CAS faculty initiatives to enhance future undergraduate education

CAS logo on white with borderFive College of Arts and Sciences faculty members have been selected to receive funding from the Samuel H. and Patricia W. Smith Teaching and Learning Endowment for four projects that will enhance undergraduate teaching and learning.

College of Arts and Sciences recipients of the 2018‑19 competitive grants and their projects are:

  • ASHLEY BOYD, Department of English
    Project: “Washington State Senate Bill 5433 and English Teacher Education: Redesigning Curriculum for Inclusive Education” will focus on developing a capstone experience for teacher candidates comprising content and pedagogies that address Indigenous history, culture and governmental relations. Partnerships with regional tribes and the Center for Digital Scholarship and Curation will support the creation of culturally responsive materials and approaches.
  • KEN FAUNCE, Department of History
    Project: “Engaging Students with Digital Active Learning Resources,” will build assignments, activities and digital resources, including classroom response systems, Story Maps, Prezi, and Google Slides among others, to enhance student engagement and learning.
  • JANET PETERS AND DEE POSEY, Department of Psychology
    Project: “Teaching the Teachers: Developing the Instructional Practicum Course for Psychology,” will prepare a suite of instructional materials around high-impact practices such as learning communities, experiential learning and capstone experiences to better prepare undergraduate teaching assistants for their roles.
  • SUSAN ROSS, Department of English
    Project: “Dialogic and Multimodal Student Engagement with War Literatures,” will help students engage in difficult dialogues on sensitive subjects through her project. It will include students’ creative multimodal projects on literatures and experiences of war.

The Smith fund was established in 2000 to honor retiring WSU President Smith and his wife. It has since funded dozens of faculty-initiated projects that, in turn, have directly and indirectly impacted the education of thousands of WSU students, university pedagogy and industry knowledge and practices across the world.

Read about all fourteen recipients of the Smith Teaching and Learning grants on the WSU Insider website.

By Bev Makhani, Office of Undergraduate Education, for WSU News