Liberal Arts Voices

Read the perspectives of our current students

Discovery Grant Competition Opens – Especially For Paterno Fellows

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Paterno Fellows have a special interest in undergraduate research since they are required to complete a senior thesis as members of the Schreyer Honors College.  And the Discovery Grant competition gives Paterno Fellows a chance to win significant funding–$2500–for research to be completed next summer.  Do plan to apply–the deadline is February 10— particularly if you are now in your junior year.  For information and application materials, see visit the Undergraduate Research website.

Note Well:  For the past few years the College of the Liberal Arts has had more Discovery Grant winners than any other PSU college.  The biggest reason, of course, is the quality of our students. Check out a list of last year’s winners and the titles of their projects.  A dozen or so of these students are from Liberal Arts (and nine are Paterno Fellows–Borriello, Dorian, Foster, Heimark, Kilkelly, Ogram, Rotiroti, Sroka, Theberge).  

But another reason is that Liberal Arts faculty and staff help students to refine their applications. To get a head start on the application process, interested students should attend a workshop on January 26 (Thursday) at 4 pm in 124 Sparks.  At the workshop you’ll have a chance to see some example proposals (including successful ones!), you’ll be able to ask specific questions, and by attending you’ll earn the right to share your subsequent draft materials (if you want) with sympathetic and experienced Liberal Arts grantmanshippers. 

You have a good chance to win, in other words.  So give it a try!

Liberal Arts Staff Social Media Workshop

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Today, College of the Liberal Arts staff participated in a Social Media Workshop sponsored by the Office of Undergraduate Studies.  Staff from a variety of departments, including Anthropology, Economics, English, Psychology, and Sociology, just to name a few, attended the workshop. The workshop was designed to get Liberal Arts staff familiar with social media and to begin thinking about ways to implement those technologies into their work environment.

Associate Dean Long, Ashley Tarbet, and Jillian Balay led the workshop.  The presenters talked about the ways that LAUS is currently making use of social media.  They discussed the LAUS blogs, Facebook page, Twitter accounts, Flickr account, and You Tube channel.  The presenters emphasized that the overall goal of LAUS’ new social media initiative is to build a community around the undergraduate experience in the College of the Liberal Arts at Penn State.

Take a look at a screencast of the Invitation to Participation Prezi below:

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Invitation to Participation on Prezi

The workshop participants had the opportunity to brainstorm ways that their departments or units could also begin using social media technology. Several Liberal Arts staff members thought that creating departmental Facebook pages would be a good way to begin to build an on-line community.  Others thought that Flickr pages would allow their units to draw attention to certain events by posting pictures in a more public domain.   

The workshop was a great way to bring Liberal Arts staff together to begin talking about ways that all Liberal Arts departments can use social media to build an even stronger community.

Take a look at some pictures from the workshop:

Thank you to everyone who attended the workshop.  We look forward to watching you develop your own social media technologies. 

Please feel free to share your thoughts and do some additional brainstorming by commenting on this blog post or adding to our Google Doc.

First Year Seminars and Social Media

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We ♥ blog
Originally uploaded by tarop

This year we are encouraging faculty in the College of the Liberal Arts who are teaching First Year Seminars to consider integrating social media technology into their courses to engage students around learning objectives central to their academic success.

At three points during the Fall 2010 semester, we will be feeding case studies and vignettes to the Penn State Rock Ethics Institute blog intended to encourage a conversation about the Penn State Principles and academic integrity. Hopefully, students will comment directly on the blog, adding to a College-wide conversation on ethical issues relevant to undergraduate education.

We also plan on holding two information sessions for freshmen to learn more about the opportunities and resources available to them as students in the College of the Liberal Arts.
One presentation will cover call enrichment activities like internships, education abroad, undergraduate research, and involvement in student and community organizations. The other session will (tentatively) cover advising and university resources (learning centers, CAPS, disability services, etc.)

For those faculty interested in thinking more broadly about how to integrate technology into their course, we are planning a First Year Seminar Summer workshop. The workshop will introduce ways to incorporate such social media technologies as blogging, podcasting, wikis, twitter, and YouTube into the First Year Seminar experience.  FYS faculty interested in this workshop should contact me at: longc@psu.edu. (Or you can direct message twitter me @LAUSDeanLong).

In the spirit of the dialogue these initiatives are designed to cultivate, I thought I might conclude with a specific question to all faculty and students who have read this post to this point:

Can you think of specific examples of how social media technology could be used in a First-Year seminar to deepen the educational experience of students and faculty?

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