and other educational forums nationally and internationally.
Vocal Health Lab, Somatic Bodywork & Curriculum Development for the Contemporary Musical Theatre Performer
Catherine A. Walker
Music, Theatre & Dance

$10000.00

This 3-tiered initiative will enhance the curriculum and training of the musical theatre majors as well as provide professional development for faculty members in the Musical Theatre, Theatre & Voice Departments. The Musical Theatre department remains committed to providing a comprehensive, cutting-edge, holistic, approach to training today’s performers. Part One: New Vocal Health Lab - Musical Theatre students will have regular access to Voice Specialist, Marci Rosenberg (CCC-SLP). Musical theatre performers are at greater risk for developing voice disorders. Even a minor voice disorder can have a significant impact on the performer. The Vocal Health Lab will offer specialized care and training for the students who regularly sing using a high vocal load and become proactive at detecting emerging problems. Part Two: Alexander Technique Somatic Training - By training both faculty and students to optimize posture and alignment, the functionality of the voice will improve. Additionally, Alexander Technique has been shown to reduce stress and improve overall well-being; essential for Musical Theatre performers.

Continued in Project Objectives
Using 3-D printed anatomical models of specimens from the Museum of Zoology Research Collections to transform experiential learning in six vertebrate biodiversity laboratory courses
Priscilla Tucker
LSA - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
LSA - Museum of Zoology
Hernan Lopez-Fernandez
LSA - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Alison Davis Rabosky
LSA - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Benjamin Winger
LSA - Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

$10000.00

A grant from CRLT will enhance lecture materials and laboratory exercises in six vertebrate biodiversity classes through the use of 3-D printed anatomical models made from images generated with X-ray computed tomography (CT). Recent access to CT is made possible through the acquisition and installation of a Nikon X-ray CT scanner in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. The scanner is located at the Research Museums Center in close proximity to > 4 million specimens of fishes, reptiles, amphibians, birds and mammals including an extraordinary collection of fluid-preserved specimens, all housed in the Museum of Zoology (UMMZ). The ability to generate CT images and produce models of both hard and soft anatomy from valuable fluid preserved research specimens, using noninvasive techniques, will provide opportunities for students to engage with the great diversity of vertebrate form and function. For example, students will be exposed to the differences in internal anatomy such as the windpipes of cranes that are coiled to amplify sound. Printing models at magnification will provide opportunities to compare small anatomical structures such as the pharyngeal jaws or gill arches of fishes or the bones of a snake skull. Students will use models to articulate entire skeletons or assemble and disassemble bones of the skull and other structures. These self-guided activities of discovery and research will provide a better, more intuitive understanding of species diversity and variation with less memorization.
Enhancing student learning of dental anatomy with 3D computer-aided-design software

$10000.00

The ability to understand the complexity of dental anatomy and the critical role it plays in the oral environment is essential for a dental student to master early in their development as a health care professional. Historically, first-year dental students spend hours in lecture learning the importance of the dynamic relationship between height of contour, cusp/fossa relationships, embrasure spaces, and contacts of teeth. A static, hands-on exercise of sculpting teeth out of wax is designed to reinforce these concepts but is limited by the inefficiency of using analog methods to teach a dynamic concept. Implementing 3-D CAD software in the dental anatomy course has the potential to enhance student learning with a level of detail and feedback not possible with analog methods. Using CAD software, students will be able to quickly and efficiently modify tooth morphology and receive instant feedback on the impact the changes made to adjacent and opposing teeth. The CRLT Faculty Development Fund will enable the CRSE department in the School of Dentistry to train faculty in the application of this software so they can support dental students as they master complex concepts in dental anatomy. This project is designed to leverage technology to enhance the learning of complex dynamic relationships and has the potential to change the future of dental education.
Applications of Immersive Media Technologies in Performing Arts
Anil Camci
Music, Theatre & Dance

$5995.00

Augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) studies have gained significant momentum in recent years with new and accessible consumer-grade devices, such as head-mounted displays and depth cameras. As evidenced in many previous instances of new media being introduced to mass appeal, art is often a platform for exploring the potential of emerging technologies. Similar to music being an initial application of recording technology, and cinema being that of broadcasting, performing arts today is a domain for cutting-edge applications of AR and VR. With this project, we aim to satisfy a growing need in the Performing Arts Technology (PAT) curriculum to address these topics; the project provides a significant step towards this goal by introducing a new course, titled Immersive Media. In this course, the students will explore new and innovative forms of artistic expression that rely on rapidly growing entertainment platforms and emerging media technologies. The practice-based learning approach of the course will allow our students to gain an expert understanding of modern AR and VR tools through collaborative and interdisciplinary projects that adopt new approaches to sound, motion and storytelling in virtual environments. The project will involve the acquisition of state-of-the-art AR and VR systems, which will be introduced into PAT curriculum for the first time. In addition to supporting the development of a brand-new course, the project will also yield an extended evaluation of the novel methods applied to integrate modern AR and VR technologies into teaching practice, and their learning outcomes.
Eng401: Engineering Programming for (respectfully) “dummies”
Kazuhiro Saitou
Engineering

$6000.00

The goal of the project is to develop teaching modules for an introductory engineering computer programming course, which intends to expose non-computer science undergraduate senior and 1st year graduate students with “joy of engineering programming.” Each self-contained module will consist of a problem in an engineering discipline and a programming exercise to implement computational tools for solving the problem, with an emphasis on engineering problem solving rather than underlying mathematics, and on “from scratch” coding and debugging exercises. With a broad sampling of examples in various engineering disciplines, multiple modules, each focusing on a different topic in engineering programming, can be chosen and configured to form an introductory engineering programming course(s) for CoE and non-CoE Departments, which can be taught in rotation by a team of faculty members.

As commercial software packages are increasingly becoming more user-friendly and encouraging the use as “black-boxes,” our engineering students gain very limited experience in coding beyond ENG101, and has become (respectfully) “dummies” in engineering programming – they can use skillfully what’s available commercially but will easily be stuck when there is a need beyond the capability and limitation of commercial software tools. While existing computer programming courses in EECS offers the “from scratch” coding experiences, they focus on fundamentals in computer programming such as data structure and abstract algorithms, with little emphasis on engineering problem solving. The course to be built out of the proposed modules will provide a high degree of “from scratch” programming experiences in the context of solving specific engineering problems.
Neuroimaging data, concepts, and computer skills
Bennet Fauber
Administration

$6000.00

Quantitative and computing skills are becoming increasingly important in the social and neurosciences, especially with public concerns about the “replication crisis” on the one hand, and the increasing availability of large public databases on the other. Teamwork and collaboration skills are also increasingly important both in science and the nonacademic workplace. However, rarely do students in these areas receive formal training in quantitative, computing, or collaboration skills, and current course offerings (e.g., through the computer science and statistics department) often don’t address the needs these students have in their research. This course will address that need by closely integrating conceptual instruction relevant to psychology and neuroscience with hands-on training in computational and data management skills necessary to efficiently take advantage of public databases, prepare their own data for such databases, and produce robust, reproducible analyses. Class projects will take a team-based approach, with specific training in teamwork and collaboration. The first iteration of the course will focus on human neuroimaging as the content area, but the course infrastructure is designed such that it can be extended to other content areas where these skills are important for students’ success.
Teaching Private Piano Lessons Using Video Game Piano Transcriptions
Matthew Thompson
Music, Theatre & Dance

$6000.00

This Faculty Development Fund proposal would allow for a pilot year of teaching piano lessons using video game music. It’s the practical application of an ongoing research project I’m involved with studying video game music piano collections. Since the 1980s, there has been a tradition, especially in Japan but also in the United States, of publishing piano arrangements of video game music. Virtually no scholarly or serious study has occurred of these works. Many of these arrangements are based on a long forgotten piano method by Ferdinand Beyer and often contain pedagogic comments, written in Japanese, that I’m in the midst of exploring courtesy of a research grant from SMTD. As I study these scores, I feel the next step for this project is to test their pedagogic value in a lesson setting. This FDF funding would allow me to teach a small cohort of students in weekly one-on-one piano lessons using these game music collections as the vehicle of musical study instead of traditional canonic Western repertoire. The students will receive lessons both Fall 2018 and Winter 2019 and the project will culminate in a studio recital performance. This project aims to understand how using video game music as a vehicle for piano study allows for novel teaching innovations and how this repertoire affects the student experience. The project updates and diversifies the curriculum by exploring primarily Japanese repertoire. Further, it reaches out to non-SMTD students who may be interested in serious music study but not in the canonic repertoire or standard performance traditions.
Development of an Interprofessional Education Curriculum to Prepare Medical Students for Residency
Anita Malone
Medical School
Brittany Allen
Medical School

$5725.00

Interprofessional education (IPE) is an important aspect of medical education, teaching learners how to collaborate in multidisciplinary teams and more effectively provide care in our complex medical environment. In medical school, students are taught the intricacies of pathophysiology, medical decision making, and patient care, but less focus is placed on how to best work in the interdisciplinary team as they advance through clinical education. Students who do not understand the importance of and utilize interprofessional collaboration may struggle when they transition to residency, as this is a time when relying on the entire team of healthcare professionals becomes of utmost importance in order to provide safe, efficient, and effective patient care. This project aims to formally assess the needs for interprofessional education and develop an IPE curriculum for senior medical students as they prepare for the transition from student to resident physician. Innovative curricular changes such as simulated patient care experiences, team-based problem solving, and education on interdisciplinary communication incorporating students and providers from different professions will be implemented, guided by the information gained from a formal needs assessment. This needs assessment will be done by conducting focus groups of healthcare professionals, interviewing recent medical school graduates, and interviewing residency program directors to delineate needs for IPE within specific areas of medicine. Once this assessment is completed, this IPE curriculum will be implemented within the 8-week long senior medical student residency preparatory courses in which all University of Michigan medical students will participate.
Engaged Mathematics Teaching: Building A Video Library for Instructor Training Across Programs
Nina White
LSA - Mathematics

$9984.00

Three programs within the Department of Mathematics wish to collaborate to create a library of video clips of classroom teaching for training Department instructors. The Introductory Math Program (Pre-Calculus, Calculus I, and Calculus II), Inquiry-Based Learning (IBL) program (https://lsa.umich.edu/math/centers-outreach/ibl-center-for-inquiry-based-learning.html), and Teacher Education program teach courses to different populations and with different goals, but all aim to engage students in collaborative, interactive work during class on novel, deep mathematical problems. Learning to teach effectively in this way requires robust instructor training. One piece of this training that could traverse these diverse classroom settings and benefit instructors from all three programs is a library of curated video clips of classroom teaching.

Faculty members Nina White (IBL and teacher education) and Fernando Carreón (Introductory Math Program) propose to (1) film a diverse array of classroom settings within the IBL, teacher education, and intro programs during the Winter 2018 semester, and (2) carefully edit and curate them to be used in instructor training in all three programs.

The primary costs of the grant will be hiring student assistants for filming and editing assistance, and paying summer salary to the co-PIs for the time-intensive work of selecting and curating the clips.
MPH Core Curriculum Design and Evaluation
Angela Beck
Public Health

$10000.00

The University of Michigan School of Public Health (SPH) requests a Faculty Development Fund award to help support design and evaluation of a new core curriculum for Master of Public Health (MPH) degree programs, which enroll an annual cohort of approximately 300 students. The timing for curriculum redesign is prompted by changes to accreditation requirements released by the Council on Education for Public Health (CEPH) in 2016, which represent a significant departure from previous mandates. Under the new requirements, all MPH students must complete courses that address and assess a standard set of learning objectives and competencies put forth by CEPH, in addition to requirements for individual degree concentrations, to ensure a strong foundation in public health knowledge and skills.

SPH seeks to develop a cohesive set of 8 core courses to launch in the 2018-2019 academic year using innovative teaching methods and curriculum design that result in positive student learning outcomes, program satisfaction, and readiness for the public health workforce. The interdisciplinary core curriculum will engage expertise from SPH’s six academic departments to collectively address the CEPH-defined learning objectives and competencies. Building on SPH’s current partnership with CRLT in this effort, this proposal requests additional services from CRLT, along with assistance from a graduate student, to support curriculum development, learner assessment plans, and program evaluation. A solid instructional design focus during curriculum design will help ensure high-quality graduate education with built-in mechanisms for continuous quality improvement for years to come.
Designing a Curriculum for Discipline-Based Student-Faculty Mentoring Programs in Engineering
Joi Mondisa
Engineering - Industrial and Operations Engineering
Okwudire Chinedum
Engineering - Mechanical Engineering
Engineering - Integrative Systems & Design

$9995.00

In this research project, two URM engineering faculty members will: (1) document how they created two engineering student-faculty mentoring programs for URM students at Michigan; (2) document and examine the mentoring practices and approaches they use with students; (3) create an outline of a mentoring curriculum that features insights and tips about what a URM student-faculty mentoring program might consist of in terms of program design and mentoring practices; and (4) develop and instruct a half-day faculty workshop on mentoring in student-faculty partnership programs. The study’s research questions are: (1) what are some best practices in creating a discipline-based student-faculty mentoring program in Engineering? (2) what are the experiences of students and faculty who participate in a discipline-based student-faculty mentoring program in Engineering? and (3) what types of practices and approaches can be used to assist faculty and students in discipline-based student-faculty mentoring programs in Engineering? In this social constructivist inquiry, the Project Director will use an explanatory mixed methods research design using quantitative (e.g., surveys) and qualitative (e.g., interviews, focus groups, notes) methods. From this research, we will produce: (1) evidence about the mentoring experiences and outcomes for approximately 60 URM undergraduates, 12 URM graduate students, and 3 URM faculty at Michigan; (2) a curriculum for informal student-faculty mentoring programs; and (3) a half-day Faculty Mentoring Workshop for Michigan engineering faculty led by the Project Director and co-Project Director.
Innovations in Communication with Patients and Families: Communication Coach Curriculum
Priyanka Rao
Medical School
Elizabeth Hill
Medical School
Melissa Cousino
Medical School

$9285.00

Communication and partnership with families is paramount in providing quality medical care and achieving positive patient outcomes. We propose a unique communication coach model and curriculum which would pair individual pediatric physician trainees with two communication coaches (a faculty member and a parent advisor). Coaches will meet with physician trainees for the duration of their residency training to provide direct, real-time feedback on communication skills with patients and families in both the inpatient and outpatient setting. Coaches will participate in a communication and observation feedback workshop twice per year. In the iterative nature of quality improvement, feedback will be received from both the physician trainee participants as well as communication coaches to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses of this model. Data will also be collected on the patient experience via the CARE measure and chart review both before and after implementation to assess for measurable outcomes. If successful this program will be continued annually with new classes of pediatric trainees and also be expanded to other residency training programs throughout our institution.
Michigan Critical Care Project
Cindy Hsu
Medical School
Ross Kessler
Medical School
Sage Whitmore
Medical School

$10000.00

“Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.” - W. B. Yeats (1865-1939)

Critical illness and injury pose tremendous societal and economic burden to global health care. Sepsis, cardiac arrest, respiratory failure, stroke, hemorrhage, and traumatic injuries represent a diverse and challenging set of disease processes with complex patient management. The care of critically-ill patients often begins in the prehospital setting and emergency department (ED), then continues through the intensive care unit (ICU), and often extends well beyond their hospital discharge. As such, critical care is provided by a diverse group of providers including paramedics, emergency physicians, intensivists, trainees of different specialties, advanced providers, and ancillary staff with varying levels of prior training and patient exposure. The variability in provider background, time restrictions posed by duty hour regulation, and increased administrative demands make traditional didactic format ineffective and inefficient for critical care education. To solve this problem, we propose the creation of an asynchronous education website called “Michigan Critical Care Project”. The aims of the Michigan Critical Care Project will be to: 1) Provide high quality, free, and asynchronous emergency critical care education material from the University of Michigan Health System (UMHS) to foster adult learning and multidisciplinary collaboration and 2) Demonstrate its institutional, national, and global educational impact.