Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Using a tablet to represent student thinking and aid in formative assessment Nina White LSA - Mathematics $500.00 |
I am seeking funding to buy an IPad and accessories for two teaching projects I am implementing this semester. The first project will use the tablet, almost daily, to project my representations of students' diverse numerical strategies. The second will use applications on the tablet to help me with rigorous, ongoing, real-time, formative assessment. |
| Bits and Atoms Project Archive Sophia Brueckner Art & Design $500.00 |
The project involves creating an archive of all previous projects from Bits and Atoms and finalizing a project documentation format so the future work of students can be immediately incorporated into the archive. This allows new students to browse previous projects for inspiration as well as to learn about materials and technologies that might be well suited to a project or might be problematic, and it also raises awareness of safety considerations. Most importantly, students themselves are building new knowledge as they experiment with new materials and processes, which then gets incorporated into future courses. This archive will be made available to all students using Stamps' digital fabrication studio and possibly the rest of the university. |
| Developing Curricula on local history of Black Civil Rights $500.00 |
A walking tour of South Ypsilanti by independent historian Matt Siegfried to support developing curricular materials on local histories of black civil rights organizing in the eras of abolitionism, the Underground Railroad, and Reconstruction. Although the Signal of Liberty – a white-edited abolitionist paper – in Ann Arbor leads many to imagine local abolitionism as white-led, in fact, Ypsilanti’s African American South Side maintained a more influential, connected, and creative network for defending black civil rights in the antebellum and postbellum eras. All students should understand the vast impact of this local black civil & human rights organizing, and black students may experience deeper belonging if they encounter syllabi that more accurately portray local black communities’ creative resilience. Faculty can design curriculums that are more salient, more accurate, and more inclusive to the extent that we access this history. Black Ypsilanti’s creative work has been under-preserved relative to its historic importance, but Matt Siegfried has been working to document, organize, and conceptualize the structure and power of black civil society in the Ann Arbor-Ypsilanti area. Siegfried will create a 2-hour tour exposing us to local resources on black civil rights. We’ll compile and circulate a document containing the resources he points us to (i.e., the location of archives; contacts for oral history projects and for institutional histories; addresses of murals; copies of relevant posters, news articles, and other visual aids) for use by individual faculty as appropriate. |
| Entrepreneurship Case Study Podcasting Brian Hayden Engineering - Center for Entrepreneurship $500.00 |
Finding Your Venture (ENTR 410) offers a uniquely practical framework for launching a new venture. Our students are bright and capable but lack context and perspective about what happens in business and startups. Guest speakers and storytelling help bridge that gap, but are sub-optimal teaching tools. It’s hard to map what a guest speaker will say to measurable learning objectives and we want to change that. I’ve begun experimenting with video and podcast case studies as a more intentional way to bring context into the classroom,. Episodes of the podcast “How I Built This” have been useful for testing the concept, but a library of case studies that we build ourselves could be even more powerful. I’ve spoken with other faculty who want to use these resources in their courses, and who will use the equipment to create more content. |
| PROJECT NAME: ELICITING AND DOCUMENTING GOALS OF CARE FOR END STAGE RENAL DISEASE PATIENTS $500.00 |
Almost 50% of patients classified with Stage 4 Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD) are unaware of their renal dysfunction and are faced with the imminent possibility of being initiated on dialysis, a form of life-sustaining treatment. Every year, more than 100,000 patients are started on dialysis in the United States. They are faced with a life-altering decision as more than 12 hours a week will be committed to the procedure, with more hours dedicated to transportation and preparation. These patients will also face numerous symptoms such as fatigue, chronic pain, depression and anxiety leading to a poor quality of life. Moreover, after one year of treatment, 1 in 4 patients on dialysis will die, and only 35% of patients survive after 5 years. While more than 75% of patients want to talk to their doctors about end-of-life care, up to 54% of dialysis patients have not had these discussions with their providers. During Adult Nephrology fellowship, while the need for end of life care is recognized by virtually all trainees, there is little to no formal education provided that prepares them to have goals of care conversations with their patients. In fact, over 80% of Nephrology fellows are not offered any clinical training or rotations in Palliative Care. NephroTalk, a curriculum designed especially for Nephrologists, is a workshop that has been proven to be effective for end of life communication skills. Providing this training to Nephrologists is crucial in providing dialysis patients a holistic quality of care they deserve. |
| Tester Certification for the ACTFL Oral Proficiency Interview Soyeon Kim LSA $500.00 |
The purpose of the project is to obtain the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI) Tester Certification granted by the American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL). Accurate assessment of the learner's proficiency level is an integral part of language teaching. For the Korean language, OPI is the only standardized test with a speaking component and is thus widely accepted as official proof of Korean oral proficiency. With the tester certification, I would be able to provide OPI ratings for the students who are taking Korean at U of M, revise the curricula of the UM Korean Language Program to meet the OPI standards, and contribute to the training of language faculty on consistent and reliable oral proficiency assessment. This grant will support the first step of the certification process, which is to attend a 4-day OPI Assessment Workshop. |
| M2ENTOR Video Series Daniel Cronin Medical School $500.00 |
Physicians are rarely taught how to teach, and unfortunately medical students, residents, and faculty have limited time to learn how to teach. This has downstream consequences in the quality of medical education for students and residents. We aim to create an easy-access, no-barrier, on-demand, concise, high-yield and engaging video series which teaches skills and theory for medical education. It is meant to serve as a repository of teaching best practices in medical education for UME, GME and faculty development. It is broken down into multiple different mini-series, with each mini-series focusing on a core topic in medical education (i.e. effective feedback, chalk talks/teaching scripts, presentation best practices, clinical preceptorship, etc.). It is different than a traditional platform-based MOOC (though we may also house it within Canvas for assessment and tracking purposes) which has barriers in being used as a repository of best practices. Each mini-series is broken down into multiple 2-10 minute videos using technological/film best practices to promote learner engagement and recall. The intended outcome is to provide brief, on-demand knowledge-transfer of best teaching practices to busy clinicians, prior to real-world application. This solves the “limited time” problem for these learners. A portion of this content (Effective Feedback) will be piloted with separate groups of learners: students, residents, and faculty with pre/post self-assessment and focus groups to assess efficacy of the video series. Feedback from this assessment will inform future videos. |
| The Innovative Teaching of Psychology Katie Jodl LSA $500.00 |
Sponsored by the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Society for the Teaching of Psychology (STP), the 26th Annual Teaching Institute is a pre-conference workshop that presents best practices in the teaching of psychology by experts in the field. The APS-STP Teaching Institute begins on Wednesday, May 22 and continues through Thursday, May 23 in Washington, DC. Some topics that will be covered this year include integrating meaningful writing activities; methods for fostering student engagement; use of case studies and pop culture; technology and crowdsourcing; and issues of diversity and social justice in the classroom. My goals for attending the Teaching Institute are three-fold: 1) To learn about the current-state-of-the-art with regard to the teaching and mentoring of psychology; 2) To discover innovative ways of presenting psychology that encourages engagement and active learning; and 3) To engage with other educators about best practices related to equity and inclusive teaching principles. In summary, I believe that attending the APS-STP Teaching Institute would contribute in meaningful ways to my continuing professional development as a Lecturer II in UM’s Department of Psychology. As a teacher of psychology, my philosophy is rather simple—to inspire and to be inspired. By attending this conference, I hope to instill a sense of passion about psychology as a worthy field of inquiry in others. |
| Class Visit Eco/Queer/Feminist Art Practices: Experiential Approaches $427.00 |
Funding for Class Visit of Meghan Moe Beitiks in Eco/Queer/Feminist Art Practices: Experiential Approaches class (Women's Studies 434) |
| The Art of Plant Evolution and Structure: a STEAM approach to teaching plant paleobiology Selena Smith LSA $498.10 |
Observation is a critical skill in natural science, and drawing is a useful way to have students make and record careful observations about a specimen they are looking at. In addition, visually appealing renderings of specimens can play a useful role in communicating about science to others. The proposed project will incorporate drawing and art into Earth 432: Plant Paleobiology as a way to improve students' observational and visual data recording skills. This is an ideal course because the labs are specimen-based, offering a rich variety of materials to be used in weekly drawings. Fossil plants also naturally lend themselves to an outreach-based term project to combine written and visual art representation of scientific knowledge to a non-technical audience. These funds will support acquisition of basic equipment for the students to use in this class, and in future iterations. |
| De-centering the Global Middle Ages $500.00 |
“De-centering the Global Middle Ages” is a two-day interdisciplinary symposium hosted by the Department of History that addresses the growing body of scholarship and educational materials on “the global Middle Ages” and “the global turn.” The outcomes of this symposium are specifically geared toward cultivating new ways for researchers to teach and learn about the medieval past and incorporate these ideas into their undergraduate and graduate coursework. Most academic courses define the European “Age of Exploration” or “Age of Discovery” in the early modern period the advent of a globalized world; the materials produced for this symposium, which will include voices from the Americas, Africa, and Asia, will demonstrate that global perspectives emerged earlier and that Europe was not necessarily “at the center” even then, thus offering new perspectives from other areas of the world that will help to reformulate the coursework and views of educators. Different from most symposia, “De-centering the Global Middle Ages” embraces an innovative format and asks for tangible, public-facing outcomes that include bibliographies and primary sources that can be incorporated into teaching and used in the classroom. We hope thereby to contribute to a more inclusive, truly global view of the premodern world that de-centers European interpretations of the Middle Ages and recognizes the significant mobility and connectivity of this period. |
| What does a conventional dairy farm look like? Margot Finn LSA $214.00 |
Horning Farms near Manchester, MI is a large, conventional dairy farm with nearly 400 cows on 750 acres whose milk is sold under the Kroger brand. The recent MSU grad who has offered to give us a tour is part of the sixth generation in her family to farm the same land, although they’ve also expanded over the years and made significant changes in what they produce and how. We will see how the cows are housed from birth, hear about the rationale for decisions like whether and when to use antibiotics and hormones, get to ask questions about where their feed comes from and how it was produced, see the milking equipment and hear about what kinds of processing the milk undergoes before leaving the farm, and more. My hope is that our visit to Horning Farms will help us assess the claims we’re reading about what would happen if farms had glass walls and everyone could see what goes on there. Would more people stop consuming meat and dairy if they could see how the animals live? Is it worth paying more for organic or free range products? Should our national agricultural policies introduce new restrictions on farming practices to reduce environmental harms and improve animal welfare? What kinds of things can’t be seen (e.g. greenhouse gas emissions, soil health, the effects on consumers’ bodies)? What are the ethics and politics of witness when it comes to animal agriculture? |
| Inside-Out Prison Exchange Program Course: Reading Materials Becca Pickus LSA $479.40 |
The Inside-Out (I-O) Prison Exchange Program brings together equal numbers of "inside" (incarcerated) and "outside" (University-based) students for bi-directional, dialogic learning. In the Winter 2019 semester, I'm teaching an I-O course at Macomb Correctional Facility entitled, "Mass Incarceration and Conscientization: Critical Pedagogy as Resistance." Because inside students’ earn less than $40/month – and because the prison does not allow outside students to bring any materials into the prison for our class sessions – I need to purchase the course texts and have them sent directly to the prison. The books will remain at the prison between semesters and, thus, will support rigorous in-class discussions as well as equitable access to learning for inside and outside students not only during this semester but in future iterations of this course. |
| Facilitating the Publication of a Review Paper written by the MCDB 401 Class $500.00 |
The goal is to publish a review based off the content of a new course I recently developed called MCDB 401 - Building the Synthetic Cell. The journal ChemBioChem has solicited for a Special Issue on Bottom-up Synthetic Biology. The editors agree that their special issue is perfect for a review paper based off this class. The main thrust of the proposed review is to provide an up-to-date report on the most exciting and most recent advances towards the ultimate goal of building a human-made cell. The review will be titled “Building the Synthetic Cell – A Progress Report”. Please find below a an outline of the review. 1. Introduction 2. Genesis - How the first cell was made 3. Confinement - Making the cellular container 4. Division - Splitting the container into two 5. Organization - Partitioning cellular components 6. Central Dogma - Replication, transcription, translation 7. Metabolism - Build, Breakdown, Recycle and Waste disposal 8. Blueprints - Minimal genomes 9. Re-Genesis - How far are we & should we? For the final assignment of MCDB 401, students are responsible for writing one of the sections above. It is very likely that the writing style will vary from section to section. For this reason, I request funds to defray the cost for professional editing services on a near-final draft of the review prior to me submitting it for peer review and hopefully publication. |
| USITT Conference Attendance Nancy Uffner-Elliott Music, Theatre & Dance $500.00 |
The USITT conference is where leadership in educational and professional stage management meets annually to discuss and demonstrate best practices in stage management and the teaching and training of stage management. Though we have a nationally recognized undergraduate stage management program here at UM, which I’ve lead and overseen for 23 years, we have not been involved with the national community. My recent appointment change to full-time clinical faculty will now allow me to fully and physically engage with and learn from the leaders in my field, ultimately becoming one of them. The first step is attending this year’s conference, where I can engage in several continuing education opportunities and meet and engage with the community leaders, members and stakeholders. My goals for attending the conference are to: 1) Increase my understanding of new ideas, technologies, and products in stage management. 2) Brainstorm with other educators about current course content. 3) Brainstorm with other educators about best practices in teaching and mentoring. 4) Attend Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion workshops presented by the education arm of the organization. 5) Network with other professionals and educators to make connections that will benefit current students and alumni seeking summer and post-graduation employment. 6) Create more understanding nationally about our programming at UM. |
| Incorporating Interdisciplinary Perspectives in an Interdisciplinary Graduate Program: Leveraging Expertise in Education and Engineering in the Development of an Engineering Education Graduate Course on Theoretical Frameworks Shanna Daly Engineering Erika Mosyjowski Education $500.00 |
EER 602, Theoretical and Conceptual Frameworks in Engineering Education Research, is a course being developed this year as part of the new Engineering Education graduate program. The course will be taught in a seminar style, with weekly theoretical and empirical readings and a facilitated discussion on those readings each week. This course provides graduate students interested in engineering education with a grounding in the educational frameworks and literature commonly employed in the field, with the ultimate goal of preparing students to be informed consumers and creators of engineering education research. More specifically, we aim for the course to provide students with a foundational understanding of a number of core theories used in the field and the ways they have been and might be applied in the field of engineering education. As engineering education research draws on frameworks from a range of disciplines, including those in social science and education, we aim to incorporate interdisciplinary perspectives into the development of the course. We propose to support the efforts of an advanced doctoral student in higher education to aid with course development, as she has taken extensive coursework in educational theory and is familiar with these theories as applied in the field of engineering education (through her own research and reading that of others). In addition to the contribution of this graduate student’s perspective to the course, the opportunity to work closely with faculty to develop an entirely new course serves as a valuable learning experience and professional development opportunity for her. |
| The Nicaragua Solidarity Caravan: A Roundtable Discussion with Grassroots Activists $500.00 |
Nicaragua is currently facing the worst political crisis it has seen in decades. In April 2018, state repression of citizens protesting social security reforms unleashed a decade of accumulated grievances against the Ortega-Murillo government. Citizens from across all sectors of Nicaraguan society took to the streets to protest state violence and authoritarianism. In response, the state has killed as many as five hundred people. Thousands of citizens have been injured, hundreds have been illegally detained, and tens of thousands have fled the country for Costa Rica or the United States. A new generation of Nicaraguan activists are leading this popular movement for justice. This project includes two class visits (Spanish) at the Residential College and one lunch table visit in which students will be able establish contact and speak with three of these activists on the historical origins of the crisis, movement actors and demands, and the current state of human rights in Nicaragua. Moreover, they will give an on campus public talk addressing these issues in regards to Nicaragua’s current context. |
| Invisible citizens feed the world: Implications of structural inequalities on the livelihood of farmworkers Amber Williams Social Work $400.00 |
Guest speaker Raul Gamez will lead a three-hour interactive workshop titled “Invisible citizens feed the world: Implications of structural inequalities on the livelihood of farmworkers”. The session will explore the invisible conditions endured by undocumented and migrant workers in the agricultural industry and the leading institutional, cultural, and legal forces that shape exploitative labor practices, and broader systemic inequality. As a part of the workshop, the speaker will ship a community empowerment mural project developed youth group in North Carolina. The mural was created by Student Action with Farmworkers’ youth group, Levante Leadership Institute (LLI), in collaboration with the Beehive Collective. The mural will serve as a tool to learn about the history of farmworkers, and to frame and unpack the struggles and structural barriers that farmworkers in the United States have endured in their fight for justice and equity. The interactive discussion and activities that will couple the mural will allow masters of social work students to examine how grassroots organizations engage in change making processes through community centered practice methods. |
| Filming the Future of Detroit: Who Decides the Future of the City? $500.00 |
This workshop is a rare opportunity to learn to use film to engage Detroit and its future from personal, political, social, and historical perspectives. Over one semester, we will simultaneously think, learn, and imagine Detroit through music, dance, anthropology, art, theater, architecture, literature, history, night life, day life, school life, social life, and life after school. We will read, we will write, and we will learn how to make films with the help of an award winning filmmaker from Berlin and an anthropology professor from the University of Michigan. We will also approach Detroit from the perspectives of race, gender, sexuality, wealth, democracy, urban life, suburban life, the automobile industry, job prospects, creative projects, emergency management, and the future. In thinking about the future, we will think about the extent to which Detroit is representative of American futures more broadly, and to what extent it is the exception. We will also examine Detroit’s place in the world. How does it compare to Mumbai in India, Johannesburg in South Africa, and how does it compare to Berlin in Europe? This project is a collaboration between young people from Detroit and students from the University of Michigan. It will end in public screenings in Ann Arbor and Detroit. |
| Visiting Lecturer to Class $375.00 |
The purpose of the project is to enable students not only to learn from a professional in the field about investigating terrorism, but to be able to ask questions of the person directly. This part of the project has a value and an interest for students I rarely see in other classes. The issue of terrorism is contemporary and will be part of the students lives long after they leave the university. I know how much this kind of lecture can have on students because in some instances it has inspired students to look into a career in the FBI. |
| Online lectures on Great Lake Science and Management Karen Alofs Environment and Sustainability (SEAS) $500.00 |
The project centers on the production of a series of online video lectures by experts which will facilitate flipping the Science and Management of the Great Lakes course in the School for Environment and Sustainability. Lectures will be organized around six themes: the Great Lakes Ecosystem, Economy and Society, Water Quantity, Fisheries Management, Water Quality, Coastal Communities, and Envisioning the Future. Funding will be used to hire a student to coordinate with instructors, facilitate filming, editing and posting lectures online. Students will use the video lectures to develop background knowledge to apply during in class case-studies and discussions. Online lectures will also function as a resource for the broader audience of those interested in the sustainable management of the Great Lakes Region. |
| Public Health WORKS: A searchable, web-based collection of documents for teaching, professional development, and student recruitment Ella August Public Health Olivia Anderson Public Health $500.00 |
There is an enormous need to improve writing instruction in public health and UM is no exception. A key principle of developing effective writing assignments is asking students to write in disciplinary rather than more generic formats. Public Health Works will be a searchable, web-based collection of documents from all areas of public health practice that can be used for teaching undergraduate students or graduate students in any department in public health. Instructors can use documents as models for assigning disciplinary writing, and to support informal reflective writing assignments that connect to the activities, roles, values and context of public health. Current public health students will find the information helpful when looking for career options because documents in the collection include background information about the person who created the document, such as their job title (e.g. state epidemiologist), employer (Texas Department of Public Health) and specific activities that led to the creation of the document (e.g., infectious disease surveillance). Prospective students will be able to browse the collection to gain an understanding of what we do in public health. This project builds on a previous grant funded by CRLT which supported development of a collection of workplace writing samples from the public health sub-discipline of epidemiology. The current collection is limited because: (1) the documents are only authored by epidemiologists; (2) the collection is stored on MBox and not easily browsed or searched; (2) the collection has limited representation from minority health professionals. |
