March 2010 Articles
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Step Up With Senate Leadership by Nancy Stanko
Faculty Member Assumes Leadership in CCHA by Ida Hagman
A Day in the Life—Faculty Adviser by Jackie McGrath
Accolades by Konkel & Hagman
Williams Bay by 2009 Celebrators
Step Up With Senate Leadership by Nancy Stanko
All colleges have been suffering budgeting shortfalls caused by the poor economy. All of us play an
important role in the future of education and College of DuPage. Be willing to get involved, and be
aware of the challenges we must face. Get engaged in the election process and let your representatives
know the issues facing education. Step forward and make your voices be heard. Connect with us.
Your Senators will be circulating this term with a one-on-one canvass; please be sure to give them a few minutes of your time, and thank them for stepping forward to represent your voice. The canvass will be an opportunity to open the lines of communication between the Senate and the Association Membership, an opportunity for you to tell us what is on your mind. It will also be an opportunity for us to affirm the common bond and common identity that come from being faculty members at the College of DuPage.
The Shared Governance Council has begun to meet and plan the process for setting up five new steering committees:
- Student Learning
- Community and Outreach
- Organizational Growth and Internal Climate
- Supporting Institutional Operations
- Institutional Planning
Calls from the Committee on Committees will go out after March 9. Please consider applying for these steering committees. Questions about the Shared Governance Council can be referred to members Ken Gray, Therese McGinnis, or me.
Faculty Member Assumes Leadership in CCHA by Ida Hagman
Helen Feng is well known to us for her scholarship, her teaching, and her committee work. Now she has
taken on another challenge, President of the Central Division of the Community College
Humanities Association (CCHA). Helen's association with CCHA has been long-standing but her involvement
increased in 2005 when College of DuPage committed to sponsoring a regional and then a national
conference. From 2006 to 2009 Helen and Julia diLiberti acted as co-vice Presidents for the Central
Region, which encompasses the midwestern states. Now Helen has assumed the presidency.
I had a chance to ask Helen about the CCHA, its goals, and her role. Helen explained that the stated mission of CCHA is "to strengthen the humanities in the nation's community colleges," but she described a more personal vision of its value. Helen explained that what she likes about CCHA is that it takes community college faculty seriously. At the regional and national conferences faculty have opportunities to present research, participate in scholarly forums, and share teaching strategies. At the conclusion of the CCHA National Conference sponsored by College of DuPage last October, one participant said with delight, "This is just like graduate school, without the grades." The conferences combine a high level of scholarship with an atmosphere of community where COD faculty have gotten to know many of their colleagues in the Central Division and other regions.
Helen and the other officers of CCHA are working to continue these traditions and to strengthen CCHA. Plans are underway for the Central Division Regional Conference, which will take place in the fall of 2010. A tentative theme of sustainability was chosen in October at the National Conference. Helen is helping to recruit host colleges and will assist with planning of the conference. In the future, Helen hopes to help CCHA increase the participation of part-time faculty, create a program of faculty liaisons at individual colleges, and improve communications with its members.
A Day in the Life—Faculty Adviser by Jackie McGrath
When the meeting is over, as I fade into the background, as I listen to the students talk, vent, and
catch up, I marvel at the texture of their lives and the complexity of their days. The truth is, for a
faculty advisor to a student activity, the teaching and learning (theirs and mine) don't always go
according to an ACF. When I work to advise students involved with The Prairie Light Review, I
am always aware that the highs and lows, the emotions and experiences, have a measure of intensity
that's different from what happens in my classroom. To fully understand this, you would have to spend a
day with me in the course of advising.
Each week, when Wednesday arrives, I am go, go, go. Even though I taught until 10pm last night, this morning I managed to hit the gym before hustling to campus for a 9:30am Student Activities Fund Advisory Committee Meeting. To my delight, I entered the room and saw one of the students from the Prairie Light Review class. His presence meant I would be allowed to vote (both student and advisor must be in attendance in order to have this right). Other student advisors and student leaders trickled into the meeting, and we began close to the start time, as always.
The agenda was packed. We discussed old business, looked at budget line items, discussed future planning issues, and revisited the question of a COD class gift. When I could, I whispered explanations to the PLR student so he could learn the acronyms, institutional rules, and issues to some degree. He was a good sport and paid keen attention. Budgets don't usually appeal to our student leaders, but since he recently spent considerable time pricing t-shirts, he was awakened to some of the complexities and nuances of spending public money.
After the meeting was over, I spent some time checking with other faculty and staff on some budget issues and forms. Today I will fill out two purchase orders and complete a budget rationale that justifies the publication of our College's nationally award-winning literary arts journal.
But then the real fun begins.
This particular student group is also a class, and we meet for a two-hour "lab" every Wednesday. The student editor sets the agenda: the students read, discuss, and vote on submissions for each issue. Today they will evaluate a lengthy packet of written material, and then I will assist as they review art, projected on the wall by LCD screen. My role is sometimes limited; I try to avoid putting my oar in, and stick with comments like, "Now, how does that concern fit your criteria for submissions?"
On this day, the students paused over a submission, and I looked up from the paperwork when I heard my name: "Jackie, what is a mandala?" Their heads swiveled, and I answered, "It's an art tradition, practiced by both Navajo people and Tibetan monks. There are differences, but they produce a circular shape that has symbolic meanings embedded in it…." They resume discussing the submission.
After class is over, I meet with the student editors to discuss what was voted in and to plan for some upcoming events. The production editor needs a reminder to start editing the manuscript, and the marketing editor needs to work on a new advertising brochure. Then I talk with the editor-in-chief about her transfer applications, and I chat with a couple of other students about their transfer plans. Application deadlines on March 1st loom, and it is a fraught time for all the students. They know their lives will change, and they worry about getting in, moving away, and starting over.
After a few more words of encouragement, I pull out my laptop to reply to more emails and complete that budget rationale. The students continue to chat, and I overhear snippets of conversation—gossip, complaints about classes, excitement about an assignment, a story about a significant other. These are the moments I really enjoy. I become invisible, and the students continue to knit together a community, based on common goals, a belief in the journal they care about and to which they contribute, and a shared geography of the landscape and lives of COD District #502.
Accolades by Konkel & Hagman
Lyricist Johnny Mercer (1944) says it best this month:
You've got to accentuate the positive,
Eliminate the negative,
And latch on to the affirmative,
Don't mess with Mister In-Between.
You've got to spread joy up to the maximum
Bring gloom down to the minimum
Have faith or pandemonium's
Liable to walk upon the scene.
Brenda Alberico (Mathematics)
Will present "Conic Sections and Skis" at the 35th annual Illinois Mathematics Association of Community
Colleges Conference, March 26, 2010 at Allerton Park in Monticello, Illinois. Combining her personal
interest in skiing with mathematics, she designed a project for her calculus students where they find
all of the conics that create a ski. About 15 years ago, shaped skis&mdsh;called parabolic skis even
though their basic shape is a hyperbola—became the rage.
Bob Cappetta (Mathematics)
Presented at the School Science and Mathematics Association conference in October 2009 in Reno and at
the American Mathematical Association of Two-Year Colleges 35th annual conference in November 2009 in
Las Vegas. His presentation "Beware Blue Box Strategies: Motivating Concepts in Calculus" was a
theory-to-practice presentation that demonstrated effective teaching and learning techniques for
calculus.
Dave Fazzini (Physics)
Performs classroom demonstrations in order to highlight particular concepts in Physics 1100 (physics for
non-majors). For the concepts of momentum transfer and energy, he demos the board break where he uses a
bare-handed palm strike to break up to eight wooden boards and the bed-of-nails in which he lies
sandwiched between two beds of long steel nails while a colleague breaks a concrete block sitting on the
top bed with a sledge hammer. He's caught a lot of attention, including a front page article in the Daily
Herald (September 22nd, 2009) and an unsolicited letter of recognition from State Representative Dennis
Reboletti (46th district) as a result of that article. His students are happy that they don't get
bored in his class.
Jennifer Gimmell (Physics) and Deborah Klein (Criminal Justice)
Delighted audiences with their performances in COD's 2010 presentation of The Vagina Monologues
on February 6 and 12. This performance was sponsored by Take Back the Night DuPage, the COD Student
Association for Gender Equality, and the Human Services Department. Brava!
Mary Konkel (Library)
Presented breakout sessions on the assessment and usage of serial and periodical collections in academic
libraries at the CARLI (Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois) Collections Working
Group Spring Forum, which was held March 5 at the Illinois Institute of Technology in Chicago.
Chikako Kumamoto (English)
Celebrates her Honors student, Olivia Spadlowski, who was just chosen as one of the top ten finalists in
the Second Community College Week/National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development Student
Essay Contest. Olivia competed with over 700 community college student writers nationwide, and
considering the odds, she did outstandingly well. Her essay "Select Six," which will be published in
NISOD's monthly e-newlsetter, spoke about the great education she and her peers have been receiving at
COD, particularly in the Honors Program.
Michelle Moore (English)
Presented the paper "'Like the Buildings in a City Block: Chicago's Cliff Dwellers and The Song of the
Lark'" at the 9th Willa Cather International Seminar in Chicago, July 2009. Her article "'The Unsleeping
Cabal': Faulkner's Fevered Vampires and the Other South" is to be published in the Faulkner Journal this
spring. In addition, her book chapter "'If This Was A Rape, Then Why Would She Be a Whore?': Rape in Todd
Solondz' Films" will appear in Rape in Art Cinema, published by Continuum Press this month.
Steve Schroeder (Speech)
Selected as a 2010 Phi Theta Kappa Faculty Scholar. He is one of 24 community college faculty nationwide
to receive this honor, based on demonstrated excellence in teaching, as well as a submitted essay on the
"The Democratization of Information: Power, Peril and Promise." As a Faculty Scholar, Steve will serve
as a discussion facilitator for the 2010 International Honors Institute June 14-7 in Orange, California.
Joanne Wagner (Computer and Internetworking Technologies)
Completed all the exams in January and became recertified for the following: Cisco Certified Network
Associate (CCNA); Cisco Certified Networking Professional; CCNA Security; Cisco IPS Specialist; and Cisco
Certified Security Professional. She is now actively certified until 2013.
Accolades submissions can be sent to Mary Konkel. We want to hear about your personal accomplishments as well as your professional ones. Tell us about educational achievements, classroom and program successes/development, publications and presentations, awards, athletic achievements, musical/theatrical accomplishments. We want to celebrate and rally around your creativity, innovation, spirit, and hard work. The Faculty Advocate is open to our community, and this is really good press!
Williams Bay by 2009 Celebrators
A reflection on the Celebration of Teaching Retreat loosely inspired by Wordsworth's Tintern Abbey
(with apologies).
Three days have passed, three lunches, with the length
Of three long semesters, and again I hear
These waters, rolling from their Lakefront Cottage faucets
With a soft lavatorial murmur. Once again
Do I behold these steep and lofty minds
That on a wild secluded firepit impress
Thoughts of more deep ignition; and connect
The rolling toilet paper with the embers' spark.
The day is come when I again repose
Here under this dark oak, and view
These overhilly plots of ground, these giant oaks,
Which at this season, with their blasted acorns
Are clad in one dingy hue, and lose themselves
Under our feet. Once again I see
These cabins, hardly cabins, little lines
Of tiny beds run amok: these pastoral leaf-blowers,
Noisy to the very core; and wreaths of smoke
Sent up, in bedlam, from golf carts among the trees!
With some uncertain notice, with rigid
Minimal structure, about our tasks we are sent,
While meditating in his oral tradition,
The Great Teacher sits among us.
These beauteous educators
Through a long absence, have not been to me
As is a telescope to a blind man's eye:
But oft in lonely classrooms, and mid the din
Of construction and bathroom cleaning, I have owed to them
In hours of inservice days, the stages of grief,
Strengths-based learning and refusal to change,
The gateway into my purer mind,
With tranquil restoration, on the Lake Geneva shores.
Thanks to Richard Jarman for this submission!
