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A newsletter for the students, faculty and staff of the Collin College. Published monthly. For information or submissions, call 972.599.3142. Cougar News welcomes student and faculty submissions. Next deadline: April 10 All submissions are due by 5 p.m. on the due date. Photos cannot be returned. Text should be emailed to mrobinson@ccccd.edu or sent on disk. Please submit copy that is proofed, edited and saved in Word format. Cougar News staff: Lisa Vasquez, director; Mark Robinson, editor; Marcy Cadena-Smith, contributor; Dana Schmitz, contributor; Sydney Portilla-Diggs, campus correspondent; Stephanie Hall, student correspondent; Nick Young, photographer and layout.
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College cultivates scholars across disciplines
By Sydney Portilla-Diggs
Campus Correspondent
Collin College’s Preston Ridge Campus will launch this year’s installation of Cultivating Scholars: Research Across the Disciplines April 27.
Cultivating Scholars is an initiative to encourage and celebrate student research. Collin College students will present original research projects in a variety of academic disciplines. Collin College psychology professor Dr. Salena Brody conceived of the project to celebrate student research in psychology. The first student research showcase was held in the spring semester of 2005. The 2005 research showcase featured more than 200 student displays. Faculty at Preston Ridge wanted to expand the showcase to more disciplines.
Gary Hodge, dean of Social and Behavioral Sciences at the Spring Creek Campus attended the showcase last year and saw the value of opening the opportunity to faculty and students on all campuses. This year’s showcase promises even more student displays. Beginning in Spring 2008, the week of showcase events on each campus will culminate with a keynote speaker.
“I have proposed to Collin College administrative leadership a plan for a student research institute, and the Cultivating Scholars initiative is hopefully a step towards that becoming a reality,” Hodge said.
According to Hodge, Vice President of Academic Affairs Dr. Thom Chesney and Preston Ridge Campus Provost Dr. Belinda Newman have both been very supportive of the student research showcase initiative. Hodge stresses that this initiative is faculty-driven.
“The creativity and innovation present in Collin faculty make this [initiative] possible,” Hodge said. He added that the Cultivating Scholars initiative is designed to encourage and support efforts by faculty to actively engage students in scholarly research. The initiative endeavors to showcase student research projects in a campus celebration each spring.
He said that the goal of the initiative is to provide students with enhanced opportunities for learning that is scholarly and contextual in nature.
“I think our goal is best captured in the following quote from Jack Beacham, distinguished teaching professor at the University of Buffalo: ‘I should be putting my time, effort, and creativity into promoting the active engagement, thinking, questioning and learning of my students. Once we move beyond a transmission model of teaching and learning, in which students are passive, to a constructivist model of liberal education, in which students are actively engaged, curious, reflective, and thinking critically, the best learning technology becomes the posing of a problem, issue, or question for the students (and this is real, not magic),'” Hodge said.
More than 40 faculty members are involved in planning these events. Hodge has a district advisory committee with 14 members. The advisory body will coordinate the activities on a district level. In addition, each campus has a task force for planning the activities that will be unique to that campus. The provosts and academic deans of each individual campus will generously provide funding.
This year Rachel Simmons is the keynote speaker for the event. Simmons is the author of the New York Times bestseller "Odd Girl Out: The Hidden Culture of Aggression in Girls," the first book to explore the phenomenon of bullying between girls. Simmons has appeared on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Today, Dateline NBC and NPR's Diane Rehm Show and Talk of the Nation. Simmons' work has been profiled in numerous publications, including The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post and The Los Angeles Times. Simmons speaks all over the country to girls, parents and teachers about female aggression and its implications for girls' and women's lives. She grew up in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, DC. After graduating from Vassar College, where she double majored in Women's Studies and Political Science, she worked for Mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani in New York's City Hall as an Urban Fellow.
Simmons won a Rhodes scholarship in 1997 from New York. She worked for New York's Senior Senator Charles E. Schumer as deputy finance director for his U.S. Senate campaign in 1998, and after the election attended Oxford University where she began studying female aggression. Simmons is the founding director of The Girls’ Leadership Institute and a consultant to schools all over the country. "Odd Girl Out" was adapted into a Lifetime television movie, which premiered in April 2005.
Cultivating Scholars: Research Across the Disciplines is scheduled for April 27 from 4-7 p.m. at Collin’s Preston Ridge Campus’ Event Center.
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