SUNY Potdam

Guest speaker workshop series to promote undergrad research

09.17.09

SUNY Potsdam will host a guest speaker workshop series titled “Promoting Undergraduate Research: Principles and Practices” throughout the upcoming academic year at SUNY Potsdam.

The invited guest speakers will include Jo B. Paoletti with “Undergraduate Research: Off to a Good Start” on Friday, Oct. 2; Janet Stocks with “Undergraduate Research Across the Disciplines” on Friday, Oct. 23; Lynnette Young Overby with “Community-Based Research” on Friday, Nov. 6; Mary L. Crowe with “Integrating Teaching and Research” on Friday, Feb. 26; and Joseph F. Trimmer with “Beyond the Textbook: Creative Inquiry and Immersive Learning” on Friday, Apr. 23.

All workshop sessions will be hosted in the Learning and Teaching Excellence Center located in Crumb Library from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m.

Paoletti is an associate professor of American studies and director of The American Cultures Program at the University of Maryland College Park. She teaches courses that focus undergraduate research in gender differences, ethnic diversity and popular culture. 

A founding member of The International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Paoletti is the author of many articles, book chapters and monographs on curriculum design, service-learning and instructional application of technologies.

Stocks, a professor of sociology, is the former director of undergraduate research at Carnegie Mellon University. She currently serves as associate academic dean at Baldwin-Wallace College in Berea, OH.

Stocks recently served as chair of the Board of Governors of the National Conference on Undergraduate Research and chair of the Undergraduate Research Program Directors Division of the Council on Undergraduate Research.

Her academic areas of interest include teacher education, family, religion and qualitative methods.

Overby, former director of outreach and engagement at Michigan State University, currently serves as professor of theatre and director of the Undergraduate Research Program and Office of Service Learning at the University of Delaware.

She has had a multi-faceted career as administrator, educator, researcher, dancer and choreographer in both the arts and sciences with an emphasis on societal problems addressed through community, faculty and student collaboration.

She encourages participants to bring examples of potential projects that they may wish to pursue in community-based outreach initiatives.

Crowe is currently a professor of biology and the director of The Office of Undergraduate Research at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro.

She is an active researcher, member of the Council on Undergraduate Research, co-recipient of a $1.3 million grant from the National Institutes of Health to prepare minority students for work in the field of international health and frequent workshop presenter at undergraduate research conferences.

Crowe’s special focus is on promoting and sustaining research-rich and research-supportive curriculum.

Trimmer is the director of the Virginia B. Ball Center for Creative Inquiry at Ball State University as well as professor of English.

Trimmer is also the author of numerous articles and books on literature, culture and literacy. His textbooks include, “Understanding Others: Cultural and Cross-Cultural Studies and the Teaching of Literature” (1992), “Writing With a Purpose” (2004) and “The Riverside Reader” (2007).

His six-part PBS documentary film series “Middletown” (1982) was nominated for 10 Emmys and won first prize at the prestigious Sundance Film Festival.

The SUNY Potsdam Guest Speaker Workshop Series is funded as part of the College’s five-year, $1.6 million Title III Strengthening Institutions Grant Award from the U.S. Department of Education.

For more information, please contact Gerald L. Ratliff, Title III project director, at ratlifgl@potsdam.edu or (315) 267-2107.

The workshops are free, and the public is invited to attend.

Contact:
Gerald L. Ratliff
(315) 267-2107 | ratlifgl@potsdam.edu