On Friday, October 22nd, UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for English Associate Prof. Scott Campbell met with certified English Instructors for their professional development conference. The theme for the conference was "Teaching for Joy and Justice".
UConn English courses offered through ECE.
On Wednesday, October 20th UConn Early College Experience, UConn’s Marine Sciences Department and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Marine Sciences, Claudia Koerting met with certified MARN Instructors for their professional development workshop.
The group had a discussion on syllabi and course comparability in these COVID educational times focusing on assessments and grading. Later they discussed Sea Grant Updates and Dept. of Marine Sciences faculty met with the group to discuss proposals for working with the high schools. To end the day, Instructors shared additional resources, ideas, new instructional formats, and types of demonstrations--especially ones they have had success with these past 18 months.
UConn Marine Sciences courses offered through ECE.
On Friday, October 15th UConn Early College Experience, UConn’s Political Science Department and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator Political Science Dr. Fred Turner met with certified Instructors for their professional development workshop. Jamelle Bouie was the keynote speaker. Mr. Bouie is a columnist for the New York Times and political analyst for CBS News. He covers campaigns, elections, national affairs, and culture. There was also a panel discussion “Teaching Politics in Deeply Divided Times “ hosted by Department Head for Political Science, Prof. David Yalof, and Profs. Shareen Hertel, Jeremy Pressman, Brendan Kane.
L-R: UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Political Science Dr. Fred Turner, ECE instructors Claude Morest, Michelle Pusser, Katie Boland, Keynote Speaker, Jamelle Bouie, and ECE Instructors Christopher Todd and Jonathan McGlynn.
UConn Political Science courses offered through ECE.
On Wednesday, October 13th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for European History (HIST 1400), Prof. Ken Gouwens met with certified Instructors for their professional development workshop. Dr. Gary Kates (H. Russell Smith Foundation Professor of History, Pomona College) shared his talk on “What Book History Teaches US about the 18th Century European Enlightenment”.
Later, Jennifer Dufault (Guilford High School & Dr. Brendan Kane will lead discussion of how to teach an assignment on “Displacement in 1600s Ireland”.
UConn History courses offered through ECE.
On Friday, October 1st UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Philosophy, Prof. Mitch Green met with certified Instructors for their professional development workshop. Michael McKenna (U. of Arizona) gave a philosophical presentation on free will.
The day also included a collective discussion regarding Issues, Problems, and Challenges of the past (2020–21) and new Academic Years, FERPA and Dual Enrollment, and Grading Standardization.
On Tuesday, September 14th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinators for U.S. History, American Studies and Maritime Studies met with certified Instructors for their professional development workshop. The theme of this year’s workshop was “Integrating Asian American Perspectives into the Teaching of History, AMST and MAST: Methods to Lesson Plans to Assessments”.
Dr. Jason Chang gave the keynote presentation: “A Transdisciplinary Voyage into The History of Racial Indenture in the 19th Century Coolie Trade”. After the keynote and a short break, the group reconvened to discuss their favorite assignments and assessments and for discipline specific conversations with the ECE Faculty Coordinator for U.S. History, Dr. Matthew McKenzie and ECE Faculty Coordinator for American Studies and Maritime Studies, Laurie Wolfley.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, all UConn ECE professional development workshops will remain virtual for the Fall 2021 semester. Workshop dates will be posted on the "Dates to Remember" section of the ECE website and as always shared with each discipline specific group via the listserv. We hope to reconvene in-person professional development workshops during the Spring 2022 semester.
On Wednesday, June 2nd UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Human Rights, Dr. Glenn Mitoma met with certified Human Rights Instructors for their professional development workshop.
The theme for the event was: “A year to remember, not to forget – The Three Pandemics: COVID, Racism, and Denial”. The morning began with a discussion about how COVID has impacted their teaching over the last year. After a short break the group reconvened to collaborate in a group discussion with Dr. Mitoma about “Dealing with Denial– Historic and Current trends: Responding to claims of cancel culture, Holocaust Deniers, Armenian Genocide, and other conspiracies in the classroom.
UConn Human Rights courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Tuesday, May 25th UConn Early College Experience and Faculty from UConn's Music Department, Blake Taylor, Dr. Eric Rice and Dr. Daniel Goldberg met with certified Music Instructors for their annual professional development workshop.
The group started the day with a round table discussion about teaching ear training during the pandemic. Topics discussed included how the courses ran at UConn, how the courses ran in the high schools and what new resources were used due to the remote nature of the courses this year. Later in the morning, Prof. Daniel Goldberg, UConn Assistant Professor in Residence shared a presentation and discussed ear training and how to help struggling students in the course move forward.
UConn Music courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Wednesday May 19th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Statistics, Professor Nalini Ravishanker met with certified Statistics Instructors for their professional development workshop.
Kathy Ensor, President-elect of the American Statistical Association gave the keynote presentation. She discussed news from ASA and efforts in support of Houston’s Management of the Pandemic. The group also discussed the 2020 census.
After a short break, there were presentations by UConn ECE Statistics Instructors, Nicole Cowles (Nonnewaug High School), Boyd Johnson (Lyman Hall High School), and Kelsey Kapalczynski(Wethersfield High School) about using Desmos and Pear Deck and an open discussion. Later Prof. Ravishanker shared two interesting data samples before concluding the workshop.
UConn Statistics courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Tuesday, May 5th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Classics, Sara Johnson (Associate Professor, Classics and Ancient Mediterranean Studies) met with certified Classics Instructors for their annual professional development workshop.
Instructors received an electronic copy of "Ethnicity in the Ancient World – Did it matter" by Erich S. Gruen.
The group divided up the text to provide brief summaries of each chapter and share questions and their thoughts. Chapter topics are listed below:
UConn Classics courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Thursday, April 29th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for French, Florence Marsal (Associate Professor in Residence) met with certified French Instructors for their annual professional development workshop. Instructors received a copy of L’art de perdre by Alice Zeniter and participated in a discussion about the novel.
After the book discussion, the group listened to parts of the music album “Pili pili sur un croissant au beurre”, by Gaël Faye. Which reference exile, nostalgia, and dual identity.
Prof, Marsal shared that both the novel and the music album can help us teach history (wars in Algeria and Rwanda, France’s military actions there) with a more personal and human approach, thanks to the young narrators. But these two resources can also start discussions with our students about childhood and youth, about family origins and one’s sense of identity, and about writing one’s own story to make sense of it.
After a short break the group reconvened to hear from Adrienne Eldredge, (French Adjunct Faculty, UConn) about “The Italianization of les passions in 17th-century France.” Adrienne Eldregde’s talk focused on emotions in Italian theater, through the lens of French and Italian philosophy, theater treatises, and plays.
At the end of the meeting UConn’s French 3250 and 3251 were discussed by Elisabeth Buzay, (Visiting Assistant Professor, UConn). Elisabeth Buzay spoke about the two recent culture and conversation courses she taught in a hybrid format: her 3251 syllabus focused on the “10 arts of the 21st century”, and the final project was to create a digital story. In her 3250 course, she implemented a crowd-sourced syllabus, and students created a final project in one of the following formats: a TV newscast, a radio show, or a podcast.
UConn French Courses offered through ECE.
On Wednesday, April 28th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinators for Animal Science, Dr. Jenifer Nadeau and Dr. Amy Safran met with certified Animal Science Instructors for their annual professional development workshop. Drs. Safran and Nadeau went over guidelines for all ECE instructors including sample syllabi with course description and philosophy, required books, and grading policies. The group also discussed and shared helpful resources used in their classrooms. Later, Violet Jiménez Sims, Ed.D., Associate Director of Teacher Education (School-University Partnerships), UConn, met with instructors and spoke about “Including Diversity via Culturally and Linguistically Responsive Teaching”.
UConn ECE Animal Science courses offered through ECE.
On Tuesday, April 27th UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Natural Resources and the Environment, Dr. Morty Ortega met with certified NRE 1000E: Environmental Science Instructors for their annual professional development workshop. The meeting was focused on “Environmental Justice in Your Community” with a special presentation by Parker McMullen Bushman Director of Extension for the City and County of Denver from Colorado State University.
Later in the morning Dr. Ortega spoke with the certified Instructors about COVID -19 and Wildlife and later how the pandemic has affected the class environment.
UConn ECE Environmental Science courses offered through ECE.
On Thursday, April 22nd UConn Early College Experience and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Medieval History, Prof. Sherri Olson met with certified HIST 1300 Instructors for their annual professional development workshop. Instructors were asked to read Carlo Ginzburg's, The Night Battles: Witchcraft & Agrarian Cults in the Sixteenth & Seventeenth Centuries (first published in Italian in 1966, first English translation 1983). The group had an interactive conversation about teaching during COVID-19 and later held a scholarly discussion about the text.
If you’re interested in looking at the text, it is available free of charge at archive.org (direct link: https://archive.org/details/nightbattleswitc00ginz/mode/2up). To read it you can create a free account which allows you to check it out for one hour or for 14 days.
UConn ECE History courses offered through ECE.
On Tuesday, April 20th, UConn Early College Experience and colleagues from UConn’s Babbidge Library met with ECE Library Media Specialists from our partner high schools for their spring professional development training. Topics included Allied Health resources, Citation Management, Primary Resources, and Google Tools.
On Thursday, April 8th, UConn Early College Experience and UConn ECE Faculty Coordinators for English Scott Campbell and Jason Courtmanche met with ECE English Instructors for their spring professional development conference.
UConn English courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Tuesday, April 6th, UConn Early College Experience and UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Biology, Dr. Tom Abbott and colleagues Jean Laughman and Dr. Christopher Malinoski met with ECE Biology Instructors for their annual professional development conference.
The group met to discuss future curriculum directions and pedagogy in our classrooms. Later, Dr. Abbott showed Instructors how to use computational techniques in the 3D Modeling of Proteins, and its use in the addressing of complex health problems and its possible implementation in ECE Biology classrooms.
The figure below and its description were taken from a public protein database and can be visualized and analyzed using a computer-modeling program called PyMol.
“Spike glycoprotein, a class I fusion protein harboring the surface of SARS-CoV-2 (SARS-CoV-2S), plays a seminal role in the viral infection starting from recognition of the host cell surface receptor, attachment to the fusion of the viral envelope with the host cells”
The morning ended with a discussion on the merits of molecular modeling skill development and its implementation in our classrooms. Dr. Abbott and Dr. Malinoski also shared a scientific animation project with the instructors.
UConn Biology courses offered through Early College Experience.
On Tuesday, March 30th, UConn Early College Experience and UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Marine Sciences, Claudia Koerting, met with ECE Marine Sciences Instructors for their annual professional development conference.
The group met to discuss the positives and negatives of teaching during COVID-19 and their shared ideas for projects at home and virtually. Later, the group discussed the book “Soul of an Octopus “, by Sy Montgomery which they received in advance of the workshop day to discuss with UConn Faculty panel:
UConn ECE Marine Science courses offered through ECE.
On Wednesday, March 24th, UConn Early College Experience and UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Italian and Assistant Professor in Residence Tina Chiappetta-Miller met with ECE Italian Instructors for their annual professional development conference.
The group met to discuss teaching during COVID-19 and their best strategies and resources. Later, Assistant Professor Camilla Zamboni from Wesleyan University shared her talk “Teaching Italian through Games: Practical Approaches for a Gameful Pedagogy” with the Instructors.
Each Instructor received a copy of the board game Dixit. The game is based on picture cards that the players use words and expressions in the target language (in this case Italian) to describe in a cooperative and story-building ways. Prof. Zamboni discussed how to adapt games like Dixit to the Italian classroom (as well as provide a few online options) and why games can work as great teaching tools.
UConn ECE Italian courses offered through ECE.
On Wednesday, March 10th, UConn Early College Experience and UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator from Engineering Prof. Ross Bagtzoglou met with ECE Engineering Instructors for their annual professional development conference.
Prof. Bagtzoglou invited Associate Professor in Residence Sarira Motaref to speak about the HuskyCT site and course resources and later Department Head & Professor Civil and Environmental Engineering Prof. Maria Chrysochoou and Research Assistant Connie Syharat shared their research “Neurodiverse Initiative Discussion: "Leveraging Neurodiversty for Engineering Innovation" with the group.
UConn Engineering courses offered through UConn ECE.
On Wednesday, March 10th UConn Early College Experience and UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for American Studies Laurie Wolfley, Faculty Coordinator for Latino and Latin American Studies Anne Gebelein, and Faculty Coordinator for U.S. History Matt McKenzie met with ECE American Studies, Latino and Latin American and U.S. History Instructors for a professional development conference.
Prof. Gebelein spoke about "Mass Deportation" and engaged in a Q&A session with the group afterwards. Later, certified UConn ECE Instructors Veda Harris (Waterbury Schools) offered resources for teachers teaching Latino studies and Kim Childress and Matt Hay (Hartford Schools) shared how they integrate Latino and African-American voices into their 11th grade US History class. After a short break, Instructors broke into groups to encourage listening across disciplines for collaborative potential.
UConn American Studies, U.S. History, Latino and Latin American Studies courses offered through UConn ECE.
