Nine win instruction awards

Nine University of Iowa faculty members will receive the 2002-03 Instructional Improvement Awards to support eight projects designed to improve classroom teaching. The awards are presented each year by the Council on Teaching. The funding supports instructional projects designed to make exceptional and specific contributions to in-class instruction.

Gail Boldt and Kathryn F. Whitmore, curriculum and instruction, will purchase materials for the Exemplary Literacy Teaching Archive Project, which is designed to create an archive of audio, video, and digital media and a collection of related elementary classroom teaching materials for use in the University’s teacher education classrooms. Students have indicated a need for more opportunities to see in practice the methods and concepts discussed in their courses. The library of material—short digital video clips gathered in Iowa classrooms; elementary teaching materials to help students practice strategies; and longer, commercial videotapes featuring demonstrations from exemplary teachers across the nation—will allow the department to bring virtual classroom experiences to UI students in language and literacy courses.

Ann Broderick, internal medicine, will facilitate the training of a pilot group of five to 10 first- and second-year medical students to be volunteers at Iowa City Hospice. She asserts that because of lack of training in the “emotive and comfort part” of medicine, physicians tend to withdraw from patients who are dying. The students will undergo 20 hours of training to help them learn how to give psychological, spiritual, and physical comfort to a dying patient and will then visit a patient weekly for six months through the end of her or his life. The students will write about their experiences in a journal and participate in a monthly discussion facilitated by Broderick and a hospice social worker. She plans to submit curriculum recommendations for introducing end-of-life care to first- and second-year medical students.

John Cameron, theatre arts, will purchase a digital video recording and editing system in order to develop both undergraduate and graduate courses on performance technique for the camera (the language and terminology of the craft, how it differs from stage work, and the enormous impact of framing and editing on performance), which currently are not offered at the University. The new technology also will be used to train student designers in design for the camera as well as digitizing images for portfolios and classroom demonstrations. Student directors will be able to use the equipment to master camera techniques.

Corey Creekmur, cinema and comparative literature, will purchase a collection of 15 16mm film prints of African American feature and short films produced between 1916 and 1948, most of which are unavailable on video. The films will allow the department to regularly offer undergraduate and graduate courses on the history of African American cinema. The body of work to be purchased has become the subject of significant critical attention within film studies. Having the films available to faculty members will allow the program to extend this examination of African American cinema. Graduate students will have the films available for their research.

Daniel Gross, rhetoric, will solicit from current and recent graduate instructors within the department proposals to be developed into academic units. Ten proposals will be chosen, developed into complete units—including a theme or topic, class plans, assignments, and readings—and then placed on-line for use by future instructors. Each instructor selected will be awarded $250 after his or her unit is completed. This project will allow future instructors the freedom to move outside of the constraints of available textbooks while still allowing department administrators to oversee sections and ensure consistency in quality.

Kevin T. Leicht, sociology, will purchase a series of 15 films to begin an archive on the globalization of the workforce and its impact on American workers and industry. Teaching the globalization of work, he asserts, has been hindered by the complexity and rapid change in workplaces and labor markets and also by students’ lack of experience in them. The film archive will enhance several courses in the department as well as a new course on the sociology of work. It also will be available to instructors of anthropology, business, public health, and other related topics.

Margaret Raymond, law, will identify, secure permission for use, edit, and digitize material for a required course in the College of Law on professional responsibility. She notes that students hold little enthusiasm for the dated material currently in use—the current VHS format also is awkward and of lesser quality—and maintains the importance of keeping the course accessible and engaging to a large group of students. New excerpts may include contemporary television series such as The Practice, Ed, and Family Law. Ultimately, she will create a course web site containing excerpts and study questions.

Robert L. Schneider, prosthodontics, will purchase six training kits that will allow students to more accurately visualize and understand the basic restorative principles and clinical procedures needed when utilizing dental implants. The use of dental implants to replace missing teeth has become standard in dentistry; dental schools, however, have been slow in adopting this technology into curriculum, and students often receive training from implant manufacturers. This project will supplement the depart-ment’s new predoctoral clinical implant program. Each didactic training kit, which can simultaneously train four students, will help provide an unbiased, properly presented education on how to place, restore, and maintain implants while also supplementing students’ clinical experience with in-depth working knowledge.

Compiled by Sara Epstein Moninger