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. |
| the 2019 ACTFL Annual Convention and World Languages Expo $500.00 |
I would like to attend the 2019 ACTFL Annual Convention and World Languages Expo, where language educators from around the world meet to learn about foreign language education. The conference goal is to provide a comprehensive professional development experience that will have an impact on language educators at all levels of teaching and in turn help their students to succeed in their language learning process. By attending the research-oriented paper session on study abroad programs, I will be able to become better at guiding students to social networks and helping them become language learners who can set learning goals and chart their progress towards language and intercultural proficiency while in Japan. The other session I would like to attend is titled “Tips and Tools to Promote Learner Agency in the Japanese Language Classroom.” Student agency refers to learning through activities that are meaningful and relevant to learners, driven by their interests, and often self-initiated with appropriate guidance from teachers. I have been trying hard to obtain such skills to improve my communication with my students as well as my teaching methods, but I am not confident in them yet. Thus, I believe that this presentation will aid me in achieving my goals. Attending this conference will be meaningful for myself, my students, and the Japanese program at the University of Michigan. |
| Communication and Case Studies in Nursing Education Jade Burns Nursing Rushika Patel Nursing Nadia Ali Charania Nursing Patricia Coleman-Burns Nursing Lee Roosevelt Nursing $500.00 |
To better support our faculty members at the School of Nursing to adopt inclusive teaching as a mindset and to and incorporate various materials into their courses and curriculum design, the School of Nursing developed an inclusive teaching checklist modeled after the CRLT checklist and also a teaching Canvas site. These resources guide faculty members to create inclusive syllabi and course materials, set inclusive classroom norms and guidelines, maintain inclusivity over the course, and incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion-related materials related to health into course materials. Currently however, there is a need for more complex case studies specific to different nursing courses that faculty can use to spark student discussions and facilitate their understanding of how various social identities influence nursing and health. Furthermore, there is also a need for communication guidelines on how to listen deeply to give and receive feedback during sensitive moments. Therefore, the CRLT Instructional Development Grant will be used to organize and facilitate a writing retreat for nursing faculty to develop case studies relevant to their individual courses and will be used to develop a brief 3-5 minute video on giving and receiving feedback. |
| Connect and Assess Judith Policicchio Nursing Daicia Price Social Work $500.00 |
An interdisciplinary group including medicine, nursing, and social work was formed for the purpose of providing Michigan graduate and undergraduate students with an interdisciplinary, experiential learning experience in a community setting. The project will use the funding to purchase the Michigan Model of Health. This grade-specific curriculum will be brought into the classrooms of Dixon Educational Learning Academy. At the same time, these health care students will use their assessment skills to identify physical, social, emotional and learning needs. |
| FLOPS: Why and How Films Fail in America Giorgio Bertellini LSA - Film, Television, and Media $500.00 |
Courses on American film history generally focus on film that have achieved critical or commercial success, or are of historical importance. The pedagogical assumption is that “winning titles” reveal insights about popular taste. In a course to be first taught in fall 2020, titled FLOPS: Why and How Films Fail in America, I aim to challenge this prevailing approach by considering Hollywood failures as worthy historiographical resources. By “flops” I do not just refer to works failed at the box office or were critically savaged. Their mark of notoriety stems from the dramatic gap between their anticipated success and their critical and commercial failure. In the course, I seek to show that flops can be significant cultural indicators since they reveal the limits of what constitutes popularity or esteem in a media environment. Since flops have not received extensive critical attention, any course on their significance requires a basic corpus of documents and short essays, each devoted to individual films. I developed this project after two years of UROP-sponsored collaborative research with about a dozen undergraduate students who studied notorious flops and produced short ten-page essays. An IDF grant would enable me to hire a FTVM Ph.D candidate Joshua Shultze as a research assistant. He will assist me in identifying the case studies whereby a flop can be paired with a contemporaneous “hit.” These pairings will enlighten students on the cultural or commercial dynamics that prevented the former from obtaining success. |
| Adding an Experiential Dimension to Introduction to Judaism $400.00 |
When we learn about the religious traditions of our own heritage communities, it is typically a multi-sensory and immersive experience only loosely connected to the official beliefs of a given religious community. When we are taught about the religious traditions of other heritage communities, it is a very different experience. The first real consideration of non-heritage religious traditions frequently happens at the college level through the mediation of secondary sources or even textbook descriptions of a tradition’s official tenets. The contrast is not benign. One tradition is experienced as a living tradition-—alive, multifaceted, complicated, and rich in sensory experience. The other is experienced through a flattened description given at second hand-—devoid of complexity or moving sensory associations. Moreover, since introductory courses often elide this formal difference, students may be tempted to attribute the unflattering contrast to the religious traditions themselves. This project seeks funding to break down this dichotomy by introducing new students of Judaism in "What is Judaism" (Introduction to Judaism) to some of the smells, sounds, tastes, and textures of Judaism as a religious tradition. |
| Impact of traditional versus virtual simulation education for pharmacists on aminoglycoside pharmacokinetic dosing and monitoring Michael Kraft Pharmacy Gregory Eschenauer Pharmacy Rima Mohammad Other $500.00 |
Aminoglycosides have narrow therapeutic window and patient-specific pharmacokinetics are highly variable in hospitalized patients; therefore, necessitating intensive therapeutic drug monitoring to prevent supratherapeutic and subtherapeutic levels that can lead to clinical consequences (i.e. nephrotoxicity). It is crucial to provide effective aminoglycoside education to pharmacists. Unfortunately, there is limited data evaluating traditional compared to innovative educational interventions (i.e. computer-based patient simulation) in teaching aminoglycosides. Computer-based patient simulation technology simulates “real-life” clinical scenarios for learners to utilize their critical-thinking skills. We plan to evaluate learning outcomes (knowledge and application) and pharmacist perception of two educational activities on aminoglycosides (traditional vs computer-based simulation). We propose that implementing a computer-based patient simulation educational intervention compared to traditional education on aminoglycosides in pharmacists will improve knowledge and application scores. This study is a prospective, comparative, pilot study (pre- and post-study) will include pharmacists at Michigan Medicine that provide patient care in the adult inpatient setting. continued in Project Objectives |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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) |
| Learning about museum exhibits and collections from source communities Lisa Young LSA $489.50 |
In the Museum Anthropology course (Anthrarc 497), students investigate the changing role of anthropology museums from colonial collecting institutions to organizations that collaborate with the communities from which their collections originated, commonly called “source communities.” Students learn about these critical changes in museum practice by engaging with museum exhibits and through a course project in which they examine museum collections and then learn about the cultural context of these objects from members of the source community. The course project focuses on a different museum collection whenever it is taught. In the winter 2019 semester, students are examining a collection of ethnographic objects and related plant materials that were collected from Native Anishinabe communities in Michigan and Ontario during a 1933 project that examined traditional basket-making techniques. This collection is curated by the Museum of Anthropological Archaeology (UMMAA). To enhance the engaged learning in this course, funds are requested to take students on a field trip to the Ziibiwing Center of Anishinabe Culture and Lifeways, the Saginaw Chippewa Tribal Museum. The field trip serves a dual purpose. Students will experience differences in representation, voice, and authority through museum exhibits, as well as learning about the cultural context of the objects in the museum collection they are researching for their course project. Funds are also requested for a small honorarium for a member of the source community to meet with the students and discuss the museum collection from their perspective. |
| Beyond the Cities: Experiential Learning about the Sustainable Development Goals in Morocco Susan Waltz Public Policy $500.00 |
During a one-day field trip to villages outside Marrakesh in the foothills of the High Atlas Mountains, public policy graduate students traveling to Morocco as part of an annual policy study tour will have opportunity to interact with local residents and gather impressions of material life circumstances in Moroccan “hinterlands.” All of the other scheduled activities during the weeklong policy study tour will take place in urban settings. This field trip into rural Morocco, in one of the most impoverished provinces, will allow participating students to make their own direct observations and stimulate questions to inform subsequent interactions with Moroccan policy stakeholders. Although poverty and material deprivation are by no means limited to remote rural areas, the reality of distance and limited infrastructure are one of the important challenges that confront Moroccan officials seeking to reduce the incidence of poverty and attendant welfare deprivation in conjunction with the global pursuit of Sustainable Development Goals (including opportunities for health, education, and access to technology). Such issues will be discussed in the 7-week preparatory course (PUBPOL 674), but there is no substitute for direct observation and experience. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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. |
| 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? |
| Mindset Mathematics Elaine Lande LSA $500.00 |
I would like to attend the Mindset Mathematics Workshop at Stanford University to learn ways of integrating the growth mindset into the introductory mathematics class here at U of M, particularly in the CSP sections. This workshop teaches instructors how to teach math with a growth mindset, focusing on exploring content and the pedagogy that promotes a growth mindset. The workshop is offered through the YouCubed program at Stanford, which is the leading national organization promoting growth mindset in mathematics. I would like to attend to learn and bring back ideas and best practices for encouraging growth mindset in mathematics her at U of M. |
