Topic: Education
Greg Smith awarded environmental education grant
Greg Smith, professor of teacher education:
Smith has received a $19,380 grant from the Gray Family Fund of the Oregon Community Foundation to train teachers in the West Linn School District on environmental issues. The Environmental Education Program seeks to encourage a strong local land ethic, sustainable communities, and stewardship of the natural environment by citizens throughout Oregon. The Fund is committed long term to institutionalizing a series of age-appropriate experiences that build a sense of place and responsibility towards Oregon and the region.
The Sustainability Education Initiative is a program of professional development coursework and activities for K-12 teachers in the West Linn-Wilsonville School District. During three courses offered in 2009, Smith will prepare 50-60 teachers to incorporate sustainability issues into their classrooms and help them implement school or community projects that will enhance local natural and social environments. Participants will be eligible for small seed grants to fund start-up projects. The grant aims to increase the number of teachers implementing sustainability projects in schools, and increase student and educator awareness of local natural systems, ecologies, and social needs.
Associate Professor Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell named Professor of the Year
Associate Professor of Psychology Jerusha Detweiler-Bedell has been named the Outstanding Baccalaureate Colleges Professor of the Year Award by the Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. The CASE/Carnegie prize is the only national award for excellence in undergraduate teaching and mentoring.
Detweiler-Bedell, who joined the psychology faculty in 2001, immerses students in interactive and challenging lessons starting in their first psychology course. Students in her Introduction to Psychology class, for example, handle a human brain and imagine themselves as subjects in classic psychology experiments. More advanced students in her Clinical Psychology course assume the roles of therapist and patient as they learn to solve realistic problems. “CASE and the Carnegie Foundation saw in Jerusha what we also see in her: an inspiring and very talented teacher whose pedagogical approach in the classroom and laboratory is informed by excellent scholarship,” said Julio de Paula, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, of the award.
For additional details about Detweiler-Bedell’s award, including her acceptance speech, visit this Lewis & Clark site.
The Chronicle of Higher Education (Washington, D.C.) 4 Faculty Members Are Honored as U.S. Professors of the Year
Inside Higher Ed (Washington, D.C.) Top Profs
USA Today (McLean, Va.) 2008 Professors of the Year prepare students for lifelong learning
The Oregonian (Portland, Ore.) Lewis & Clark professor wins national educator honor
Video: Sophomore featured in Project Happiness documentary
For sophomore John-Nuriel Vissell, the key to happiness lies in doing what you love. During Vissell’s senior year at Mount Madonna School in Watsonville, California, his Values Education class was offered a challenging opportunity to evaluate the concept of happiness with two other schools from India and Nigeria. Selected by Project Happiness, a non-profit group inspired by the Dalai Lama’s book “The Ethics for the New Millennium,” these three groups were filmed for an entire school year while interacting with each other through the internet and eventually meeting in India on a trip to visit the Dalai Lama.
For Vissell, this experience was life changing. After his group asked the Dalai Lama how to obtain lasting happiness, Vissell noted, “He sat silent for a while, then responded, ‘Well, I don’t know.’ It was the perfect answer. This was the pinnacle of our work on this project. We ascended the mountain and as soon as we met with him on the summit, he sort of brought us back down to where we started.”
Santa Cruz Sentenial (Santa Cruz, Calif.) Spreading ‘Happiness’ worldwide - one young person at a time
Education Professor Zaher Wahab contributes expertise to Winter Soldier forum
Zaher Wahab, professor of education:
Wahab contributed his expertise on the situation in Afghanistan as part of the Winter Soldier Northwest forum this month, an event held at First Unitarian Church in Portland. Winter Soldier hearings have been convened across the country to give U.S. veterans an opportunity to testify about their military service. In addition, panels of scholars, veterans, journalists, and other specialists give context to the testimony.
The panel discussion in which Wahab participated was titled, “Eyewitness Accounts of War: Local Soldiers, their Families, Iraqis and Afghans Testify on the Human Cost of War.”
“The average family [in Afghanistan] lives on one dollar per day,” Wahab said at the forum. “Two million people are seriously mentally ill, 70 percent of Afghanis are traumatized.”
Wahab splits his time between Lewis & Clark and Afghanistan, devoting six months of service each year to the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education. He is dedicated to helping normalize conditions in Afghanistan, and he believes “quality, equal and universal education is the key to establishing peace, security, democracy, harmony, and a healthy, stable economy in Afghanistan.”
Read more about Wahab and the Winter Soldier event online.
Mary Stuart Rogers Professor of Education Ruth Shagoury publishes book on young writers
Ruth Shagoury, Mary Stuart Rogers professor of education:
Shagoury published a book about educating young writers. “Raising Writers: Understanding and Nurturing Young Children’s Writing Development” (Allyn & Bacon, 2008) explores how primary educators can nurture young learners through the transition from spoken to written language.
Assistant Professor Kimberly Campbell discusses how to engage adolescent readers
Kimberly Campbell, assistant professor of language arts:
In April, Campbell served as a keynote speaker at the the Kansas Reading Association conference in Junction City, Kansas. Campbell’s presentation was titled “Less is More: Using Short Texts in Support of Adolescent Readers.”
In May, Campbell presented “Less is More: The Power of Essays to Engage Adolescent Readers” with Janet Allen and three YA authors at the International Reading Conference.
Assistant Professor Dorothy Aguilera examines language immersion models
Dorothy Aguilera, assistant professor of educational leadership:
In March, Aguilera presented “Restoring and Preserving Indigenous Languages: Three Indigenous Communities’ Successes with Language Immersion Models” at the American Education Research Association conference in New York. Aguilera’s presentation analyzed the language immersion models that are meant to revitalize and preserve the native languages of indigenous communities in grades K-12.
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