CATL announces 2017-18 Diversity Infusion Grant recipients

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning established the Diversity Infusion Project grants in 2011. Consistent with Elon University’s unprecedented commitment to diversity and global engagement, the Diversity Infusion Project’s purpose is to develop and implement strategies to infuse the curriculum and pedagogies of the university with the best practices related to human diversity, broadly defined. This year the name has changed to Diversity and Inclusion Grants (DIG) but the grant purpose remains the same.

The Center awarded Diversity and Inclusion Grants to the following teams to work on projects during the 2017-18 academic year:

Increasing cultural relevance in education courses – From the School of Education, Erin Hone, and Marna Winter, lecturer and department chair, will provide more opportunities for streamlined cultural relevance experiences across all education methods courses, in an effort to help students see diversity work in practice within their consecutive practicum experiences.The project goal is for all teacher candidates to be able to recognize the many assets their students bring into their classroom, including the personal, cultural, and community knowledge of students.

Greater diversity represented in Cinema and TV Arts resources – Douglas Kass, Max Negin, Nicole Triche, Youssef Osman, all assistant professors in the School of Communications, are working on a project to update course materials to reflect the multitude of diverse voices in our contemporary entertainment media environment. The project will include the creation of a master list of films and television programs as well as material for lectures and classroom activities that will allow faculty in Cinema and TV (and other interested faculty) to present, assign, and analyze a more diverse range of films and television to create a more global, and more inclusive classroom environment.

Redesigning a foundational Spanish course – April Post, senior lecturer in Spanish, and Pablo Celis-Castillo, assistant professor of Spanish, plan to develop the learning outcomes and write a new curriculum for a foundational course in the Spanish minor and major, SPN 222: Contemporary Conversations.The grant will allow them to diversify the pedagogical approach and expand its educational core to include linguistics skills such as writing, reading, and listening, and will do so by introducing coming of age narratives from a diverse range of authors in countries that share Spanish as one of their primary languages.

Creating a Calculus I resource for diverse learners – Aaron Trocki, assistant professor, Jan Mays, senior lecturer, Karen Yokley, associate professor, Jim Beuerle, associate professor, all from the Mathematics Department, will be researching evidence-based pedagogies to meet the learning needs of diverse learners in Calculus I courses. Their project will include research on how and which sociomathematical norms to establish in order to structure a supportive environment for a semester-long course with a high expectation for meaningful mathematical discourse. After completing this research, the team will develop and share a teaching and learning resource with the aim of increasing participation of all learners in Calculus I courses.

For more information and to see examples of past Diversity Infusion Projects, visit the CATL website.