USF Diversity Award

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

KOPOBKA - Kellogg's Krave

Kellogs just came out with a cereal in the U.S. that is very similar to one of Peggy's favorite Russian cereals (which we had called the "cushions"), that she enjoyed in Moldova.

(Pictured here is a photo I posted on this blog back in August 2010 of the cereal, along with other products purchased at the grocery store in Chisinau)

Peggy has enjoyed the new American version of this cereal -- Krave -- every day this week.

It's brought back happy memories of our time in Moldova.

Internationalizarea Curricula Universitare

Dr. Svetlana Suveica published an article about our project (entitled "Internationalaizarea Curricula Universitare") in Moldova's national pedagogical newspaper.

The article describes our project from Fall 2011 semester in which my USF St Petersburg Women and the Law students worked together with her students from Moldova State University American Studies Center in groups conducting research about human trafficking.

European Court of Human Rights, Legal and Constitutional Change in Moldova

Allison Brown, working with me on an Independent Study project this semester, presented our preliminary findings about whether and how decisions of the European Court of Human Rights affect legal change in Moldova.

Florida Political Science Association Annual Meeting
University of Tampa, March 2012

Florida Political Science Association 2012 Annual Meeting: Teaching Roundtable

The Teaching Roundtable at the Florida Political Science Association Annual Meeting (at the University of Tampa, 17 March 2012) provided another opportunity to discuss my collaboration with Dr. Svetlana Suveica and her students at Moldova State University in our "global classroom."

I very much enjoy the exchange of ideas/teaching tips/best practices at the FPSA Teaching Roundtable

APSA Conference on Teaching and Learning, Washington, DC February 2012

Dr. Svetlana Suveica and I presented a paper at the American Political Science Association Annual Meeting in Washington, DC in February:

"Creating a Global Classroom: Providing Collaborative Research Opportunities for U.S. and Moldovan Students"

Dr. Suveica joined our session via skype videoconference, adding a truly international dimension to the conference's Internationalizing the Curriculum Track at the Conference on Teaching and Learning.

We received very positive and encouraging feedback on our paper.

In addition to attending all of the sessions of the Internationalizing the Curriculum Track, I also learned a great deal from the workshops that I attended regarding technology in the classroom. I learned new ways to use facebook as a tool for group work, cell phones as a way to get instant poll results, and twitter and blogs to engage students outside of class.

Global Classroom: Celebration Event, 30 January 2012

We were pleased to get back together with our colleagues from Moldova State one last time.

The purpose of this skype session was to thank our research partners, to reflect on what we learned from the experience, and to unveil the book that we edited that includes the research papers written last semester.

A special thanks to Allison Brown for her work in pulling the book together