Engaging Departments with General Studies: Building Bridges

1. Engaging Departments with General Studies: Building Bridges CLAST Dean: Isaac Agboola EDI Coordinator: Kathleen Wood Physics: Henry Snyder Business: Emilia Chukwuma, Marie Ogork Art: Marguerite Glass, Tracey Salaway Psychology: Deborah McCaw, Deborah Schooler Philosophy: Barbara Stock Mathematics: James Nickerson General Studies: Lindsay Buchko EDI Team Members A Gallaudet University Faculty Learning Community: The Engaging Departments Institute (EDI) EDI Project Background EDI Projects Physics: To analyze the discursive components of the final PHY 152 project and create incremental assignments to guide students to success in all components of that project (CT and LC work). Art: To retool the ART 150 and 160 assessment projects and create the rubrics for those-- so that they provide students with a foundation for the ART core courses and the senior portfolio project. Business: To retool the BUS core course projects to build on and compliment the projects in the GSR and which also lead to mastery of the BUS capstone projects, which should be a synthesis of the skills demonstrated in the core courses.    Philosophy: To develop a GSR 150 course that is intensively and intentionally infused with critical thinking. This will involve providing a clear conceptual framework of kinds of critical thinking skills and using this framework to organize an archive of materials (to be made available to all) that target specific skills. Psychology: To address assessed student weaknesses in existing written and ASL projects in Psy 201, assignments will be retooled in both Psy 201 and Psy 311 to include incremental components designed to build foundational skills in CT and LC necessary for success in upper division major courses. Mathematics: to examine the current MAT pre-requisite and the major sequence and develop assessments and rubrics for ASL presentations and written products. A CLAST faculty team of 6 was selected by the Dean to represent Gallaudet at the Association of American Colleges & Universities Summer 2011 Engaging Departments Institute (http://www.aacu.org). This team proposed a Scholarship of Teaching project which pulled in another 5 faculty members, to forge a stronger bridge between our majors and general studies courses, focusing on language/communication (LC) and critical thinking (CT) Student Learning Outcomes (SLOs). This bridge project from General Studies to the Major Programs is intended to strengthen student competence in LC and CT (English, ASL, and critical thinking skills) to the levels necessary for them to become more competitive in the job market and/or better prepared for graduate studies. EDI Project Objectives