Professional Activities
With Michelle Niestepski (Lasell College), Kate Tirabassi (English) coordinated the National Archives of Composition and Rhetoric (NACR) workshop at the Conference on College Composition and Communication (CCCC) in Tampa, Florida, March 2015. This workshop included invited scholars who discussed the possibilities and challenges of negotiating digital archives, conducting digital-only historical research, working with meta-data, building and linking digital archives, and considering intersections between archival projects in rhetoric and composition and the digital humanities. This workshop also offered strategies to participants working in and building digital archives, including next steps in their own research and hands-on opportunities to work with materials that would help to build connections across composition and the digital humanities. Kate also presented on “Developing New Departmental Internships” in the “Going Outside: Internships, Fieldtrips, and Experiential Learning” workshop. In this presentation, she discussed key issues in developing a new departmentally-supported internship program as part of a new writing option in the English major, including helping students find writing and publishing internships and building local networks among departmental internship coordinators, career advising, and local community partners.
Tanya Sturtz (Education), Darrell Hucks (Education), and Kate Tirabassi (English, ITW Coordinator) presented at the Tenth Annual Conference on the Teaching of Writing at the University of Connecticut on Friday, March 27. The panel, entitled “Linking Education and First-Year Writing: Piloting a Full-Year Reading and Writing Initiative for Education Major discussed the pilot at Keene State College that offers first-year Education majors an opportunity to take linked courses across the full academic year: an Education course focused on reading and research and a first-year composition course focused on a semester-long research project. They shared resources they’ve developed to help their students transition from high school to college-level reading, research, and writing and discuss what students have said about their learning in this initiative and provided an overview of the history and future of this pilot initiative at Keene State College.
Dr. Beverly J. Ferrucci, Professor of Mathematics, presented “Investigating the Learning of Spatial Visualization with Virtual Manipulatives” at the International Mathematics Education in the 21st Century Conference that was held in Herceg Novi, Montenegro. The presentation discussed Dr. Ferrucci’s latest research on using virtual manipulatives to teach K-12 mathematics. Dr. Ferrucci also served as chair of the working group on Comparative Education. Researchers from more than 50 countries were in attendance at the conference.
Karrie Kalich has received a $99,300 grant from the NH Department of Health & Human Services for a healthy eating and sodium reduction project. This award provides funds to provide nutrition consultation and to implement a sodium reduction pilot program for Licensed Child Care Programs and New Hampshire Public School Administrative Units (SAU). This project is supported 100 percent by funds from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Brantley Palmer (Assistant Archivist, Mason Library) and Mylynda Gill (Class of 2016 / English & Psychology) presented on the panel “Delighted to Make Your Acquaintance: Introducing Users to Primary Sources” at the recent New England Archivists and Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference joint meeting in Boston. Palmer and Gill discussed their work with primary sources from a teaching and undergraduate student point-of-view. The panel included archivists from Dartmouth College, Drexel University, Harvard University, MIT, and Yale University.
Stephanie Chmielecki has received an $8,452 grant from Cheshire Medical Center/Dartmouth-Hitchcock Keene (Federal Award Funding Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention [CDC]) for the Turn A New Leaf Program. This funding allows the KSC Dietetic Internship Program to participate with Cheshire Medical Center in a CDC Partnership in Community Health Services grant. Dietetic interns will provide recipe analysis to institutional settings that are implementing the “Turn a New Leaf” program. This program identifies healthy choices in restaurants and food venues to provide a dining environment that promotes healthy choices.
Lara Bryant, Geography, has received a $5,000 grant from Esri ConnectED for the Watershed Ecology Institute 2015. This award supports training events for geography educators at the 2015 Watershed Ecology Institute. Middle and high school science teachers will use the ArcGIS online system to learn how to map water quality and fisheries data to enhance classroom study of watersheds.
