This year I was selected as a USF Diversity Honor Award recipient. The recipients were recognized at the 9th Annual Diversity Summit at USF Tampa.
I was recognized for my work "internationalizing" my courses in American politics.
As those of you who follow this blog know, I collaborated with Dr. Svetlana Suveica to develop a project for my Women and the Law class in which we partnered with her class at Moldova State University. Our students worked together in groups on research papers about human trafficking. Students had the opportunity to work with students from another culture -- expanding knowledge and fostering mutual understanding and cooperation. A truly multicultural experience!
Due to my class schedule, I was not able to get over to Tampa for the Summit.
Not only would it have been nice to receive this honor in person, but also, and more importantly, there was programming all day as a part of the Summit that I would have very much enjoyed.
For example, there was a session entitled
Experiential Learning: “Learning is Experience. Everything Else is Just Information.”— Albert Einstein
"Discuss the importance of integrating academic with learning experiences outside of the classroom. From mentoring experiences to community service to exposure to the global society. Explore the connections between student engagement, civic responsibility, retention and student success."
I would have loved to have the opportunity to talk to colleagues at USF Tampa who are as passionate as I am about incorporating civic engagement across the curriculum.
As the Founding Director of USF St. Petersburg's Center for Civic Engagement, I have been working for the last 6 years to expand our Citizen Scholar program -- courses that include a civic engagement component, getting students out of the classroom and in to the community, working with community partners on projects that are tied to the student learning outcomes in the course. Typically, USF St Pete offers about 100 different citizen scholar courses per academic year. We need to create our new website (we have since merged with the Bishop Center to become the Bishop Center for Ethical Leadership and Civic Engagement), but you can learn more about our past programming here
www.stpt.usf.edu/community
We missed you at the summit! I was there with two department colleagues helping receive an organizational award, and it was wonderful to realize how many of the recipients I knew.
ReplyDeleteKeep up the great work!
I was so sad I could not get to the Summit! There were several sessions I would have attended -- and I was interested to learn about the work of the other recipients.
ReplyDeleteMy Tues/Thurs class schedule has me busy with classes from 10 to 4, with classes in the morning and the afternoon. With the drive time, there was simply no way to get to any of the sessions or the reception.
What was your organizational award? Congrats!