Monday,
May 7, 2007
Volume 19, Issue 127

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FROM THE COLLEGE

James H. Korn Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award Nominations

The Reinert Center for Teaching Excellence is inviting nominations for the 2007 James H. Korn Scholarship of Teaching and Learning award. One of the goals of the Reinert Center for Teaching Excellence is to promote faculty inquiry and scholarly research on teaching and learning. In 2006, the Center established the James H. Korn Award for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning in recognition of Psychology Professor Emeritus Jim Korn’s many contributions to research on teaching and learning.
In defining Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), the Center embraces the following description from The Advancement of Learning: Building the Teaching Commons, by Mary Taylor Huber and Pat Hutchings:
Though employed in different ways and to different degrees, the scholarship of teaching and learning entails basic but important principles --- It means viewing the work of the classroom as a site for inquiry, asking and answering questions about students’ learning in ways that can improve one’s own classroom and also advance the larger profession of teaching.
SoTL involves asking questions about student learning and teaching activities; answering those questions by examining student learning and effectiveness of teaching strategies; and publicly sharing results of this inquiry in a setting that invites peer review.
Examples of SoTL research include:
• Implementation of a new teaching strategy and documenting its effectiveness.
• Documentation of development and implementation of an interdisciplinary teaching approach.
• Research on teacher performance, e.g. research on the effect of videotaping on teacher performance.
• Evaluation of the effectiveness of a new teaching approach in a course or curriculum, e.g. evaluation of the use of collaborative writing in a composition course.
• Research on effectiveness of integrating service learning or technology into a course.
Finalists for the James Korn SOTL award will be invited to present their research at a SoTL symposium to be held in fall 2007. The award will be presented at this symposium.

Criteria for award:

• Nominees must be current full-time faculty member at Saint Louis University. Note: a team of individuals or a department may be nominated as long as at least one member of team is currently a full-time faculty member at SLU.
• Nominees have conducted research on teaching and student learning. Examples of SoTL research are given above.
• Results of research were disseminated to peers through means such as publication, conference presentation or poster session, invited presentation, departmental or school symposium.
• Nominee has not previously received this award.
• Nominee is willing to present the research results at the CTE SoTL symposium to be held in Fall 2007.

Self-nominations are acceptable. Nominees selected as finalists will be asked to submit more detail on the SoTL project to the selection committee.

To nominate, please email or mail the following information to Mary Stephen Reinert Center for Teaching Excellence, Verhaegen 315 no later than May 11, 2007.

1. Name(s) and contact information of person(s) nominated for the award. Please include email address and academic department.

2. Briefly describe the scholarly work in which the nominee has been involved. Provide sufficient detail to allow selection committee to determine whether or not to include nominee(s) in the group of finalists for the award. Finalists will be asked to provide additional detailed information on the project.

3. Name and contact information of person making nomination.

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ACADEMIC NEWS

Faculty Publications, Presentations, Awards

Chemistry
Dr. Brent Znosko's lab authored a paper which was published in Biochemistry (Biochemistry 2007, 46, 4625-4634) titled "Nearest Neighbor Parameters for Inosine-Uridine Pairs in RNA Duplexes." Co-authors included current undergraduate student, Daniel Wright, former undergraduate student, Jamie Rice, (now a medical student at Kansas City University of Medicine and Biosciences), and former summer student, Dawn Yanker, (currently a chemistry Ph.D. candidate at Washington University in St. Louis). This study now allows researchers to predict the stability of RNA anticodon-codon interactions, ADAR products, and any other RNA duplex containing inosine-uridine pairs.

English
Dr. Joya Uraizee has been named a Senior Fulbright Lecturer and will teach at Nelson Mandela Metropolitan University in Port Elizabeth, South Africa during the 2008 spring semester.

Dr. Georgia Johnston authored a book titled The Formation of Twentieth Century Lesbian Autobiography: Reading Vita Sackville-West, Virginia Woolf, H.D., and Gertrude Stein, which has been published by Palgrave Macmillan Press.

Dr. Harold Bush, Jr., has been named a Senior Fulbright Specialist in American Literature, eligible for teaching appointments throughout the world for the next five years.

Modern and Classical Languages
Dr. Evelyn Meyer authored "Gender Erasures, Knightly Maidens and (Un)knightly Knights in Hartmann von Aue's Iwein" acepted for publication by Neophilologus, published through the online access of the journal: http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11061-007-9029-0(April 7, 2007), printed journal edition forthcoming 2007.
Dr. Meyer presented "Undercutting the Fabric of Courtly Love with 'Tokens of Love' in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzival" 18th Departmental Colloquium, Dep. of Modern and Classical Languages, Saint Louis University, April 27, 2007.

Community Outreach, Partnerships, Media Events

External Funding, Research Productivity