Guidelines

Nexus Learning Grant for 2013-2014

Nexus Grant Review Rubric

Deadlines

Applications are due April 12, 2013.

Notifications sent on May 10, 2013.

Grant funds must be used by June 30, 2014.

Previous Recipients

PHILADELPHIA UNIVERSITY NEXUS LEARNING™ GRANT RECIPIENTS FOR 2012-13

Kim Douglas, Assistant Professor of Landscape Architecture

Interdisciplinary Collaboration in the Design Studio

We must develop a new way of teaching design studio that takes the design studio into the real world and out of isolation and provides the missing link of collaboration among ‘experts’ and mirrors ‘real’ project work. We will develop an interdisciplinary collaborative studio over the summer that includes outside consultants and liberal arts faculty.  For this grant we intend to develop a studio curriculum that addresses collaboration among varied disciplines with landscape architecture and architecture students.  The collaborative studio will improve upon existing studios now being taught and developed with C-ABE and C-SLA as well as outside experts. 

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Katie Gindlesparger, Director of the Writing Program and Assistant Professor of Writing

Writing Across the Curriculum:  Writing Beyond Writing 101

PhilaU has a sophisticated structure for WAC already in place: we require writing in all four years and writing intensive courses in every major; additionally, many programs require extensive writing in courses not designated as writing intensive. The trouble is, many faculty inherit these structures but aren’t trained how to teach in them.

This grant addresses the question, “How do we convey writing in a way that doesn’t alienate.”  How might we help faculty integrate writing into their studios, labs, and specific disciplinary expectations?  This grant proposes a “teaching circle” for faculty to learn more about writing pedagogy.

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Katharine Jones, Associate Professor of Sociology, and Barbara Kimmelman, Associate Professor of History

Course Re-Design: The College Studies Capstone

Our purpose is to develop and pilot an alternative version of the current College Studies Capstone, Contemporary Perspectives in Fall 2013 that would integrate this Capstone with students’ senior year work in their majors, in order to revise both curricular content and encourage more active classroom practices.

Capstone classes are among the high impact practices that solidify student learning of concepts and skills, as evidenced by AACU data. They also showcase PhilaU’s commitment to integrative, collaborative learning based on active pedagogy.

The chief priority of this project is to achieve an integrated capstone experience that provides a more meaningful culminating experience of the students’ college careers by asking them to apply what they have learned in College Studies directly to their professional activities.

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Kihong Ku, Assistant Professor of Architecture, and Susan Frostén, Associate Professor of Architecture

Incorporating Open Source Knowledge Communities into the Research Skillset of the Design Student as Evidenced through Prototyping of Interactive Architecture
We propose to incorporate and promulgate the use of information from open source knowledge communities and social media networks into the information literacy and research skills agenda of the architecture program.  As entry points, we will use the studio, ARCH-502 Design X: Digital Methodologies and the theory seminar, ARCH-320 Ecology and Making. This supports proposed changes in the Architecture curriculum to create a more defined and enhanced design research agenda through a required theory seminar and design research studios.

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Meriel Tulante, Assistant Professor of Italian Literature and Chair of World Languages, with Professors Farida Ferradji (French and Arabic), Concetta Caporale (Italian), Eiko Carr (Japanese), Siegfried Boettjer (German), Carlos Gonzalez-Ferrin (Spanish), and Maria Peale (Spanish)

Developing Best Practices in Nexus Learning for World Languages

The purpose of this grant is to provide an intensive and focused faculty development opportunity for the World Languages instructors at Philadelphia University. Participation in the ACTFL conference will promote instructors’ development on a personal level for instructors as well as involve them in a research effort to experiment with and enhance language instruction at the university.

This project does not envisage a single pedagogical framework, but will explore different ways of teaching that reflect Nexus Learning practices and best serve Philadelphia University students. Meriel Tulante (Chair of World Languages) will lead a workshop before the conference to discuss Nexus Learning and the goals of the project as well as a workshop after the conference to consider and collate what we have learned.