From Judy Thomas, Director of Faculty Programs

The Course Enrichment Grant (CEG) program supports faculty who want to enhance their students’ abilities to seek, evaluate, manage, and use information and data, as well as create new kinds of media-rich assignments. Faculty collaborate with library specialists to restructure their courses to emphasize the development of active, research-rich, learning environments.

All of this year’s grant recipients are faced with a special challenge: designing courses that can be adapted to both residential and online instruction. This challenge, particularly daunting in the case of production-oriented classes, is one that all the teams are excited about addressing. We expect that the valuable lessons learned in this year’s program will ultimately benefit all faculty, since our intention is to quickly apply our findings to our support for the curriculum at large.

We’re delighted to have the opportunity to work with these innovative faculty:

Christopher Ali, Media Studies, College of Arts & Sciences: Undergraduates will learn about the methods of policy analysis by consulting digital platforms to retrieve and organize key documents, and then apply different methods of analysis such as stakeholder analysis and discourse analysis. These methods will be applied to students’ final assignment, a critical policy memo, and will give students a foundation both in the specifics of policy analysis and in the methods of media studies more broadly

Library team:

• Erin Pappas, Research Librarian for the Humanities
• Cecilia Parks, Undergraduate Student Success Librarian
• Jenn Huck, Data Librarian
• Brandon Butler, Director, Information Policy

Federico Cuatlcuatl, Studio Art, College of Arts & Sciences: This course will challenge and engage students in multiple modes of fabrication and digital productions through the conceptual framework of wearable self-portraits.

Library team:

• Lucie Stylianopoulos, Research Librarian for Art, Archaeology, Classics, Indigenous Studies
• Ammon Shepherd, Makerspace Manager
• Josh Thorud, Multimedia Teaching and Learning Librarian
• Arin Bennett, Information Visualization Specialist
• Will Rourk, 3D Data & Content Specialist
• Fang Yi, Educational Technologist

Bremen Donovan, Anthropology, College of Arts & Sciences: Students from across disciplines will be introduced to diverse modes of ethnographic research and creative practice in this course designed to broaden understanding of what rigorous scholarship can look, sound, and feel like. In addition to readings, screenings, and other interventions, students will collaboratively explore different forms of knowledge production and representation, and will engage in practical training to guide them in the conception and bringing to fruition their own small-scale experimental projects.

Library team:

• Josh Thorud, Multimedia Teaching and Learning Librarian
• Phil McEldowney, Librarian for Middle East and South Asia Studies
• Krystal Appiah, Instruction Librarian, Special Collections
• Chris Gist, Geographic Information Systems Specialist
• Drew Macqueen, Geospatial Consultant

Erin Lambert, History, College of Arts & Sciences: Students will develop skills in historical research by tracing the travels of a single object through early modern global trade networks and presenting their projects in an ArcGIS StoryMap.

Library team:

• Keith Weimer, Librarian for History, Politics, and Religious Studies
• Krystal Appiah, Instruction Librarian, Special Collections
• Chris Gist, Geographic Information Systems Specialist
• Drew Macqueen, Geospatial Consultant
• Lucie Stylianopoulos, Research Librarian for Art, Archaeology, Classics, Indigenous Studies
• Ronda Grizzle, Project Management and Training Specialist

Stella Mattioli, Spanish, College of Arts & Sciences: The students of Elementary Italian will work in pairs to create an interactive picture book about an Italian cultural aspect that they will have to choose and research.

Library team:

• Miguel Valladares-Llata, Librarian for Romance Languages and Latin American Studies
• Bethany Mickel, Teaching and Instructional Design Librarian
• Josh Thorud, Multimedia Teaching and Learning Librarian

David Singerman, History, College of Arts & Sciences: First-year students will explore the 2008 financial crisis by learning to think like historians. They’ll combine scholarship, media accounts, and interviews with friends and family into multimedia projects about what it’s like to live through a major historical event.

Library team:

• Todd Burks, Teaching and Learning Librarian
• Keith Weimer, Librarian for History, Politics, and Religious Studies
• Bill Corey, Research Data Management Librarian
• Josh Thorud, Multimedia Teaching and Learning Librarian

Tyler Jo Smith, McIntire Department of Art/Interdisciplinary Archaeology Program, College of Arts & Sciences: In a seminar setting, students will learn how to research individual objects of religious significance belonging to the Fralin Museum of Art. They will share their final project results using 3D technologies of scanning, printing, and digital presentation.

Library team:

• Lucie Stylianopoulos, Research Librarian for Art, Archaeology, Classics, Indigenous Studies
• Bethany Mickel, Teaching and Instructional Design Librarian
• Arin Bennett, Information Visualization Specialist
• Will Rourk, 3D Data & Content Specialist
• Josh Thorud, Multimedia Teaching and Learning Librarian