May 3, 2004

Gen Ed Course Proposal Winners Announced

The winners of the first annual grant competition for projects to enhance the content or teaching of courses proposed for the new system of general education have been announced by the Provost's office.

Fifteen winning proposals were selected from among 31 submitted. A reception to celebrate and announce the winners, hosted by Fred Maryanski, senior vice provost for academic administration, and Keith Barker, associate vice provost, was held on April 29 in the Wilbur Cross Building.

The proposals were reviewed by a committee composed of faculty and academic staff from the Office of Undergraduate Education and convened by Anne Hiskes, an associate professor of philosophy and chair of the General Education Oversight Committee.

"This competition is a sign of the administration's commitment to invigorating the undergraduate experience and raising the status and visibility of teaching general education courses," she said. "It signals a new era of utilizing and stimulating faculty talent in support of an important University mission - providing students with a high quality education."

To be eligible, proposals had to focus on either developing a new course or significantly enhancing the content or pedagogy of an existing course. The courses were required to meet the broad goals of general education, as well as the specific criteria of one or more of the content areas in the new general education requirements.

Hiskes said many of the proposed courses were in the area of diversity and multiculturalism, perhaps because the existing general education requirements offered little scope for such courses.

Criteria for evaluation included clarity of the objectives and their consistency with the new general education program; filling gaps in the curriculum or providing a new interdisciplinary perspective or teaching approach; inclusion of a plan for evaluation; and the potential to serve as a model for other general education courses in the future.

Each winner will receive a grant of $8,000 as summer salary, which may be applied to a reduction in teaching of one or two courses.

The new or revised courses will be offered in the academic year 2005/06. Each course is expected to be offered at least once per academic year for several years, at one or more of the UConn campuses.

The faculty members selected and their projects are:

Bede Agocha, Psychology
New 200-level Course: Social Psychological Perspectives on Diversity and Multiculturalism

Rajiv Bansal, Faquir Jain, and Robert Magnusson, Electrical & Computer Engineering
New 100-level Course: ECE 100: A Survey of Modern Electronic Technology

Teresa Boyd Cowles, Educational Psychology
New Course: Multicultural Inquiry in Psychology and Education

Richard Clark, Lori Smolin, Mary McGrane, and Patricia Jepson, Nutritional Science
Enhance 100-level Course: Fundamentals of Nutrition

Cecile Hurley, Chemistry
Enhance Course: Chemistry 124-126

Vicki Knoblauch, Economics
New Course: Game Theory with Applications to the Sciences and Technology

Benjamin Liu, Modern & Classical Languages
New 100-level Course: Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Medieval Spain

Usha Palaniswamy, Allied Health, Asian American Studies Institute
Honors Sections: Critical Health Issues of Asian American; Asian Medical Systems (AASI 215 and AASI 216)

Rosemary Shinko, Political Science, Stamford Campus
New 100-level Course: Global Perspectives on Political Thought

Gary Storhoff, English, Stamford Campus
New 100-level Course: Race, Gender, and the Culture Industry

Robert Thorson, Honors Program, Geological Sciences
New Honors Course: Science from Social Science ... or Geology from History

Alexander Vias, Geography
New 100-level Course: Globalization

Katharina von Hammerstein, Modern & Classical Languages
New 200-level Course: Germans in Africa, Blacks in Germany: Colonial and Postcolonial Perspectives

Janet Watson, History
New 100-level Course: War Stories: War and Imagination in World History

Michelle Williams, Psychology
New 100-level Course: Intro. to Multiculturalism and Psychology