CFDE FIT Grants support innovative teaching
In 2012-13, the CFDE awarded nearly $25,000 in grants to 14 projects by Emory faculty through the Fund for Innovative Teaching, a pool of resources designed to support innovative undergraduate and/or graduate, and postgraduate teaching at Emory.
One FIT grant recipient, Ariela Freedman, associate research professor in the Rollins School of Public Health, received funds to develop a course titled Classroom to Community: Health Education in Action. Her course prepares master of public health students to partner with schools to deliver school-based health education and to serve as a resource for health education and promotion in schools and their surrounding communities. Teach For America (TFA) corps members, identified as excellent teachers through a rigorous selection process, mentor the Rollins students. The TFA teachers will also attend class with Rollins students. In addition to classroom discussions, this mentorship will include Rollins students observing and teaching in TFA classrooms and also receiving feedback from their mentor teachers. MPH students and the TFA corps members pictured above.
Alicia DeNicola, associate professor of anthropology at Oxford College, received a FIT grant to support her course Crossing Borders: International, interdisciplinary innovations in Theory, Practice, Service, Learning (TPSL). A group of DeNicola's students traveled to Costa Rica on an international spring break program to meet their TPSL requirements, working together to share knowledge gained from diverse classroom experiences. The collaborative and interdisciplinary experience combined both service learning and ethnographically engaged research.
A team of faculty from the departments of pediatrics in Emory Medicine and from psychology in Emory College, in addition to staff in the Marcus Autism Center, received a FIT grant to support Psychology 473: Advanced Seminar and Practicum in Autism Spectrum Disorders. This course is one of its kind in the field; an opportunity to provide undergraduate students with advanced teaching about autism spectrum disorders and direct clinical experience with individuals afflicted with the disorder within the nation’s largest center for autism care. Students enrolled in this course were afforded the opportunity to learn from leading experts in the field and had opportunities to interact with individuals with autism spectrum disorders and learn hands-on strategies to help treat them, as opposed to merely learning about them. These experiences can then help shape students’ career interests, goals, and aspirations as they learn about the scientist-practitioner model and the roles of each.
Bumyong Choi, a lecturer in Korean in Emory College, received a FIT grant to develop a hybrid online course that employs Korean television drama series to help students who are trying to elevate their Korean language proficiency by challenging them to understand Korean TV dramas. Through the contextually rich texts of the dramas, and through frequent discussions and feedback sessions, this course also offers an opportunity to increase students’ awareness of Korean culture, a crucial element in advancing their proficiency.
Other FIT grant recipients included
- José Binongo, Associate Research Professor, Rollins School of Public Health: Incorporating Real-Life Research Experiences in BIOS 502: Statistical Methods III
- Hope Victoria Bussenius, Instructor, Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing: The Under-Diagnosis of Pediatric Hypertension
- Elena Conis, Assistant Professor of History, Emory College: Health and the Humanities
- Keith Delman, Associate Professor, School of Medicine, Shishir K. Maithel, MD, & Michael Konomos, Medical Illustrator: Liver Anatomy for the Surgeon and Medical Student with iPad App
- Eleanor Donnelly, Post Doc Fellow, School of Medicine, and Nicholas Boulis MD, Dept of Neurosurgery: Paideia Emory Neuroscience Program (PENS)
- Jeannette Guarner, Professor of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; Charlie Hill, Associate Professor in the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine and Director of the Residency Training Program in Pathology; Donna Martin, webmaster of the Pathology Department webpage and the Microbiology Vignettes webpage: Emory Pathology e-learning Portal (EPEP)
- Hong Li, Senior Lecturer of Russian and East Asian Languages and Culture, Emory College: Fun with Chinese Grammar: 35 Humorous Dialogues and Comics
- Quyen Phan, clinical faculty for the adult medical-surgical undergraduate course instructor, School of Nursing; Caroline Coburn, Instructor, School of Nursing: Innovative Approaches to Clinical Teaching of Undergraduate Nursing Students: The Dedicated Education Unit
- Rachelle Spell, Sr. Lecturer in Biology, Emory College: Increasing and Diversifying Student Engagement: Classroom Response Unites (Clickers)
FIT grants, which are open to all full-time tenured, tenure-track, and non-tenured faculty, range from $500 to $3000. They are available for both individual faculty members and faculty working as teams. Look for the call for proposals for the 2013-14 round of FIT grants early in the fall semester.