Heart Soul COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Volume 10 No. 1 Northern State University Spring 2012 The Introductory Math Program started as a pilot program in the fall of 2009. The program was designed to incorporate collaborative learning strategies in MATH 101 Intermediate Algebra and MATH 102 College Algebra with the intent of improving student success rates in these courses. (Student success is defined as a grade of C or higher.) The primary component of the program is a required lab that meets for one hour, once a week, and is offered in conjunction with the standard courses which regularly meet for one hour, three times a week. The students work together in the lab solving math problems in small groups under the watch of Instructor Assistants (IAs). The IAs are undergraduate students who have successfully completed these courses. The IAs are chosen for their problem-solving skills and their ability to communicate their understanding of the material and provide guidance to beginning students to help them succeed in these courses. The IAs are trained to help students take ownership of their learning and to facilitate the students’ work. Mr. Roger Wilson ran the program in the fall of 2009 with three labs and eight IAs under the guidance and direction of the Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, Dr. C. G. “Tino” Mendez, who is a mathematician. Since then, the program has continued to grow to seven labs and fifteen IAs in the spring of 2012 under the supervision of Ms. Jennifer Dolejsi. Dr. Tariq Alraqad and Dr. Ricardo Rojas of the NSU Math faculty have actively participated in the program. The program will expand next fall with the addition of two new labs for the MATH 021 Basic Algebra courses taught at the University College. The Introductory Math Program has dramatically increased the success rates of students in MATH 101 and MATH 102. In a study done in the fall 2011 by the South Dakota Board of Regents, Northern State University’s student success rates in MATH 101 increased from the 50% range in 200809 to the 60% range in the last two years. Even more impressively, the student success rates in MATH 102 increased from 60.1% in 2008-09 to 71.5% in 2009-10 and 69% in 2010-11. NSU numbers are now the highest in the state, ahead of the SD School of Mines, with student success rates of 70.8% in 2009-10 and 66.2% in 2010-11. The students enrolled in the program enjoy the lab and see it as a valuable learning experience. A student wrote: “I liked the fact that we worked together as a group. It was easier to ask questions in a small group of 5-6 people because it was much less intimidating than larger classroom settings. I think the labs are crucial to gaining academic achievement in math courses because math tends to be a very difficult subject for most people.” Another student observed: “I really liked having the lab. I have never done well in math, but the lab helped me to be successful in this course.” The IAs who help out with the labs also gain valuable work experience. The majority of the IAs are math education or elementary education majors, and being able to work with students gives the IAs work experience and insight into their future careers as teachers. A veteran IA stated: “My overall experience as an IA has been very educational. I have learned different approaches to different problems, and I have seen different positive and negative aspects of different teaching styles. Being an IA will benefit me as a future math teacher as I am learning new ways to explain common math problems, and I am better able to understand the struggles that students go through.” NSU College Algebra Student Success Rates Best in the State under New Program “I really liked having the lab. I have never done well in math, but the lab helped me to be successful in this course.”
Northern State University’s Rising Scholars Program is a dual-creditenrollment program which provides highschool students with the opportunity to take college-level courses and receive both college credit and high-school credit for those courses. The program was established in 2005 and is open to junior and senior high-school students. The Rising Scholars Program offers two options. In the first option, the courses are taught at the student’s own high school during the regular high-school day. These courses are taught by highly qualified high-school faculty who must meet the qualifications of adjunct faculty at NSU (a Master’s degree and significant graduate course work in the discipline). The courses use a college-level textbook and corresponding syllabus. Each course is assigned an NSU faculty mentor who is an expert in that subject area. The mentors work with the high-school teachers to ensure that the offering is a college-level course. In the second option, local or regional high-schools students take courses on the NSU campus. Students may register for any scheduled course for which they have met the prerequisites. In this case, students pay regular tuition and fees, but may qualify for available scholarships. There are significant benefits to students participating in the program. After highschool graduation, as entering college freshmen, these students will have college courses credited on their NSU transcripts, thereby reducing the time and cost needed to complete their college degrees. The courses are offered at a greatly reduced tuition, with corresponding savings to the students enrolled in the program. In addition, the program provides an excellent opportunity for the students to be challenged academically throughout the duration of their last two years of high school. The students taking courses on campus also have the opportunity to learn about college life while still living at home, which will help them adjust to the challenges of the college experience. The Rising Scholars Program has experienced significant growth. The student enrollments in the program have more than doubled in the last three years, from an enrollment of 117 students in Fall 2008 to 269 students in the Fall of 2011. Currently, there are twelve courses offered in seven South Dakota high schools. The courses include English Composition, Introduction to Literature, Biology, Chemistry, U.S. History, Art, Web Authoring, and Calculus. The Rising Scholars Program is under the direction of Ms. Terry Piatz. She can be reached at terry.piatz@northern.edu or 605626-7197. NSU Rising Scholars Program Enrollments Continue to Grow The new accelerated nursing option at NSU will be open to the first cohort of students starting in January 2013. South Dakota State University has established an accelerated nursing site here in collaboration with NSU. All the classes and offices will be housed at NSU. The accelerated nursing program is a twelve-month curriculum in which students with an existing bachelor’s degree complete all the required nurse coursework for a Bachelor’s in Science in Nursing (BSN). Students will have to apply to SDSU to be admitted into the program. The required coursework for a BSN is sixtytwo credits, including clinical work to be completed at Avera St. Luke’s hospital or the Sanford Clinic in Aberdeen. The requirements for the program are an overall GPA of 2.8 and a GPA of 3.0 (with grades no lower than a C) in the pre-nursing coursework. Upon completion of the program, the students will receive a BSN from SDSU. The goal of the program is to have forty students per calendar year. Accelerated Nursing is an intensive program, but worth the time investment since there is a need for nurses in northeastern South Dakota, particularly with the growing community of Aberdeen. Information regarding the Accelerated Nursing Program in Aberdeen can be found at http://www. sdstate.edu/nurs/programs/undergraduate/ bachelors/aberdeen.cfm. Dr. Alyssa Kiesow, NSU Professor of Biology, is the program’s contact person and advisor. The first deadline for applicants is September 25, 2012. NSU expects to see enrollment growth, as students seeking a four-year degree become interested in qualifying for this program. Mr. Daryl Kosiak joined NSU faculty in 2012 as Instructor of Sociology. Following graduation from Concordia College in Moorhead, Minnesota with Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in History and Political Science, Kosiak served as a high-school social-studies teacher and coach in northeastern South Dakota. After graduating from the University of North Dakota (UND) School of Law in Grand Forks, he was admitted to the North Dakota Bar and worked in southeastern North Dakota in private practice and as a state prosecutor. From 1986 through 2009 he worked in several different positions as an attorney with the U.S. Department of Justice Federal Bureau of Prisons. Following retirement from government service, Kosiak enrolled in the Ph.D. in Criminal Justice program at the UND. He has completed all course work necessary for a Ph.D. and continues to work on his dissertation. While in Grand Forks, he taught college-level criminal-justice courses at UND and the University of Minnesota, Crookston. During his legal and teaching career, Kosiak wrote several articles in criminal justice and is the co-author of a college textbook on corrections. Dr. Anthony M. Wachs, native of Aberdeen, was hired as the Director of Forensics in 2011. He just received his Ph.D. in Rhetoric from Duquesne University this spring. Dr. Wachs’ areas of emphasis are the rhetoric and philosophy of technology, and the rhetoric and philosophy of interpersonal and organizational communication. Wachs earned his M.A. in Speech Communication from Kansas State University in 2008, and completed his B.S. in Political Science from Black Hills State University in 2005. In his doctoral dissertation, Wachs connects Marshall McLuhan’s work on the classical and medieval trivium to McLuhan’s media theory. His research agenda is focused upon utilizing the classical and medieval trivium tradition as a basis for understanding technology and culture in the twenty-first century. In particular, he is interested in transcending the problematics of thought and being since the rejection of this tradition within the Protestant Reformation, the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, and within Postmodernism. New Faculty at NSU Accelerated Nursing Program
In May of 2011, the NSU English Department held its inaugural Literary Tour of England led by Dr. Elizabeth Haller. This nine-day tour included the inspiration for Harry Potter’s Diagon Alley in York, the Brontë parsonage in Haworth, Jane Austen’s home in Chawton, and a Dickens walk in London. In addition to literary sites, the participants toured York Minster, Windsor Castle, Westminster Abbey, and St. Paul’s Cathedral, and witnessed the historic Changing of the Keys ceremony at the Tower of London (including a private showing of the Royal Jewels), watched the Changing of the Guard ceremony at Buckingham Palace, and viewed a performance of Shakespeare’s Much Ado About Nothing at the reconstructed Globe Theatre. For 2012, Dr. Haller decided to broaden the scope of this annual tour to a Literary Tour of Europe, including the countries of Ireland, Scotland, and England. This elevenday tour includes Dublin, Edinburgh, York, and London, focusing on locations devoted to Irish authors James Joyce and Oscar Wilde, Scottish authors Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and Robert Burns, and British authors William Shakespeare, William Wordsworth, Charles Dickens, and J.K. Rowling. In addition to the York and London activities from the 2011 tour, some highlights of the 2012 tour include a visit to Edinburgh Castle and Dublin Castle, a ferry across the Irish Sea to Wales, a tour of Wordsworth’s Dove Cottage in the Lake District, and a Harry Potter walk in Edinburgh. These Literary Tours are a fun and enriching experience, providing NSU students and community members the chance to immerse themselves in the United Kingdom’s rich literary history while making memories that will last a lifetime. Dr. Haller is currently planning the next Literary Tour of Europe, which will take place in May 2013. Literary Tours of Europe Dr. Guangwei Ding, Associate Professor of Chemistry, collaborated on three articles in 2011: “Effect of Lipids on Sorption/ Desorption Hysteresis in Natural Organic Matter,” co-authored with J. A. Rice, was published in Chemosphere; “Soil Erosion Control Practices in Northeast China: A Mini-Review,” co-authored with Xiaobing Liu, Shaoliang Zhang, Xingyi Zhang, and, R. M. Cruse, was published in Soil and Tillage Research; and “Research on Soil Microbial Ecology Under Different Soil Organic Matter Levels in Farmland,” co-authored with Xiao-guang Jiao, Chong-sheng Gao, Yue-yu Sui, and Xing-yi Zhang, was published in Scientia Agricultura Sinica. Dr. Elizabeth Haller, Assistant Professor of English, published a chapter on Dante Alighieri in the two-volume Greenwood Press reference work titled Icons of the Middle Ages. Dr. Alyssa Kiesow, Assistant Professor of Biology, published two articles in 2011: “Detection of Domestic Cattle Gene Introgression in a Small Population of North American Bison,” co-authored with T. Kasmarik, and R. Binstock, was published in the Proceedings of South Dakota Academy of Science; and “Characterization and Isolation of Microsatellite Loci for Northern Flying Squirrels (Glaucomys sabrinus),” coauthored with L. E. Wallace and H. B. Britten, was published in Western North American Naturalist. Dr. Ginny Lewis, Associate Professor of German, has published a new edition of a popular novel from nineteenthcentury Germany entitled Die Geschichte des Diethelm von Buchenberg (The Story of Diethelm von Buchenberg). This novel was written in 1852 by German-Jewish author Berthold Auerbach (1812-1882) and has been published by the Wehrhahn Verlag of Hannover, Germany, in celebration of the 200th anniversary of Auerbach’s birth. The novel is accompanied by Lewis’s afterword, in which she shows how the author’s stellar reputation was undermined during the Bismarck era by anti-Semitic German politics. continued on following page… Student Awards, Research and Publications Nicholas Blazer won second place in the Brown County Historical Society Research and Writing Contest in May 2011. Blazer’s paper, titled “Drawn to War,” was written under the supervision of Dr. David Grettler. Caitlyn Friesz won first place in the Brown County Historical Society Research and Writing Contest in May 2011. Friesz’s paper, titled “Railroads and the Rise and Fall of Evarts and LeBeau, South Dakota,” was written under the supervision of Dr. David Grettler. Kyle Klipfel won first place in speaker points in novice parliamentary debate at the Pi Kappa Delta’s national tournament in March 2012. Chris Maier won award for best paper for non-member of Phi Alpha Theta, a History Honors Society, at the History Conference at the University of South Dakota in April. Two other students, Caitlin Friesz and Jon Redmond, had papers accepted for presentation at the conference. Cassandra Potter had an essay published in the March/April 2012 online issue of Orion Magazine. The essay, entitled “Rolling Grasslands of Winfred, South Dakota,” was selected by senior editor Eileen Bolinski of Living on Earth for radio broadcast in June. Anne Tingley won an “Excellence” award for placing in the top 30 percent of contestants in the oral interpretation of prose at the Pi Kappa Delta’s national tournament in March 2012. The first NSU Undergraduate Research Forum took place this January under the direction of Dr. Alyssa Kiesow. The group of students who presented their research projects included Lu Xu; Devena Holmes; Amber Wolken and Chaya McCormack; Eric Peterson and Geoffrey Firmin; Chelsie Bickel and Amber Olson; Caitlin Peterson and Ethan Brown; Claire Kopfmann and Sarah Hintz; and Brittany Hiten and Cameron Hendrickson.
Northern State University 1200 S. Jay St. Aberdeen, SD 57401-7198 www.northern.edu Nonprofit Organization U.S. Postage PAID Aberdeen, South Dakota Permit No. 77 COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES Dr. Pen Pearson, Professor of English, received a competitive Individual Artist’s Grant from the South Dakota Arts Council for July 2011-June 2012 to continue work on her biographical novel of early twentieth-century British poet Charlotte Mew. Dr. Pearson was a visiting writer and speaker at the first annual graduate symposium at the University of South Dakota in September. She also chaired a panel of original creative writing readings at the Western Literature Association Conference in Missoula, Montana in October. Dr. Jon Schaff, Professor of Political Science, published a chapter on U. S. Senate elections in South Dakota entitled “The Politics of Defeat” in The Plains Political Tradition: Essays on South Dakota Political Culture. He gave a presentation that promoted the book at a conference in November at Dakota Wesleyan University. Dr. Schaff also presented a paper titled “Was Lincoln a Progressive?: Lincoln and Progressive Political Thought” at the annual meeting of the Midwest Political Science Association. Dr. Steven Usitalo, Associate Professor of History, was the recipient of a J. William Fulbright Research and Lecturing Award to Armenia (hosted by the Faculty of International Relations and History, Yerevan State University), 2011-2012. Dr. Usitalo delivered six lectures at various venues across Armenia. In May 2012, he will be giving a seventh, and final, talk at the Caucasus Institute in Yerevan, Armenia; the talk is entitled “The Workshop for Armenian/Turkish Scholarship and De-Essentializing the Debate on the Origins of the Armenian Genocide.” Dr. Usitalo also published a book review of Simon Werrett’s Fireworks: Pyrotechnic Arts & Sciences in European History (The University of Chicago Press, 2010), in Eighteenth-Century Studies. Dr. Patrick J. Whiteley, Professor of English, delivered a paper titled “Silence and Exile in Bernard MacLaverty’s Grace Notes” at the Midwest American Conference for Irish Studies (Ireland and Its Global Influence) on the campus of Minnesota State University, Moorhead, in October 2011. NORTHERN STATE UNIVERSITY Aberdeen, South Dakota Stay in touch with your school – visit www.northern.edu
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