LA$ Grant-Getter$
The Columbia College Chicago Harris Center for Early Childhood Education (ECE), in collaboration with the Chicago Department of Children and Youth Services (CYS), has been awarded a $600,000 grant from the McCormick Foundation to advance program quality in ten community-based Head Start programs.
The 18-month “Relay” project, which was designed and will be managed by Columbia ECE faculty member Karen Haigh, will engage education coordinators and site coordinators from participating Head Start agencies in an active and innovative program that will build skills necessary to more effectively manage staff, design curriculum, and ultimately provide a better learning environment for both children and teachers.
The Relay (or “Reflective Learning in Action”) initiative uses the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood education, which draws on a long history of learning theory and practice led by its founder, Loris Malaguzzi. The project focuses on dialogue, reflection, collaboration, and multiple perspectives. The engaged participation of both “teacher” and “learner” are key to the “reflective practice model” of the Reggio approach.
The Relay project begins this month and comprises six key components: organizational review; professional development retreats; professional development projects; monthly cohort meetings; individual mentoring; and progress update meetings. Participating Head Start agency managers will also engage in learning tours, curriculum planning, documentation, and lectures.
Project Manager Haigh has more than 30 years of experience in early childhood education, including 15 years as director of child development for Chicago Commons.
“I commend professor Haigh and Dr. Carol Ann Stowe, director of our Early Childhood program, as well as their excellent, committed colleagues in ECE for developing and sustaining an outstanding, student-centered program with dedicated graduates—all individuals who have contributed to our success in receiving this important award,” said Dr. Deborah Holdstein, Dean of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences. “The importance of the educational foundations built during a child’s early years cannot be overstated.”
Wins Mini-Grant
The ASL-English Interpretation Department has been awarded a $1,000 internal mini-grant from the Student Orientation Office. The grant, which is awarded for programs that aid in student retention, will be used to fund the an ASL-English Interpretation Open House and a Dave and Buster's Night Out for the departments' students. Congratulations!
The grant will allow the Education Department to continue providing professional development for elementary school teachers to enhance their ability to teach math more effectively to English language learners (ELL). The project activities will provide professional development for a cohort of at least 30 teachers, giving them tools and strategies to adapt standards-based mathematics instruction to match the linguistic needs of students enrolled in bilingual or English-as-a-new language (ENL) programs. To that end, the project is designed to integrate mathematics with the study of language and with the arts to increase the probability for academic success.
Members of the Education Department will work in partnership with the Chicago Public School District #299 and Summit School District #104 to provide teachers with information, plans, opportunities and tools to ensure successful learning among language minority students. These activities will improve teacher practice by addressing mathematical content knowledge, prepare a cohort of teacher leaders, introduce pedagogies for using art projects to teach ENL students, and develop an integrated math, ENL and arts curriculum.
According to Dr. Ava Belisle-Chatterjee, Chair of the Education Department, “We have found that the same rich contexts and strategies that are used to develop mathematical concepts in a standards-based curriculum are also useful for developing second language proficiency. And the interactional nature of the arts, where learning emerges from doing or making the art form, dovetails with both research-based approaches used for second language learning and with those approaches recommended in standards-based mathematics curricula, which demand that students do mathematics.”
This phase of the grant will focus on program sustainability by providing professional development for teachers to assume school-based leadership roles necessary for this initiative to continue to thrive. In addition, the grant will focus on including the department’s Master of Arts in Teaching students in the project’s professional development activities. It will also pilot the use of the lesson study approach with a small group of faculty members from other departments in the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
2007 Faculty Development Grant Winners
We are pleased to announce that five of the ten winners of this year's Columbia Faculty Development Grant are faculty members of the School of Liberal Arts and Sciences.
These grants are intended to encourage the kinds of research and artistic work that cannot be easily or routinely pursued without financial resources. The Faculty Development Committee, with financial and adminstrative support from the Office of the Provost, awards these grants for only the best proposals, especially those "whose quality, originality, and sustainability demonstrate the potential for external recognition and/or additional funding within the near future." Congratulations, LAS winners!
Stephen T. Asma
Liberal Education Department
Stephen Asma will return to China so that he can continue his research and writing into the contemporary religious landscape. His goal is to research the expanding religious environment of China's urban centers, and to continue his study of Mandarin as a means to that end. His goal is to spend the summer living and researching in China (Nanjing, Shanghai and Beijing) in order to better understand the recently "thawing" religious cultures (in the context of an increasingly capitalistic phase of Chinese development). China is often reported on these days, in terms of this economic development. But most journalism on China is mute and uninformed when it comes to deeper ideological and religious issues. Stephen's goal is to increase his expertise in these neglected areas.
Ames Hawkins
English Department
Ames Hawkins will use this Faculty Development Award in order to fund travel to the 2008 International Microbicides Convention in New Delhi, India, this coming February. This travel allows for a professional and creative constellation regarding the ideas and projects she has been working on for the past two years. As the 2005-2007 Critical Encounters Faculty Fellow, she made a personal commitment to develop her own creative endeavors and take professional risks through the writing of short pieces for the Critical Encounters website, creative nonfiction that chronicles her relationship with her HIV+ father. These pieces currently inform a book-length project that is the focus for her sabbatical this coming spring. Tentatively titled Still Dying Still, this volume centers on her father’s story of contracting HIV, his choices in a time when drugs are available, the ways that the virus now “appears,” and, grammatically speaking, between what it means to be still dying and what it means to be dying still. Having read many, many works on HIV&AIDS, it has become absolutely clear to Ames that we must address HIV&AIDS as a global issue. Travel to the 2008 Microbicides Conference in India will allow her the opportunity to write about HIV&AIDS from this global perspective, focusing on the conference as a cultural text, and also, perhaps more importantly, take her so far out of her comfort zone that she will be able to open different ways of seeing, thereby opening for her new paths as a writer.
Pan Papacosta
Science and Mathematics Department
Pan Papacosta's Columbia College professional development grant will enable him to make a documentary about Henrietta Leavitt, an astronomer, who in 1912 discovered a new method of measuring intergalactic distances. This method enabled Edwin Hubble to discover that the universe is expanding, a discovery that reinforced the currently accepted Big-Bang model of the cosmos. Sadly, Henrietta Leavitt remains only an obscure figure in the annals of astronomy and the public at large is oblivious of her discovery that transformed modern science. The proposed documentary by Pan Papacosta, with planned shootings at the Harvard and Mount Wilson observatories, is an effort to correct this historical oversight.
Teresa Prados-Torreira
Liberal Education Department
Teresa's work examines the images of women and womanhood projected by political cartoons throughout American history. This award will allow her to study the three large cartoon collections housed in the Library of Congress in Washington D.C.
Stephanie Shonekan
Liberal Education Department
Stephanie Shonekan will be traveling to Trinidad to shoot a short musical film called "The Lioness of Lisabi," accompanied by a crew of fifteen Columbia students.
OTHER GRANT WINNERS
Neil Pagano
Associate Dean, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
From 2002 to 2006, Associate Dean Neil Pagano was Principal Investigator for a $167,000 grant project from the Department of Education’s Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE). Neil directed a group of diverse institutions in collaboratively assessing student growth and change in written communication and in diversity. Partner institutions on the project were the University of Delaware, California State University – Long Beach, California State University – Sacramento, Florida Gulf Coast University, Towson University, the University of Nebraska at Omaha, Brenau College, and Murray State College.