My Global History Course Curriculum: Building Cultural Competency and Skill for a Diverse and Interconnected World

This course focuses on understanding the driving forces of change that have been most consequential for global societies in the twentieth century.  Along with traditional lecture, the course facilitates discussion based on primary and secondary sources.  Students read and discuss the meaning of historical documents that highlight forces of global change such as social movements, religion, and competing economic systems.  In addition to these primary source texts, students will gain a deeper understanding of the global past by analyzing interpretations of history by present-day historians. Through this work, students will gain a better understanding of the practice of history and a better understanding of what it has meant to live in the twentieth century. <Click this link to open the comprehensive course page, readings, lecture videos, historyu simulations and other resources.>

10 'Best Practices' for Serving First-Generation Students and Searchable Database of Best Practices

By Justin Doubleday from the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

A report released on Thursday by the Council of Independent Colleges gives guidance to institutions that want to improve resourcesfor students who are the first in their families to attend college.<Click on this link to download the entire report of identified best practices.> 

<Click on this link for the website established for the identified best practices from the project.> With two generous grants from the Walmart Foundation, the Council of Independent Colleges funded 50 college success programs across two cohorts of private colleges and universities in 2008 and 2010. For a full list of funded programs, see the Program Profiles page. Although all 50 programs focused on assisting first-generation students succeed in higher education, each program went about this in different ways. CIC identified 13 broad strategies that were implemented by multiple institutions. The programs are grouped by these strategies in order to help other colleges and universities find and implement the best strategies for a given institution.

• Academic Support
• Alumni Involvement
• Campus Life
• Career Preparation and Internships
• Course Planning and Faculty/Staff Development
• Cultural Experiences
• Faculty/Staff Mentors
• Family Involvement
• Peer Mentors
• Scholarships
• Stipends and Vouchers
• Summer Bridge/Orientation Programs
• Target Student Populations

Based on the experiences of 50 colleges that received grants from the group and the Walmart Foundation to enhance such programs, the report lists 10 "best practices" to promote first-generation students' academic success. Those suggestions are as follows:

1. Identify, actively recruit, and continually track first-generation students.  Aid eligibility is one indicator institutions can use to help identify first-generation students.

2. Bring them to the campus early.  Summer bridge programs let colleges better prepare first-generation students for the rigors of higher education. The programs also give students a chance to bond with classmates, meet faculty and staff members, and become familiar with the campus.

3. Focus on the distinctive features of first-generation students.  First-generation students on any given campus will often share one or more characteristics. Building support systems around those similarities can help colleges better meet students' needs.

4. Develop a variety of programs that meet students' continuing needs.  Colleges should develop programs that prepare first-generation students for academic success during college and for careers after graduation.

5. Use mentors.  Mentors, whether they are fellow students, staff or faculty members, alumni, or people in the community, can provide valuable guidance to first-generation students. Some of the best mentors are those who were also the first in their families to attend college.

6. Institutionalize a commitment to first-generation students.  Colleges should involve the entire campus community in promoting the success of first-generation students. That approach creates a supporting and welcoming environment.

7. Build community, promote engagement, and make it fun.  Colleges need to focus on more than academic performance to improve retention. Through nonacademic activities, students can build meaningful relationships.

8. Involve families (but keep expectations realistic).  First-generation students often struggle more than their peers with moving away from home. Communicating with families can help keep them connected to their student while he or she is away.

9. Acknowledge, and ease when possible, financial pressures.  With many coming from low-income families, first-generation students often struggle with finances. Colleges should provide financial-aid information to students and parents whenever possible. Creating scholarships specifically for first-generation students can help as well.

10. Keep track of your successes and failures: What works and what doesn't?  Colleges should look beyond grade-point averages and retention rates to assess its first-generation programs. Other methods for measuring success include: college records, surveys, in-depth interviews, and focus groups.

We Connect Now, Website for Issues Related to College Students with Disabilities

Our Mission – We Connect Now is dedicated to uniting people interested in rights and issues affecting people with disabilities, with particular emphasis on college students and access to higher education and employment issues. [Click on this web link to access the We Connect Now web site.]

One of the goals of this site is to help college students with disabilities to succeed in their studies by getting the information and support they need, both through resources, links, blogs latest news, studying existing laws and regulation and through personal contacts. Through this website people can also share and read other people’s stories as a source of support and comfort. We also want people using our webpage to take action by writing blogs, hosting an event or becoming involved in politics by knowing about upcoming legislation.  Also, every month our webpage will focus on a particular disability or condition to bring our visitors more information and support related to our focus of the month. Through our jobs section, we also hope to help empower people with disabilities find employment through job posting and job searching tips, and  if people have any questions we encourage them to contact us. The goal of this site is that people leave it having gained knowledge, a support system and having taken action. We were founded in 2008.

My personal research agenda

This web site is primarily oriented towards my position as an Assistant Professor at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities. I serve in the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning within the College of Education and Human Development. I have two main research objectives: explore issues related to academic access in postsecondary education and develop strategies to increase the success of underrepresented student populations in college.
I have three research questions that I am pursuing:
Question #1: What is the comprehensive history of academic access in postsecondary education and does it provide lessons for the present and future?
Question #2: How can I effectively teach my students not only “what to know,�? but also “how to know it�? through appropriate class activities and assignments
Question #3: What are the critical components that are needed to create a new, more powerful and relevant peer cooperative learning model?

Research Questions
For more than two decades I have taught college students, administered developmental education programs, and trained faculty and staff from many institutions how to implement one specific academic intervention program (Supplemental Instruction).In my role as a faculty member at the University of Minnesota, I am investigating a series of research questions to expand the scholarship concerning postsecondary education academic access.

Question #1: What is the comprehensive history of academic access in postsecondary education and does it provide lessons for the present and future? Questions of who has the right to pursue postsecondary education in America have been debated since the founding of Harvard University in 1636. A major focus of my research will document the history of the debate over access to higher education -- a subject which has been largely overlooked in major historical accounts of the American higher education. I will investigate the chronology of the debate, including the various iterations of access programs, currently known as developmental education.

This research has three components. The first is identifying the history of this topic since the founding of American higher education. This reveals the historic relationships among academic access, postsecondary education, and public secondary schools. The second component reviews the present state of this topic area with policy analysis and recommendations for changes in access programs The final component is an analysis of access models in other countries. This permits a comparison of the models and identification of best practices.

Question #2: How can I effectively teach my students not only “what to know,�? but also “how to know it�? through appropriate class activities and assignments? I have had two careers, the first as a community college social science instructor and then a subsequent career as a learning center administrator who also trained individuals to adopt a specific academic intervention program. My current position allows me to integrate those life experiences together to explore how to integrate “what to know�? and “how to know it�? simultaneously through my role as an assistant professor teaching a world history course.

Embedding the best practices of developmental education within my course is part of my approach to delivering effective developmental education within a research institution. With the growing trend of eliminating developmental education courses at public four-year institutions, it is essential to identify models that others can adopt. Research with my students reveals the most effective methods to integrate relevant learning strategies into the class activities that permit them to successfully adopt them for use within my course and other classes they will encounter at the University. This scholarship has resulted in conference papers, publications, and faculty development workshops.

Question #3: What are the critical components that are needed to create a new, more powerful and relevant peer cooperative learning model? For more than a decade I designed a training curriculum, wrote descriptive and research-based publications, and conducted workshops to encourage hundreds of colleges in the U.S. and other countries to implement the Supplemental Instruction (SI) academic intervention program. I see an opportunity to develop a new model more relevant for today’s student body and based upon emerging theories of learning for today’s increasingly diverse student body. A more flexible model is needed that will meet the needs of individual students rather than expecting students to imitate the behaviors of the culture of the institution.

Related to this is the need to explore “help seeking behaviors�? of students regarding their access and voluntary use of services such as advising, counseling, peer tutoring. This behavior needs to be deconstructed, analyzed, and new programs developed that meet the needs of students. Too often the students who could most benefit from services do not avail themselves of the resources and quietly drop out of the institution.

I am working in collaboration with other colleagues at the University and other institutions in Minnesota with diverse student populations to develop a new, more relevant peer-led cooperative learning model. The new model is being tested with students at the University. External funds will be sought to support national dissemination of the model or the efforts could be supported through workshop fees charged for participants much as the SI model has been disseminated nationally and internationally. The working name for the new cooperative learning model is Excel Learning Groups (ELGs).

Welcome to my personal web site

Greetings!
Welcome to my redesigned personal web site. I decided to incorporate a blog on the first page of my web site. I thought this would be a more interesting way to both enter the web site as well as provide an opportunity for me to share some new information with you regarding recent publications, research investigations, and new things that I have learned. The best part about a blog page is that you can "comment" on the postings that I put up. Look for the link for "comments" at the bottom of this posting. Please make a comment since it is a great way to begin a conversation.