Funded Projects
| Project Title | Overview of the Project |
|---|---|
| Ford School IEDP 2016, Cuba Susan Waltz Public Policy Shobita Parthasarathy Public Policy $500.00 |
Funds are requested to support a one-day field trip to visit sustainable agricultural production and explore rural energy installations during this year's International Economic Development Program (IEDP), a study tour that will take place in Cuba over spring break. The Ford School's IEDP is an experiential learning program, now in its 17th year. The field trip will entail transporting 20 students and 2 professors to designated sites, with visits and host interactions arranged by CIEE, the licensed ground-travel provider with whom we are working. |
| Visit of Alessia Blad to Italian program $500.00 |
Invitation of Prof. Alessia Blad to campus in February 2015. Prof. Alessia Blad leads the prodigiously successful Italian language program at the University of Notre Dame. She also teaches the Methodology course for the Department of Romance Languages and Literatures there. Among the innovations in which she has had a leadership role is the multi-university Consortium on Useful Assessment in Language and Humanities Education, of which Notre Dame is a founding member. This collaboration has produced a consistent set of tools for setting standards and assessing outcomes and that go from the lowest level of language to every level of literature and culture. She has been very active in curricular and extra-curricular initiatives, making the Italian language program the leading innovator in many advances later adopted by other programs (such as assessment, methods of teacher training, and most recently, computer enhanced language instruction, especially hybrid courses. She was invited by UC Berkeley recently for a similar presentation. She would spend one night in Ann Arbor in February, meeting with small groups of faculty and presenting to the entire Italian teaching staff, GSIs, Lecturers and Professors, on a Wednesday when elementary language classes are not held. She would consult and present on assessment strategies to connect lower and upper level courses, computer enhanced courses, and principles and practices of language pedagogy. |
| Creating a digital resource for critical thinking in Molecular Biology $500.00 |
MCDB 427 is an upper level required course for the Cell and Molecular Biology (CMB) major. This course relies on a textbook that emphasizes critical analysis of experimental data and poses a challenge for many of our students. In the past few years several new resources and different pedagogical approaches have been implemented but there remains a few students that have difficulty accessing the material. The focus of this proposal is to generate a new digital resource. Specifically, we will generate video recordings (~12) describing key experiments that students struggle with. These recordings will be made available on YouTube and on Canvas. All of the funds will be used for the salary of one undergraduate who has (1) taken the course and (2) has extensive experience generating digital media for science problems. This student will work closely with the PI over the holiday so that the videos will be available for the winter term. |
| Hands-on experience in computational genomics Jeffrey Kidd Medical School Jacob Kitzman Medical School $500.00 |
Advances in data generation have revolutionized all aspects of biology. In particular, the advent of affordable high-throughput sequencing has transformed biological research into a data-intensive, quantitative field. There is a large and growing need to train researchers and other professionals in the basic, practical skills necessary to meet this challenge. Toward these ends, we have developed a new course, Human Genetics 551: Computational Genomics, targeted towards graduate (masters and Ph.D level) students without an existing background in computer programming or statistics. This is a population of students that is not well served by existing classes. This audience will benefit immensely from practical, hands-on experience analyzing real-world genomic data sets. We are requesting $500 to facilitate usage of the FLUX computer cluster for course projects focused on analysis of real data. The FLUX system is a campus-wide computing resource and features a pay-as-you-go usage model. We anticipate that most students will utilize FLUX in their own future research endeavors, thus necessitating the incorporation of FLUX into our course design. If awarded, the $500 grant will be used to purchase ‘on-demand’ computing resources for student use during the semester. Please see http://arc-ts.umich.edu/resources/compute-resources/ for more information on the FLUX environment. |
| Digitizing media-rich presentations for Spanish 232 Andrew Noverr LSA - Romance Languages and Literatures $475.00 |
This proposal would allow us to digitize our interactive cultural presentations and make them available in the Canvas site for students who miss class or who simply would like to review the material at their own pace. Furthermore, we hope to have speakers of different regions of the Spanish-speaking world record them so as to allow students the opportunity to hear different accents. |
| Field Trip to New York City Anne Berg LSA $500.00 |
For Hist 497: Wastes of War: A Century of Destruction, I seek to take my 10 students to New York City during the week we discuss the War on Terror with the goal to visit the Museum at Ground Zero, Freshkills Landfill from which many of the artifacts displayed have been retrieved, and environmental consultants and representatives from the city government and the United Nations to discuss disaster prevention and clean-up both. We would document and share our experiences through a course blog, tweets, photos, videos and the like and potentially produce a collaborative essay report. I would like to get it published in either the Chronicle of Higher Education, History Teacher, History Today, the Michigan Daily or in any event in an internal publications like the history department's newsletter or college or university equivalent. This might be great publicity not just for history but for our institution in general. Most importantly, this active learning initiative connects pertinently with the University's focus on sustainability and shows that questions of sustainability have deep and complicated histories that are not always visible. Moreover, I think, such undertakings take seriously our institution's emphasis on innovative, experience-based, active learning. Lastly, it also shows that history is of public, contemporary relevance. It would take students out of the classroom but deeper into the issues we study. |
| Linking classroom to the Comerica Park Dae Hee Kwak Kinesiology $500.00 |
N/A |
| Author visit to Science Fiction and Philosophy course David Baker LSA $500.00 |
I propose to bring award-winning science fiction author Ted Chiang to Michigan, to discuss his story "Liking What You See: A Documentary" with my students in PHIL 154: Science Fiction and Philosophy. The story examines ethical issues surrounding discrimination on the basis of appearance, or "lookism," by imagining a future in which people can be treated to become blind to the traits we commonly perceive as attractive. A college campus is shaken by debates over whether to make this treatment mandatory for students. Chiang and I plan to lead a Q&A session in which students will examine and criticize his thoughts about lookism, its parallels with other forms of discrimination such as racism and sexism, and also the role of philosophy in his creative process while writing the story. |
| Using the Coach's Eye + Teams application as a tool to provide enhanced conducting video analysis in CONDUCT 315/316 courses. Courtney Snyder Music, Theatre & Dance $500.00 |
Video analysis is crucial to sound conducting pedagogy. Traditional methods of video analysis have been to meet with each student in a class individually, often outside of class time, and watch the video collectively. The primary takeaway is what the student remembers or has written down. With the Coach's Eye application, video analysis has been taken to a whole new level. This application allows me to capture high frame rate HD video recording, provide precise video review with slow motion playback, side-by-side comparison, audio voice over, video telestration tools, and send students video, allowing them to watch the streamed, analyzed video on their own time as often as they like. Coach's Eye has created a new form of the application called "Coach's Eye + Teams." The use of this application in a formal academic setting will be the first of it's kind. This new application allows the same video analysis and dissemination as before, but it is much less time consuming to upload video, contains more storage, and even better, students can now take their own videos and send them to me outside of class time. Instead of taking class time to take a recorded exercise test, they can record the exercise on their own and send it to me. This allows for more instruction time. The flexibility afforded by this video analysis tool will greatly enhance instruction and learning. This grant will allow each student to use the application for one full year. |
| Inclusive and Policy-Relevant Statistical Methods Catherine Hausman Public Policy $500.00 |
With this project, we aim to make a core required Statistics course more responsive to concerns about diversity and inclusion. Given the challenges associated with addressing these issues in a quantitative course, a thoughtful and intentional process is needed. I propose to hire two to three students over the summer to work with me to brainstorm concrete ways to improve the course's approach to diversity and inclusion. |
| Establishing Berlin, Germany, base for MFA Dancers Clare Croft Music, Theatre & Dance $500.00 |
This proposal requests $500 toward the costs of one week in Berlin to begin establishing a base at internationally recognized performance and residency center Dock 11 that would be ideal for U-M MFA graduate dance students conducting their summer thesis research. |
| Hypertext as a Pedagogical Tool in the Teaching of Midrash (and Other Premodern Texts) $500.00 |
One of the most challenging aspects of teaching midrash (early Jewish biblical interpretation) in a university setting is how to make available to students the plethora of intertextual allusions and cultural references necessary to interpret midrash. Most student do not have access to the cultural repertoire necessary to interpret midrashic materials in a historically-situated way. Nor do most undergraduate students possess the technical skills they would need to track down these allusions for themselves. And yet, if an instructor simply presents students with the ‘correct’ references to decode a midrashic text, these students cannot develop a sense for how this ancient genre works because (a) they are thereby denied the experience of struggling to decipher a cryptic midrash for themselves and (b) they are never exposed to the fact that a single midrashic passage can plausibly be interpreted in several competing ways. I proposes that internet hypertext can provide a solution to this pedagogical problem. Specifically, this project will explore the possibility that an instructor can use the basic web capabilities provided by the university’s commercial web hosting partners to create online translations of midrash in which each word in the translation is a hypertext link. Each of these hypertext links, in turn, could be clicked to bring the reader to a page devoted to (a) the diverse possible meanings of the word in the ancient context and (b) a selection of other ancient texts that use the phrase or concept in question. By means of this multi-layered digital texts, students would be given the opportunity to explore midrashic passages for themselves under circumstances that recreate, in a very general way, the cultural and linguistic repertoire that the instructor brings to her own study of midrash. |
| Field trips for Hist/Environ 223: Trashed! A History of Garbage in the Modern World Anne Berg LSA $456.00 |
Trashed! explores the history of waste since the 19th century. We will trace how garbage – the actual stuff that humans discard – has changed along with methods of production, distribution and consumption. We will think about waste politics and garbage culture. We will examine how waste shapes societies, how it is managed, what roles it plays in different economies, how it integrates into people's everyday lives, and how it fits into their value systems. Most importantly, we explore how trash connects and divides people in different parts of an expanding and constricting world. In order to make these connections tangible, this course includes active explorative learning in particular two field trips to a waste processing facility and a materials recovery facility. It is in support of these field trips that we apply for funding. |
| The Angoulême Festival - analysis of the collection for the competition to better understand French Comics $500.00 |
30 to 35 comic books, all in French, are in competition each year for the coveted Fauve d'Or award at the Angoulême Festival, in France, at the end of January. Having access to this collection will be very meaningful to students and engage them individually for a better understanding of the content of the course. It will provide them with a variety of genres and styles to study and analyze, it will trigger unique, personal and empowering conversations, engage students in the competition process and motivate them to express their opinion in the target language so as to convince other students of their choice of preference. The class will of course follow the competition on-line and react to the results of the award-winning comics. Students will be able to relate their French course at the University of Michigan, in the United-States, to an international cultural event happening in France, all in real time. |
| Healthcare quality poster session Andrew Ryan Public Health $500.00 |
In HMP 601 – a required master's level course –students explore the definition and measurement of quality medical care. Students gain an understanding of private organization approaches as well as policy efforts to measure and improve quality. As a culminating experience of the course, students will analyze quality measurement and improvement efforts in a specific healthcare sector (i.e. surgical care, nursing homes, behavioral health services). Students will display their analyses as a presentation and a poster. The goal of this final project is not only to apply knowledge about quality measurement and improvement to a real-world healthcare context, but to improve presentation skills (both verbal and visual). |
| Audience Work in Technical Communication Sarah Burcon Engineering $500.00 |
This project involves pedagogy in technical communication. Along with 3 other technical communication instructors, I am presenting pedagogical and research findings at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (4Cs) in March in Tampa, Florida. At this conference, we will discuss and share insights into a particular subject in Technical Communication (TC): audience. "Audience" is a crucial constituent in the field of technical communication, and it is important for TC instructors to convey to their students the significance of this concept so that students are equipped to write effective technical documents, both at the university level and in their future careers. Therefore, it is important for TC instructors to think about how they will teach this term. The conference panel at the 4Cs conference is based on some colleagues' research on audience. This research shows that we must think in terms of "audience work" vs. "writing for an audience," and further demonstrates that this approach allows for the complexity of relationships and the collaborative nature of audience work. Last semester (Fall 2014) I used this approach as a foundation in my classroom to create a more student-centered experience. I greatly modified my existing curriculum, giving students an assignment in which they worked with an actual stakeholder, the Canton Public Library (CPL). I will share my findings from last semester at this conference in order to add to the existing conversation on audience in technical communication. |
| Innovative Teaching Curriculum in the Cardiac Intensive Care Unit using Mobile Apps Peter Hagan Medical School $500.00 |
Our project involves the creation of a novel interactive mobile application to implement a newly formed curriculum aimed at educating training physicians practicing in a Cardiac Intensive Care Unit (CICU). To our knowledge a mobile application would be a new approach to education in this setting. The CICU is a challenging learning environment due to the high demands and unpredictable nature of critically ill patients with severe cardiovascular dysfunction; obtaining protected time for on-the-job education is difficult and traditional teaching models have failed. By combining a new curriculum with the mobility, accessibility, and efficiency of mobile application we hope to demonstrate improvement in trainee knowledge as well as increased satisfaction with their educational experience. The project will benefit medical students as well as house officers at various levels of training. The results of this project may be applicable to post-graduate medical education at large. We will study the effect of this educational initiative through the use of pre- and post-implementation surveys and formal testing to assess house officer knowledge and satisfaction. Resources from the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching will be vital to the success of this project as we hope to refine our methods of curriculum design, curriculum implementation, and data analysis. |
| Expanding Student Learning Opportunities in Calculus by Teaching GSIs a Culturally Responsive Feedback Strategy $500.00 |
We will be experimenting with the design of the GSI training in the service of improving the instruction in the undergraduate calculus sequence. One central assumption of this project is that access to and equity in postsecondary learning opportunities is determined in part by collegiate teaching. In other words, the very teaching practices enacted by instructors in their courses actually serve to open or erect barriers to learning for particular groups of students, depending on the academic domain. For instance, giving students praise as a form of feedback actually serve to depress academic achievement amongst many women and African American students in mathematics courses (Lepper, Woolverton, Mumme, & Gurtner, 1993). An instructor offering praise equally to all his/her students in a calculus course would be creating inequitable learning opportunities for the women and men as well as white and students of color in the classroom (Yeager et al., 2013). This does not mean that there is malicious intent involved, yet ignoring the empirical research on effective, culturally responsive teaching practice, like the feedback strategy in this project, causes a great deal of harm to already marginalized student populations. We argue that it is especially important to create more equitable opportunities for undergraduate student learning in gateway courses, like pre-calculus (MATH 105), calculus one (MATH 115), and calculus two (MATH 116). We propose to do this by teaching Graduate Student Instructors (GSIs) to employ a culturally responsive practice for giving student feedback. |
| Cinematography workshop $500.00 |
I am continuing development of a new course on cinematography for the Department of Screen Arts and Cultures. I am requesting $500 for the purchase of film stock and processing for students' use during three in-class workshops. The class is a hands-on exploration of the practice of 16mm motion picture photography where students will learn the technical and aesthetic demands of the craft. The use of analog film will encourage students to practice careful planning, gain intellectual and technical understanding of the medium, as well as strengthening their aesthetic instincts about the process of creating moving images. Students will also learn about of the evolution of motion picture technology as well as its relevance in the age of advancing digital technology. |
| Enhancing Application of Health Behavior Change throughout the Dental Hygiene Curriculum Anne Gwozdek Dentistry Janet Kinney Dentistry Dina Korte Dentistry $500.00 |
The goal of this project is to enhance integration of Motivational Interviewing (MI) within the Dental Hygiene Program's curriculum through student application during patient care. Attainment of this goal will continue to facilitate students' abilities to translate MI content learned in the classroom to clinical applications. The use of digital audio recorders will allow students to record their patient interactions, providing a means for self-assessment and faculty evaluation/feedback. |
