Professional Activities

John Sturtz, Education, has received a nearly $5,000 grant from the Whiting Foundation. Dr. Sturtz will travel to Australia to engage in a cross-cultural investigation of teachers’ pedagogical thinking. The project will involve interviewing teachers, observing classroom instruction, meeting with higher education faculty responsible for training preservice teaching candidates, and collaborating with a co-investigator in Australia. This research provides Dr. Sturtz the opportunity to better understand how teachers think about their pedagogy and to investigate the gap that exists between theory and practice.

Jonathan Schwartz, Film, has received a $5,640 grant from the Whiting Foundation. Dr. Schwartz will travel to Vienna to explore holdings in the Austrian Film Museum — specifically, the Dziga Vertov Collection, the Amateur Film Archeology, and the Amos Vogel Library. Materials to be studied — films, notes, stills, sounds — reflect Soviet observational and historical newsreels as well as amateur films that capture and archive the everyday.

Following his decidedly non-professional spring break activity of nordic skiing in Finland (Lapland), Mark C. Long, professor of English and American Studies, was invited to serve as an external reviewer for two departments of English: The College of Idaho and our COPLAC peer institution, SUNY Geneseo. And, as the current president of the Association for the Study of Literature and Environment (ASLE), Mark organized and hosted the annual retreat of the ASLE Executive Council at the Glenn Brook Camp in Marlborough, New Hampshire.