During the last third of the Faculty Fellows program, faculty teams work independently on a project of their choosing to improve the teaching of writing within their department. On the final day, each team presents their project to the other teams and invited guests in a showcase celebration. These final projects have ranged from course modifications to creating new courses to beginning the work of redesigning an entire graduate curriculum. Projects have come from over 20 disciplines and every division at Miami. 

The full list of these projects is provided below to give you a sense of what's possible and to highlight the innovation of Miami's Faculty Fellows. 

 

Spring 2017

Anthropology:  James Bielo, Jeb Card, Yang Jiao, Leighton Peterson

• Developed a disciplinary writing guide; modified courses based on concepts learned in Fellows. See disciplinary writing guide.

Economics:  Jacob Brindley, Janice Kinghorn, Ling Shao 

• Developed plans to design an Advanced Writing course; surveyed department to determine where writing was already happening; after Fellows, developed a curricular writing plan for multi-course Advanced Writing requirement; modified courses to align with learning from Fellows. See writing spotlight and writing assignments.

Interdisciplinary & Communication Studies:  Jeff Kuznekoff, Caryn Neumann, Leland Spencer

• Developed a set of videos and guides for their online courses.
  

Summer 2017 

FSB First-Year Integrated Core:  Julie Alexander, Rob Morris, Rebecca Morrison

• Redesigned the curriculum of the integrated core. 

Gerontology:  Kate de Medeiros, Jennifer Kinney, Suzanne Kunkel

• Redesigned graduate curriculum; began developing their "gerontological voice" concept for which they later published an article. See disciplinary writing guide, writing spotlight, and writing assignments.

History:  Wieste de Boer, Erik Jensen, Lindsay Schakenbach Regele, Dan Prior

• Presentation to department about threshold concepts; updated own courses to include more scaffolding, peer review and instructor feedback earlier in process, being more explicit. See disciplinary writing guide, writing spotlight, and writing assignments.

Fall 2017 

Family Science & Social Work:  Karleah Harris, Kate Kuvalanka, Anne Roma, Sherrill Sellers, Carolyn Slotten, Jon Trauth

• Developed an Advanced Writing course. See disciplinary writing guide and writing spotlight.

Political Science:  Erica Edwards, Youn Ki, Michael Marshall, Abby Matthews

• Developed a repository of shared resources for faculty to include syllabi, assignments, etc. See disciplinary writing guide.

Project Dragonfly & Hefner Museum:  Jamie Anzano, Jill Korach, Kevin Matteson, Steve Sullivan (Hefner)

• Developed a set of videos for their asynchronous online graduate program courses. See disciplinary writing guide.

Spring 2018 

ACE and ESL Composition:  Larysa Bobrova, Kyung Min Kim, Nugrahenny Zacharias

• Revised assignment to be more explicit and add scaffolding.

Psychology:  Brooke Spangler Cropenbaker, Yvette Harris, Vrinda Kalia

• Developed set of scaffolded assignments to help 300-level students improve their understanding of psychology journal article conventions, reading comprehension, and psychology disciplinary writing values. See writing spotlight.

Teacher Education:  Jeannie Ducher, Sheri Leafgren, Barbara Rose, Scott Sander, Brian Schultz     

• Addressed changes/integration in various areas to align with the EDT strategic plan (EDT 190 Intro to Education course, TESOL curriculum, and Assessment of Readiness to Teach). See disciplinary writing guide and writing spotlight.

Summer 2018

International Studies:  Dilchoda Berdieva, Carl Dahlman, Naaborle Sackeyfio, Charles Stevens

• Revised advanced writing course: redefined SLOs; added scaffolding to prepare students for the larger assignment; enhanced the persuasive public writing assignment to help students understand the genre.

Philosophy:  Keith Fennen, Elaine Miller, Gaile Pohlhaus

• Developed a detailed "writing in philosophy guide for students" with annotated sample student writing assignments. See disciplinary writing guide and writing spotlight.

Teacher Ed and Educational Psychology: Martha Castaneda, Darrel Davis, Xiang Shen

• Created a Canvas module that situates various courses in the EDP discipline; created a “Writing in EDP” guide; created a semester-long writing experience focused on threshold concepts.

Fall 2018

Biology:  Joyce Fernandes, Kathleen Killian, Haifei Shi, Hank Stevens

• Developed an Advanced Writing proposal for the department that included writing across 4 required courses in the major; inventoried genres, purposes, amount of writing and writing instruction across those courses.

GRAMELAC:  Mila Ganeva, Kazue Harada, Benjamin Sutcliffe      

• Developed an inventory of writing activities and assignments in the department (300-400 level); verified integration of threshold concepts into Student Learning Outcomes.

Project Dragonfly:  Karen Plucinski, Amy Sullivan, Rachel Yoho

• Created videos for their online graduate program courses on topics such as writing about concepts and disciplinary citation practices. See disciplinary writing guide.

Spring 2019

Art History:  Annie Dell'Aria, Jordan Fenton, Pepper Stetler 

• Wrote a disciplinary writing guide with annotated sample assignments for undergraduates. Updated assignments and teaching approaches to include threshold concepts. See disciplinary writing guide and writing spotlight.

Music:  Claire Boge, Elizabeth Hoover, Tammy Kernodle, Brenda Mitchell

• Mapped graduate writing curriculum to standardize guidelines for the graduate research project and develop vision statement for graduate academic curriculum. See writing spotlight.

Fall 2019

Geography:  Bruce D’Arcus, Roxanne Ornelas, David Prytherch, Damon Scott

• Researched and developed plans to begin an eportfolio program for their majors. See disciplinary writing guide.

Latin American Studies:  Jose Amador, Elena Jackson Albarran, Yuridia Ramirez, Juan Carlos Albarran

• Redefined their program goals and values; identified the writing genres taught in courses; produced a student writing guide. See disciplinary writing guide.

Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering:  Mark Sidebottom, Muhammad Jahan

• Surveyed department to see where and  how faculty teach writing across their department; developed a detailed writing guide for engineering graduate students.

Political Science:  Ann Wainscott, Lisa Frazier, Benjamin Bartlett

• Expanded a disciplinary writing guide on writing as a political scientist to be embedded in Canvas. See disciplinary writing guide.

Psychology:  Jay Smart, Jennifer Quinn, Carrie Hall

• Developed new assessment and rubric for teaching team writing in a psychology research methods course. Piloted the course after Fellows. See disciplinary writing guide.

Spring 2020

Special seminar for graduate students who individually developed scaffolded assignments for a course based on learning theory and threshold concepts of their field.

Fall 2020

Havighurst Center:  Hannah Chapman, Scott Kenworthy, Neringa Klumbyte, Steve Norris, Zara Torlone

• Began a Faculty Teaching Guide for their cross-listed 254 course that explains their threshold concept of “Interdisciplinarity” that provides resources for non-disciplinary faculty to teach the course, including explanations of disciplinary approaches to the material and suggested readings and assignments from their respective fields.

Justice & Criminal Studies:  Theresa Conover, John Forren, Jessica Warner

• Surveyed writing assigned and taught throughout their curriculum (in collaboration with department colleagues); plan to continue post-Fellows with student round tables and writing awards.

Spring 2021

Architecture and Interior Design: Mary Rogero (Chair), Mary Ben Bonham, Gulen Cevik, Diane Fellows, Elizabeth Keslacy, Jeffrey Kruth

• Surveyed department faculty to create a curriculum grid of writing genres taught in every course (from 100 level through graduate), along with other criteria such as feedback and revision. Plan to engage entire department and evaluate the effectiveness of writing in their curriculum.

Commerce: Mary Kovach, Patrick Lindsay, Tom Mays

• Created an introductory module for specific Commerce courses to help students learn core disciplinary skills (define situation, summarize, analyze, recommend).

Music: Thomas Garcia, Wallis Vore, and Aaron Pergram

• Identified two cultural music threshold concepts (cultural awareness/competency/sensitivity and affective experience) and began redesign of three large GMP courses in order to teach those threshold concepts more effectively.

Teacher Education (Adolescent Young Adult (AYA) Program): Kathy Batchelor, Nathaniel Bryan, Jeannie Ducher, Todd Edwards, Eva Howard, Ann Mackenzie, Tom Misco, Molly Sawyer, Robin Schell

• Developed a set of threshold concepts for their faculty to move them forward toward realizing their department’s social justice mission statement; drafted a pilot plan to pair up AYA faculty as critical partners who will work together over the fall semester to set goals, engage throughout the semester, and reflect on their progress; plan to extend to the whole program.

Summer 2021

History: Kimberly Hamlin, Andrew Offenburger

• Developed new scaffolded assignments to help Honors, BA/MA, and MA students learn to synthesize primary sources; began a list of primary source repositories for assignments; will present to department in Fall semester to begin discussion of ways to add this learning into the curriculum.

Spanish: Tamise Ironstrack, Julie Szucs, Katie Fowler-Córdova, Tiffany Belka

• Building on their SPN 101-102 pilot curriculum, the team developed a curriculum map of linguistic functions  and goals at each level; plan to realign prompts and rubrics for the new model.