Spring Professional Activities Workshop (SPAW)
Contact
Jan Serie Center for Scholarship and TeachingDewitt Wallace Library, Suite 338 651-696-6605
Spring Professional Activities Workshop (SPAW)
May 14-16, 2024
The Serie Center is pleased to be hosting our Spring Professional Activities Workshop (SPAW)
As we anticipate the end of another complicated and intense academic year, we hope you’ll join us for a chance to reflect, renew, and reimagine with colleagues. The current schedule is below. All sessions (except the one virtual workshop) will be held in Theater classrooms, and lunch will be served each day.
All Macalester faculty and staff are invited to participate in the SPAW. You are free to attend as many or as few of the sessions as your interests and time allow.
Click on the link to register for the workshops: Spring Professional Activities Workshop.
| Tuesday, May 14, 2024 |
| 9:00 – 11:30 AM Theater Building Improving our practice in U.S. Identities and Differences (USID) courses Facilitated by Cari Gillen-O’Neel (Psychology; Chair of General Education Requirements Committee [GERC]), Cynthia Kauffeld (Spanish & Portuguese; GERC member), Nancy Bostrom (Institutional Research & Assessment; GERC member), Cait Bergeon (Community Engagement Center) In an increasingly interconnected world, students need to be aware of the complexities of identities and differences, not only within the United States but also globally. Macalester students must take “…at least one course devoted to the study of forms or forces that create, reflect, maintain, or contest identities of, and differences amongst, U.S. social groups.” While this U.S. Identities and Differences general education requirement (USID) focuses on the U.S. as an exemplar, it is hoped that the knowledge and skills that it fosters will be transferable to other national and international contexts. If you teach a USID course, teach related content, or would like to do so, this session is for you! We’ll start by sharing a few results from a recent faculty survey on the USID requirement. Then, the majority of our time will be devoted to conversations focused on areas of faculty interest that were reported in the survey—the joys and challenges of teaching about identities and differences (including how instructor positionality can complicate that goal); strategies to help students apply their knowledge, skills and perspectives beyond the classroom; and how to effectively integrate community engagement in courses. We will feature a panel of faculty (Myrl Beam, Julia Chadaga, Christina Hughes, and Christie Manning) who incorporate community engagement into their USID classes in various ways, and there will also be time for all participants to brainstorm and share resources. |
| 12:00-1:00 PM Lunch |
| 1:00 – 3:30 PM Theater Building Community-Engaged Scholarship Facilitated by Roopali Phadke (Environmental Studies; Serie Center for Scholarship & Teaching) Join faculty who served on the Community Engaged Scholarship committee and those who have experience conducting such research. We will hear about what the new Faculty Handbook changes mean for tenure, the connections between teaching and scholarship, and how to launch community collaborations. |
| Wednesday, May 15, 2024 |
| 9:00 – 11:30 AM Theater Building Is “Wellness in Academia” an Oxymoron? Shaping a Rested Life in the Midst of All Else Facilitated by Benita Jackson, Professor of Psychology and Faculty Wellness Fellow (Smith College) and Founder of Resting to Rise Just as you might create a strategic plan for your scholarly or writing life, it’s worth considering a strategic plan for well-being in other life domains. Central to that is a plan for rest, a plan that anticipates that life will bring plot twists, even if we can’t always know what they entail. In this hands-on workshop, participants will be invited to consider three domains of rest – rested body, rested voice, and rested action — and guided to consciously weave rest into semester planning. Bring paper and pen (extras will be provided if needed). |
| 12:00-1:00 PM Lunch |
| 1:00-3:45 PM Theater Building Embodied practices 1-2:15 PM – Hatha yoga and meditation with Wynn Fricke (Theater & Dance) 2:30-3:45 PM – Introduction to Capoeira: A music and movement class led by Guerreiro from Capoeira Minnesota Join us for either or both of these opportunities to use your whole body as we engage practices that will allow us to notice, move, meditate, sing, drum, and dance together. Wear comfortable clothes! |
| Thursday, May 16, 2024 |
| 9:00 -11:30 AM Theater Building Writing reflection: (Re)membering grief and joy Facilitated by Ebony Aya (Serie Center for Scholarship and Teaching) “What if joy is not only entangled with pain or suffering or sorrow but is also what emerges from how we care for each other through those things” (Gay [2022], Inciting Joy, p. 4). So often in life we are encouraged to pursue joy and happiness above all else. Seldom are we taught the extent to which grief and sorrow deepens our appreciation and understanding of joy. In this writing and reflection session, participants will have the opportunity to reflect on the situations that have brought them grief over the course of the academic year, and how they have cultivated joy in the midst of it. |
| 12:00-1:00 PM Lunch |
| 1:00-3:30 PM Theater Building Adventures in Alternative Grading Facilitated by Leslie Myint (Mathematics, Statistics, and Computer Science) and Mario Solis-Garcia (Economics) Alternative grading refers to practices that change the way that we incentivize deep learning through our course structures. We will discuss lessons learned from our own alternative grading experiments and provide ample opportunity for you to reflect on your own goals in community with others. |