Category: Blog 1: Core Seminar 1 Prep

I am Chandrika Kulatilleke. I am a Chemistry Professor from Natural Sciences Department. I teach Biochemistry (CHM 4900), Advanced General Chemistry (CHM 3001) and IDC 3002 H for Macaulay Honors College. I wish to interact with all of you and get to know you. I hope to have a productive seminar where we can learn from one another. Thank you.

1. Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects?  I am Tonia Leon, a Latin Americanist with a special love and attachment to Mexico. I teach in Black & Latino Studies Department. I have taught a basic course on Latin American Studies and another on US/MEXICO Border on-line. I will be teaching the course on Mexico synchronously on-line in spring 2022. My special interests are the indigenous cultures of Latin America, agricultural techniques in pre-Hispanic and contemporary LA, advances in ecology and solar energy, geography, cultural anthropology and pre-Hispanic poetry and philosophy.
2. Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? In order to understand the Border and its issues its is necessary to go back in history. To this end, I introduce the students to the indigenous cultural achievements and societal structures, the conquest and colony and the society which grew from this, as major issues in contemporary Mexico. I also deal with origins of racism at the border.
3. What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!). Demonstrate their increased understanding of Mexico, its history and contemporary situation. Establish links between contemporary issues and historical events in MexicoGain insight into the rich heritage of its indigenous cultures. Become aware of the pressing social, economic, and political problems Mexico faced and is facing. Learn of the creative ways the peoples of Mexico have applied to environmental limits. Conduct research using library and on-line resources Become comfortable with oral participation and presentations.
4. What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them? Reading selections from articles, news, books. Live presentations from ecologists and activists in Mexico and here. Movies and videos.

Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects?

Hi everyone! My name is Kaitlin Busse and I am a 3^rd year doctoral student in the Industrial-Organizational Psychology program at Baruch College. My research focuses on Occupational Health Psychology, specifically with work-family issues, stress/well-being, and gender. I am currently an adjunct instructor for the Psychology of Motivation and Learning course. While I taught the class online last year, this is my first semester teaching it in-person to a 30 students.

Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar?

I would like to work on my Motivation and Learning course. Like I mentioned above, this is my first semester teaching it in-person, and therefore, I want to make it more engaging for students.

What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

• Develop an understanding of motivation/learning science
  • You will leave this course with a general knowledge of motivation/learning theories and principles. This means that you will be able to identify, explain, and discuss motivational/learning theories, concepts, and findings.
• Discuss and compare multiple approaches to motivation/learning science
  • You will explore how multiple approaches and perspectives attempt to explain the motivation/learning process.
• Critically examine motivation/learning topics through a scientific lens
  • An important aspect critical thinking is becoming aware of and exploring values (yours and others) to make active and intentional choices in your life. Throughout this course, we will apply critical thinking based on scientific principles to encourage you to observe behavior carefully and consider other explanations for behavior.
• Apply motivation and learning principles
  • This course can help you learn to change your behavior, especially in applied setting. I encourage you to apply these concepts to your own life and your observations in real world situations (e.g., personal, interpersonal, community, and workplace situations).
• Create and design evidence-based interventions to enhance motivation/learning
  • An important aspect of the motivational process in humans is the ability to set complex, realistic goals and work to achieve them. During the semester, you will design and test a behavioral change intervention through motivation/learning theory in an area of your choice (e.g., schools, the workplace, etc.).

What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?

I’d either like to revamp my Behavior Modification Project, which is a paper that helps them apply motivation and learning into their life. If I were to do this, I’d like to work on making a rubric and flushing out the assignment to make it more meaningful to students. Alternatively, I’d like to work on some ways to boost students’ engagement in the class. Currently, I’m struggling with a handful of students participating. Therefore, I’d like to find a way to make the class fun and engaging for all!

Hello, my name is Carmen Valenzuela. I teach Spanish at the Modern Languages and Literatures Department at Baruch College. The classes I am currently teaching are Elementary Spanish I and II. The format is in person, but I have taught online classes and the classes I will teach next semester may be online.
The goals for the classes are to communicate in Spanish at an elementary level, both in writing and orally. Becoming familiar with Hispanic culture is another important goal.

I would like to work on the frame of the class and policies that can make the class more productive. The sylllabus is an important document that reflects the frame, but there are also interventions one can make that are not written, but work for this purpose

 

This is my very first blog

My name is Rebecca Smart. I have been teaching at CUNY on and off since starting as a graduate student at the Grad Center in 1994 (I taught at Hunter College). I am currently an adjunct at BMCC and Baruch teaching psychology. At BMCC, I mostly teach Introduction to Psychology, but have also taught almost every psychology class you can name. My favorites are Intro, Development and the course I am currently teaching at Baruch: Drugs, Brain and Society.

This course covers both paharmacology (what drugs are and how they work in the brain and on the body), as well as the social issues associated with addiction and the war on drugs, and also the cultural impact of drugs.

The learning goals for this class, as listed in my syllabus are:

• To demonstrate how drugs interact with the nervous system to produce their effects, the different classes/types of drugs and the specific drugs in each class.
• To criticallyevaluate the methodology of past and current studies on drug action as well as drug dependence, with respect to the strengths and weaknesses of the studies. Specifically, we will evaluate empirical papers in the area of drug use/dependence research, and distinguish among different research designs typically employed in the area of study. Additionally, we will interpret and synthesize findings from primary research in discussion of current studies.
• To analyze the impact of individual characteristics, developmental environment and societal attitude towards drug use/ dependence.
• To apply this understanding to critically evaluate the changing influence of attitude towards drug use/dependence on treatment of the user, at an individual and societal level in written and oral form.

I am interested in developing more interactive assignments/discussions for this class. Despite my best efforts to change how I present the material (using videos, memes, class activities etc), I still have only a few (and the same) students actually talking in class throughout the semester.

1. Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? 
   My name is Amita Singh. I teach courses in the Management Department at Zicklin. This semester I am teaching two online synchronous courses: Operations Management with 45 students, and a quantitative methods course on Predictive and Prescriptive Analytics with 79 students.
   
2. Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? 
   I will be focusing on the quantitative methods course. This is a required course for all BBA students, and is being offered for the first time to the students this Fall.
   
3. What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).
   The goal for this course is help students develop quantitative reasoning skills necessary for success in business. Throughout the course, students will build quantitative literacy skills through writing about analytics, model building, and interpreting quantitative information to understand and use data in managerial decisions.
   
4. What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?
   I would like to develop a way to get students to refresh their pre-requisite foundational concepts in statistics without taking up 4 weeks of the course time.

1. Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? Hi, I’m Cate Grundleger. (My apologies — I thought I posted this yesterday. :-)) This is my first semester teaching ENG 2100T first year writing to English language learners at Baruch. My students are great! I have 18 in my online synchronous section.
2. Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? ENG 2100T is a college-level introductory course dedicated to academic writing. In this course, students develop confidence in their ability to write for academic purposes not only for the course but also for their other courses at Baruch and beyond. We will accomplish this by completing three major assignments — a narrative essay, a critical analysis essay, and an argumentative essay – and with the writing process.
3. What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

• Read and analyze texts critically: Analyze and interpret key ideas in various discursive genres (e.g. essays, news articles, speeches, documentaries, plays, poems, short stories), with careful attention to the role of rhetorical conventions such as style, tropes, genre, audience, and purpose.

• Write your own texts critically: Compose with an awareness of students’ own rhetorical situation (audience, purpose, genre, medium) and the role of personal experience and social convention play in shaping how and what they write.

• Identify and engage with credible sources and multiple perspectives in your writing:

Identify sources of information and evidence credible to the students’ audience; incorporate multiple perspectives in students’ writing by summarizing, interpreting, critiquing, and synthesizing the arguments of others; and avoid plagiarism by ethically acknowledging the work of others when used in students’ own writing, using a citation style appropriate to students’ audience and purpose.

• Compose as a process: Experience writing as a creative way of thinking and generating knowledge and as a process involving multiple drafts, review of students’ work by members of students’ discourse community (e.g. instructor and peers), revision, and editing, reinforced by reflecting on students’ writing process in metacognitive ways.

• Use conventions appropriate to audience, genre, and purpose: Adapt writing and composing conventions (including students’ style, content, organization, document design, word choice, syntax, citation style, sentence structure, and grammar) to students’ rhetorical context.
• 4. What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them? In this workshop, I’ll be working on two goals: 1. creating my course (ENG 2150T) syllabus to make it as engaging for students as possible and 2. creating course materials that will also be engaging for the students.

1. Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? 

I’m Jessica Webster, and I am on the library faculty. My work is in the Archives and Special Collections department and I focus on Digital Initiatives. I teach in the information studies minor; my courses focus on the interplay between archives, digital materials, history, media, and current events. This is my second semester teaching an online synchronous course. My classes tend to be small (15-25 is average) with a lot of lecture, discussions, and group activities. I focus a lot on active learning techniques but have really stalled on implementing them in an online environment; I seem unable to get students to really engage with each other and have the vibrant discussions I foster in in-person sessions.

1. Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? 

I’m preparing to again teach LIB3030, Archives, Documents, and Hidden History, which focuses on ways to locate, think about, and use a variety of types of primary sources (along with some basic archival theory). In this course we have units learning about how to think about, engage with, and use different types of primary sources in research. I’m also planning to apply techniques learned here to future versions of my Digital Archives and Current Events course.

1. What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

1. Understand the origin, storage, retrieval and use of primary and secondary information sources.
2. Identify the relationship between finding aids used to describe archival collections and primary sources.
3. Access and use archival and/or primary source materials for research projects.
4. Interpret historical, social and cultural issues through the use of archival primary source materials.
5. Employ organizational skills to formulate and interpret research questions as necessary.      

1. What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?

I’d like to develop an approach for students to engage with each other outside of class sessions more readily, to help build a course community that feels more engaged and foster discussion during classtime. But I don’t know what this should look like yet: a discussion board? A slack channel? A google doc? Standing discussion groups? I’d like to get some ideas for this during the class.

1. Hi! Nice meeting you! Could you introduce yourself? What department are you from? What courses are you teaching or have been teaching? What are the classes you teach like, such as format or class size? Is there anything you want to tell us about your teaching, research, or other projects? 

My name is Stephanie Janet and I am from France originally! I received a PhD in Political Science in Paris and I have been teaching at Baruch in the Political Science department for a few years. I have taught/currently teach/will teach courses on the United Nations, International Organizations, Communist Political Systems, the French and the American Revolutions, etc.

I will be teach a course on Communism next term, a course I have never taught online. I am currently teaching an intro course on political science and a UN course.

My classes range from 18 to 50 students and I currently teach online both synchronously and asynchronously.

I love teaching and trying to engage students. I used to be quite successful at that in person and I love the challenge of doing this online! I am looking forward to learning more with this seminar.

(2) Could you talk a little bit about that course you’ll be working on during this seminar? 

I will be teaching POL 3368 Communist Political Systems.

I must admit I was surprised when I was asked to teach this class. I wondered–do we still teach this in the US today?? I had asked myself this question too when I was asked to teach the class on the UN (I think it is great they are students wanting to know more about the UN even today!).

More seriously, I used to teach class on comparative politics and I have a specialty on the Soviet Union/Russia so my course will focus on the theory of communism through a close reading of the “Communist Manifesto” followed by a study of 2 communist countries: the Soviet Union and China.

(3) What are the listed learning goals of your course? They could be ones provided by the department, or ones that you have written for your syllabus? Please list them (pasting is fine!).

 By the end of the course, students will be able to:

• Do a close reading of the Communist Manifesto and understand the main theoretical tenets of communism as a political and economic system;
• Describe the specificities of communist political systems and explain how they differ from non communist political systems;

• Develop a thorough understanding of two communist political systems, (in the former Soviet Union and in China) which includes gaining a understanding of these countries’ political institutions, political culture, and political ideology.
• Discuss why Soviet Union disappeared in 1991 while China has become a world power.
• Use critical thinking and evidence to evaluate theories and interpretations.
• Formulate and express both orally and in writing a well-organized and formulated argument supported by evidence.

(4) .What class materials are you planning to develop? What goals do you have for them?

Class materials will be provided for free on Blackboard. I will use YouTube videos, newspaper articles, and academic articles.