2005 Vision Fund grants support innovative academic and student life projects

2005 Vision Fund grants support innovative academicand student life projectsFebruary 22, 2005Jaime Winne Alvarez jlwinne@syr.edu

Syracuse University has announced its 2005 Vision Fund grants, which support new academic initiatives and faculty innovation at the small-project or course level. The Vision Fund Program was created in 1998 to stimulate innovative approaches to teaching and learning.

Coordinated by the Center for Support of Teaching and Learning, the Vision Fund Program annually provides small grants, up to $5,000. This year’s seven successful proposals had the greatest potential for improving teaching and learning with an emphasis on collaboration across academic units and with other University staff and programs.

Lori Brown of the School of Architecture and Alison Mountz of the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs were awarded funds to support Urban Syracuse: Gender, Geography, Architecture, an interdisciplinary course scheduled for Fall 2005. To be taught collaboratively by Brown and Mountz, the course will be cross-listed in geography, architecture and women’s studies and is designed to bring students of these programs together and into the city for hands-on experiential learning. Course content will include lessons on the architectural design of downtown buildings, the labor histories built into Syracuse’s residential and commercial spaces, such as Carrier Circle, and the geography of the urban region. Students will study Syracuse’s past and present public housing and transportation, as well as the history of SU’s expanding relationship with the city.

Five faculty members from of the College of Human Services and Health Professions-Robert Keefe, Mary Ann Middlemiss, Kay Bruening, Mona Mittal and Robert Moreno-received a grant for an interdisciplinary faculty and community partnership. “Developing, Supporting, and Sustaining University and Community Agency Collaboration” will build upon the success achieved by HSHP’s relationship with Syracuse Community Health Center (SCHC), the city’s largest outpatient health care agency. To create a campus-community partnership, HSHP faculty members and staff from SU’s Mary Ann Shaw Center for Public and Community Service propose to collaborate with SCHC to foster involvement in student learning experiences, enhance faculty relationships and build formal and informal connections to address problems of the urban Syracuse community. The partnership is a strategy for improving teaching and learning, civic responsibility and the overall health of the local community. A major goal is to develop a course elective, to be housed in HSHP, which will focus on issues of concern to the local community that can be addressed from an interprofessional perspective.

Francis Parks of Students Offering Service at Hendricks Chapel and Larry Elin of the S. I. Newhouse School of Public Communications secured funding on behalf of the SU and SUNY College of Environmental Science and Forestry chapter of Habitat for Humanity for a lunchtime lecture series. The lecture series is the main educational component for the chapter’s upcoming house sponsorships in Syracuse. The chapter’s student-led “house build” will afford SU and ESF faculty from a variety of disciplines the opportunity to participate in an active learning lab in which they can give on-site lectures, develop courses centered on immediate and visible issues through diverse academic lenses or add service components. Students will engage in on-site learning by working side by side with faculty and community members. The long-term goal is to make the program a crucial part of the chapter’s sponsorship program.

Sandra Faulkner in the College of Visual and Performing Arts and Matthew Kiechle in Student Health Services were awarded funds for an HIV public service announcement campaign, “Test, talk and condoms.” Health Services, AIDS Community Resources and the departments of advertising design and communication and rhetorical studies in the College of Visual and Performing Arts will collaborate to design, implement and evaluate a campaign that is campus- and age-appropriate and focuses on the benefits and importance of HIV testing, communication between sexual partners and condom use.

Philip Arnold of the religion department in The College of Arts and Sciences received funding for a new course, “Sacred Games,” proposed for the Fall 2005 semester. Nearly all sports have origins in religious ceremonies. Olympic games, hockey, sumo wrestling and the martial arts are obvious examples, but more popular games such as football, basketball, soccer and golf also directly connect with ancient ceremonial practices. An important local example is the Haudenosaunee (Iroquois) game of lacrosse. Even more important than ceremonial history, however, is that sports are currently understood by enthusiasts and critics alike as a “religious activity.” The proposed course will take the perspective that it is easier to understand the current popularity and appeal of sports as ceremonial activities, rather than as business or entertainment.

Phu Duong in the School of Architecture received a grant for “Re-surfacing Upstate,” which will expose a new pedagogy for digital modeling in the school’s graduate programs. The grant will support production of a CD-ROM publication that will disseminate the results of an analytical urban history of Upstate New York. Completed by students, the study will involve team-oriented design thinking that integrates architecture, urbanism, landscape-urbanism, cartography, history, cinema and popular culture. Students’ 3-D modeling exercises, using video and Web design software, will provide the multimedia content for the CD-ROM. Participants will publish their work to share ideas outside the profession and as an essential component of their design practice. The CD-ROM will circulate among academic units to invite interdisciplinary student enrollment and will be used for graduate student recruitment, University development campaigns and at academic and professional conferences around the world.

Judith Meighan and Susan Peck of the College of Visual and Performing Arts secured funding for the Orange Partnering Project (OPP): Embedding the Arts in K-12 Math, Science and English Language Arts Classes. The funds will initiate a multi-year OPP pilot that will support research and recruitment during the Spring 2005 semester, for full implementation in Fall 2005. OPP will team SU faculty, graduate and undergraduate students with Syracuse City School District teachers to collaborate on embedding the arts into existing math, science and English language arts classes in the city schools.