GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Patrick Bibby – Math – Kendall Campus
pbibby@mdc.edu

ABSTRACT:

I will invite all Kendall Campus students registered for pre-calculus or above to join a “problem-of-the-week” contest. I will create an email distribution list of interested students. Every Monday during the Fall and Spring terms, I will propose a problem of the week to the contestants and ask them to submit solutions by the following Sunday. All communications will be done through email. I will award points to students who submit solutions. At the end of the semester, the top-scoring students will be recognized.

The purpose of this project is to promote interest in mathematics in general, problem solving in particular, and to foster a positive attitude toward mathematics. Students will apply a wide variety of mathematical concepts to solve these problems, not just concepts from “today’s lesson.” The project will require contestants to engage in critical thinking by applying problem solving strategies. Learning to solve problems is the underlying reason for studying mathematics. Problem-solving skills are the principal mathematical skills that need to be developed by today’s students. Each “problem of the week” will
• Stimulate students’ interest and enthusiasm for mathematics.
• Broaden students’ mathematical intuition and develop their brainpower.
• Introduce students to interesting and important mathematical ideas.
• Allow students to experience the satisfaction, pleasure, fun, and thrill of discovery associated with creative problem solving.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

click to enlarge

Dr.Michael Lenaghan – Social Science – North Campus
mlenagh@mdc.edu
Myra M. Medina – ESL & Foreign Languages – North Campus
mmedinac@mdc.edu
Ginny Peterson-Tennant – Social Science - North Campus
gpeterso@mdc.edu

This is a multi-disciplinary project to plan, implement, and evaluate a curricular and co-curricular multi-cultural engaged learning community. The purpose of the project is to provide students the opportunity to apply their newly acquired knowledge and insights in service to the community in which the College is located and wherein the students will be productively employed.

International Relations, Psychology, and Spanish language are the core curricula configured, along with service learning and a technology component. Offering these courses in a two semester program will allow for optimal faculty-student interaction. As well, a student-professional interaction will be created and facilitated by the faculty through various venues, including internship options. The project envisions a total of 25 students per semester, enrolled in two courses. The continuously cooperating faculty team and service learning colleagues will contribute to the successful implementation of this program.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Theresa Albury – English/Communication – Wolfson Campus
talbury@mdc.edu
Judith Tarver – English/Communication – Wolfson Campus
jtarver@mdc.edu

ABSTRACT:

In this learning community, students will concurrently enroll in ENC 1102 and SPC 1026 to gain a fuller understanding of the interrelationships of verbal and written communication, including techniques and applications of theory. As a result of successfully completing the learning community experience, the students will be able to think critically, write logically and coherently, speak effectively, and listen attentively.
The retention rate for students in this course will be high because of the collegial interactions which occur within a learning community. Shared learning fosters a strongly supportive environment in which all members of the community can succeed. Students who complete this program will greatly enhance their marketability because prospective employers value effective communicators, and our students will be able to demonstrate knowledge-based talents which they have had ample opportunities to practice and develop, within both the classroom and the community-at-large (through a required service-learning component). Augmented student performance will be attained on the basis of the learning community's combined emphasis on composition and speech.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Arvind Kumbhojkar, Ph.D., P.E. Engineering – North Campus
akumbhoj@mdc.edu

This project will create a multimedia resource library on engineering, including majors, professions, careers, and challenges. A series of PowerPoint modules (integrating text, pictures, videos and sounds) is a key product of this work. The resource library will also include simulation programs and appropriate related engineering documents.

The modules will be used for the “Introduction to Engineering” course. Specific modules for recruiting high school students and attracting MDC students to engineering will also be crafted. The project will involve the Engineering Club student members in creating the resource library. It will be shared with the students at the North, Kendall, and Wolfson campuses.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Ana Ciereszko – Chemistry – Kendall Campus
acieresz@mdc.edu
Judy Lever-Duffy – CIS – Homestead Campus
jlever@mdc.edu

WebCT is a powerful tool for enriching a face-to-face course, but learning to implement WebCT effectively requires training. While abundant technical WebCT training is available, little is available on how to implement it academically. This project will create a program that will train, support, and mentor faculty who want to enhance their course curriculum with WebCT. The project will also create a sharable student handbook and practice course to orient students to using WebCT enhanced courses.

This project helps students gain general computer skills and skills in using WebCT, a common online training format, which improves their employability. Student performance and retention will be positively impacted by the innovative and flexible WebCT enriched courses available to students and by the improved faculty-student interaction and course organization WebCT provides.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

click to enlarge

Maria Mari – Business – Kendall Campus
mmari@mdc.edu
Barbara Rosenthal – Business – Kendall Campus
brosenth@mdc.edu

This project seeks to provide an in-depth exposure to the retail sector through customized units in two existing business classes – Principles of Business (GEB 1011) and Microeconomics (ECO 2023). For purposes of this project, retailing is defined as selling products and services for consumers for personal use. The optimum situation would be to have the same cohort of students enrolled in both classes, although this is not a mandatory element. Each of the two business professors will meet with each other regularly in order to provide special classroom emphasis on retailing as well as to facilitate student interactions with a series of industry experts in the field. This interdisciplinary approach has the potential to provide the students with an enriched understanding, both academic and real world, of this critical industry.

Since retail is the second-largest industry in the United States, it holds plenty of employment opportunities for our students. The incredible demand for jobs in the industry has caught the attention of the Beacon Council. The Council is currently in discussion with MDC’s School of Business to develop a retail industry program. This program is expected to positively impact College enrollment and will provide the seed money to develop programs in response to community needs. In addition, retention should be improved by engaging students with real-world exposure (meetings with industry experts) and by accelerating their learning curves by reinforcing the material in an interdisciplinary setting (Principles of Business and Microeconomics). The intent is that through repeated exposure to the material through alternate learning models (multimedia presentations, team projects, class discussions) and multiple sources (Professors Rosenthal and Mari and three industry experts), their performance in mastering the subject matter, as evidenced through improvement in test scores, will improve.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

David McGuirk – English – Kendall Campus
david.mcguirk@mdc.edu

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Cheryl Clark – English/Communication – Wolfson Campus
cclark1@mdc.edu

This project will explore a new approach to enhancing student writing in introductory composition classes by providing newly formulated activities, featured interactions with guest poets, and creative written assignments that place the language medium itself on center stage. Designed to help students become more expert language users through increased familiarity and awareness of linguistic functions on a more elemental, fundamental level, the course will facilitate not only better writing but more insightful critical reading and thinking as well.

Slated for implementation in ENC 1101, this project will develop and pilot strategies for teaching college-level written communication that can enhance retention and academic success for students in all disciplines when applied college-wide. What better way to sensitize students to language’s power and possibilities than frequent exposure and practice in reading and discussing literary selections in the classroom environment with writers who specialize in the finesse of language praxis.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Irene Lipof – Social Science – Wolfson Campus
ilipof@mdc.edu
Suzanne Pearl – College Prep – Wolfson Campus
spearl@mdc.edu

This interdisciplinary project will help REA 0003 students (College Prep Reading) and SOP 2772 students (Human Sexuality) acquire reading and communication skills. This learning community will foster the development of various life skills as it promotes life-long learning, vocabulary development, and reading and critical thinking skills. These skills include decision making based on informative documentation, distinguishing facts from opinions, and determining and evaluating bias in what they read, especially human sexuality issues. The learning community will enable faculty and students to build “collaborative knowledge” with a set of common tasks (addressing the objectives of both courses) in order to promote a shared understanding within the classroom and the community at large.

Our purpose is to improve retention by allowing students to take a “regular” college credit course while completing their developmental studies. Keeping student interest high is a motivational factor in both retention and student performance. In addition to promoting interpersonal skills, knowledge of human sexuality and community resources will help students solve personal, family, and employment challenges throughout their lives.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

click to enlarge

This project aims to create interactive tutorials about six different health and medicine electronic databases available to students, staff and faculty of Miami Dade College through its libraries. These tutorials will aid students in feeling comfortable with the search interface of the databases as well as teach them search techniques and strategies to readily locate the exact information they are seeking. Internet access to the tutorials will be available through the Library’s webpage.

Student performance will be enhanced by the use of these tutorials, which will teach students the skills necessary to locate high quality, scholarly information on a wide range of health and medical topics. This will expand students’ opportunities to create quality papers, presentations and other projects. Successfully completing these types of projects is motivating to students and encourages retention in their chosen discipline.

next>

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

click to enlarge

Ana Hernandez – English/Communication – Wolfson Campus
ahernand@mdc.edu

This project will create a forum for MDC students and three visiting contemporary published authors representing Latin America, Eastern Europe, and a non-Spanish-speaking Caribbean country to explore contemporary socio-cultural issues through literature. The resulting dialog between students and published writers will provide students with different successful approaches of documenting today’s cultural environment. Exposure to authors’ genuinely innovative works will inspire and prompt an improvement in students’ reading, writing, and communication skills as well as a critical understanding of the writing profession.

Students who are exposed to and interact with writers who are actively chronicling these times, through both fiction and non-fiction literature, will be inspired to think critically as well as develop analytical skills that can be applied to other areas. By seeing, hearing, and identifying with others who share similar backgrounds and who have succeeded, students will be more likely to persevere and continue their college studies. As a result, class attrition will be low and the classroom environment will be stimulating. We have specifically chosen Latin America, Eastern Europe, and the non-Spanish-speaking Caribbean to represent the diversity of the Wolfson Campus and the College as a whole.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

next>>

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

Humberto Lopez – Entertainment & Design Technology – Wolfson Campus
hlopez@mdc.edu

This project addresses one of the biggest problems in the Animation Industry: Animation companies such as Disney, DreamWorks and Pixar are finding that College animation graduates lack the fundamental skills of the creative production process and the ability to work as a team. By collaborating on a group project, I intend to teach my students production skills that include concept drawing, script writing, storyboarding, 3D modeling, texturing, rigging, animating, compositing, special effects and sound mixing.

This project will provide my students with hands-on skills in the creative production process of an animated short film. My students will learn the inner workings of a production team and gain valuable insight as to how the animation industry operates. The final animated short film will serve as a portfolio demo reel and help improve the students’ employability.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

click to enlarge

Throughout its history, American literature has been well represented by “environmental” writers. These writers might in fact be called the fundamental American voices. This environmental strain in our literature is perhaps at its strongest point today. “Reading Earth: Contemporary Environmental Literature” will focus on a close reading of some of the most vital and engaging examples of contemporary American environmental literature from the standpoint of their value as literary texts that extend the range and focus of this essential strain in our literature. In addition, through collaborations with The Florida Center for the Literary Arts and The Earth Ethics Institute, guest lecturers will be presented and at least two field excursions will be taken.

I believe this course will be innovative and valuable for a number of reasons:
--Many students, it seems to me, find the study of literature to be insular in its subjects and focus, ill equipped to help them deal with the “real” world. Such students might be awakened to the value (and excitement) of literary study if they were introduced to work that has both “literary” and “practical” application and that articulates clear issues and arguments through the multi-layered, nuanced sensibility of literature. Even those students who normally shun literary study might be shown the value of the kind of critical thinking we do when we study literature. They would thus be given intellectual tools they might otherwise lack, and would be given room to think for themselves in response to nuanced writing and thinking;
--this course will introduce students to a central strain of American literary, intellectual and cultural history and demonstrate the vitality of this kind of writing in contemporary literature;
--this course will deepen students’ sense of some of the central themes of American literature and thus allow them to more fully understand its sources and meanings—and thus the “soul” of our nation;
--this course will train students to think critically and creatively about literature as well as issues and ideas that are supremely pertinent to their lives;
--this course will allow for serious, non-partisan discussion of issues relating to the “environment” and will respond to a real lack of environmental study in their educations;
--this course will introduce students to some of the complex environmental issues facing our country today; furthermore, through its field trips it will put students face-to-face with some of the local places under threat;
--this course will allow students to meet some environmental writers as well as some botanists and field researchers;
-this course will introduce students to the concept of bioregion and allow them to understand more about our own bioregion; it will also teach them about the interrelated nature of systems within bioregion;
--this course will foster “multi-disciplinary” thinking as it engages with literature and science, allowing students to become more creative in their thinking and better equipped to deal with “real world” issues;
-this course will foster creativity in class assignments and projects;
-this course will (hopefully) give students a sense of “purpose” within the study of literature, thus making literature meaningful to them;
--this course will foster debate and interest about environmental issues and an appreciation for the complex, interrelated nature of the world.

GRANT RECIPIENTS :

This Learning Community Project seeks to lay the groundwork and firmly establish EAP learning community sections at the InterAmerican Campus. EAP reading and writing courses have been successfully paired with General Education courses at Wolfson and North Campuses. This InterAmerican project can benefit from their models and enhance the dynamic with additional research into the specific language demands of psychology classes and the creation of learning resources for students and reference material for faculty.

The Level 6 EAP-PPE Learning Community Project will improve student performance in required General Education courses, enhance student retention in those courses, and motivate other EAP students who can look forward to a new and challenging learning opportunity in level 6 if they demonstrate strong performance in level 5. Former EAP students who have gone on to take content classes after completing level 6 have indicated that one of their greatest hurdles is being able to speak up and participate in their regular classes once they leave the safe environment of ESL. Lack of confidence about language abilities results in attrition for these students. The Learning Community Project will provide College faculty with needed background knowledge about true demands these students face and effective materials and instructional strategies to help students succeed.