Faculty Fellows Alumni
Academic Year 2020-2021
The Social Just Classroom: Teaching for Equity 2030
Facilitator
Fellows
Dr. Kristen Cvancara is a Professor at Minnesota State University, Mankato (USA) in the Department of Communication Studies and also serves as the University Fellowship Coordinator. Her areas of research include interpersonal communication and social influence. She investigates the socialization and use of hurtful messages among romantics, siblings, and in parent-child relationships. She earned a Fulbright Scholar Award (Finland, 2012) to investigate sibling communication patterns and bullying behavior in schools. She has published research in the Journal of Family Communication, Personal Relationships, Communication Quarterly, Communication Teacher, North American Journal of Psychology, and has authored book chapters in the edited books Anti- and Pro-Social Communication and Bullying Among University Students.
Dr. Kristin A. Scott is a Professor of Marketing and International Business at Minnesota State University, Mankato with a Ph.D. from Oklahoma State University. She teaches Principles of Marketing, Consumer Behavior, Integrated Marketing Communications, and Fair Trade Study Abroad in Belize. Her research interests include materialism and sustainability and understanding how society can move towards more sustainable consumption. Her most current research investigates how consumers repurpose products to increase lifespans and how non-profit organizations can increase their impact in poverty alleviation efforts. Overall, she strives to engage in research that has a beneficial societal impact to improve well-being. She has been published in the Journal of Marketing Theory and Practice, Journal of Business Research, and the Journal of Macromarketing.
Dr. Jameel Haque is an assistant Professor in the History department and the Director of the Kessel Peace Institute. Dr. Haque has been a tireless social justice activist in Mankato during his time here, worked with a wide variety of groups to achieve increased intercommunal dialogue and understanding. He has published and forthcoming works on the history of US involvement in the Middle East before WWI and on anti-Muslim bias in world history textbooks.
Jessica Schomberg is a Professor in Minnesota State University, Mankato's Library Services department, where they have worked behind the scenes and directly with students and faculty to provide accessible information resources. Jessica's research focus is on taking a critical approach to disability in libraries. They have published in journals including Library Trends and In the Library with the Lead Pipe as well as the edited anthology The Politics and Theory of Critical Librarianship. Most recently published is their co-written book Beyond Accommodation: Creating an Inclusive Workplace for Disabled Library Workers.
Daniel Schwartz is the Assistant Director for Student Advising & Exchange at Kearney Center for International Student Services. Dan's role is to help international students understand federal immigration regulations and benefits, navigate campus life and academic policies, and facilitate opportunities for exchange students and scholars in Mankato through our university's global partnerships. Dan has an MS in Experiential Education and his research interest is in intercultural learning and how individuals think and act in situations that disorient them.
Abstracts from this Cohort:
Learning Outcomes- Karen Lybeck, Kristin Scott, Jessica Schomberg
The purpose of this study was to investigate the understanding and experiences that MSU-Mankato faculty have had with developing the recently mandated diversity, equity, and inclusion outcomes for new and revised program proposals. These outcomes are part of the Equity 2030 initiative. The research is broken up into two sections, which will be published as separate papers. Project 1: Using critical discourse analysis, we problematize and critique both the stated goals and the implementation of this initiative. Using the lens of critical race theory (CRT), we work to unmask language that maintains Whiteness as a neutral default by asking these research questions: Will the language of DEI in institutional communication as used by administrators and faculty challenge or maintain systemic bias? Will the language of subsequent DEI proposals challenge or maintain Whiteness as uncritiqued norm? Project 2: Of particular interest for this study were the participants' experiences writing these outcomes, their understanding of what these outcomes entail, how they planned to integrate this content into their courses and assess these outcomes, and what professional development they would like to see to help them integrate and assess these program outcomes in the future. We evaluated faculty member’s current ability to write, teach, and assess DEI outcomes using mixed methods research (survey and interviews). We used text analysis tools to compare faculty definitions of equity, diversity, and inclusion to the definitions provided by the Association of American Colleges & Universities. We also discussed what types of professional development faculty would be willing to invest in as well as what areas of professional development are most effective in promoting EDI outcomes, based on extant research.
CETL Certificate - Social Justice from the Inside Out: Starting with Ourselves & Building Resources to Support Social Justice Collaboration- Kristen Cvancara
The uniqueness of our lived experiences, the intersectionalities associated with our identities, and the implicit biases we harbor all contribute to the ways in which we (dis)engage in social justice advocacy. How we understand social justice intrApersonally impacts how we communicate it intERpersonally. Communication theory helps us understand how our beliefs and attitudes shape the messages we convey and receive from others. The main project involved designing a CETL certificate program to enable participants to prepare for social justice advocacy through purposeful self-exploration. In addition, a secondary project involved promoting the Teaching & Learning Commons (TLC), a digital repository within Cornerstone® in which Culturally Responsive Teaching Materials created and used by the campus community can be uploaded and accessed. A chart of advocacy groups was posted to the repository and a video promoting the TLC website was sent to administrators and leaders across campus. The overarching objective of both projects was to promote reflection on social justice practices necessary to achieve the 2030 Equity goals.
Reflection: Both projects were completed, with varying results. The certificate was implemented in Fall 2021. Four sessions of 90 minutes were held involving a small group of MSU faculty and staff. The sessions were scaffolded in a progression to advance from an initial focus on self-identity, to familiarity/(dis)comfort with social justice themes, to personal communication styles/approaches, and finished with each participant creating a personal plan for infusing relevant social justice practices in their work on campus. The digital repository continues to exist, but no noticeable support came from this promotional effort. Lessons learned and implications for each project will be discussed.
Quality Improvement In Online Teaching and Learning
Facilitator
Fellows
Dr. Qiang Ye joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Technology (ECET), Minnesota State University, Mankato, USA, as an Assistant Professor in Sept. 2019. He had been a Post-Doctoral Fellow from Dec. 2016 to Nov. 2018 and then a Research Associate from Dec. 2018 to Sept. 2019 at the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), University of Waterloo, Canada, working with Prof. Weihua Zhuang and Prof. Xuemin (Sherman) Shen. He was the coordinator of the Sofeware-Defined Networking (SDN) Group in the Broadband Communications Research (BBCR) Lab from 2017-2019. He received the Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Canada, in Sept. 2016, under the supervision of Prof. Weihua Zhuang. He received the M.S. degree in Communication and Information System, under the supervision of Prof. Su Pan, and the B.S. degree in Networking Engineering from the Nanjing University of Posts and Telecommunications (NUPT), Nanjing, China, in 2012 and 2009, respectively.
Dr. Susan Schalge, a native of western New York State (Go Bills!), has been living and working in Minnesota since she began her graduate studies in Anthropology at the University of Minnesota. Her areas of specialization include sociocultural anthropology, urban and applied anthropology, gender, mothering, social organization, and the anthropology of higher education. Her dissertation research focused on women's informal sector labor and household organization in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. She has studied the practice of mothering and motherhood cross-culturally. Dr. Schalge is a proud first-generation college graduate and has recently expanded her research to include education and first-generation college student experiences. She is a founding member of the Maverick Firsts initiative at MSU which works to increase awareness of and community for first-gen students, faculty, and staff on campus.
Dr. Rebekah Degener is an Assistant Professor of Elementary & Literacy Education. A former elementary educator, she has a Master’s in Children’s Literature and a PhD in Literature for Children and Young Adults. She teaches literacy methods courses for undergraduate and graduate students. Her research interests include racial justice in literacy education, sports literacy in the elementary classroom, and developing elementary teacher candidates’ dispositions toward anti-racist teaching. Her scholarship frequently examines how to prepare teacher candidates to teach from a critical literacy lens utilizing children’s literature as a tool to spark conversations about power, equity, and justice. She is a current faculty fellow in Minnesota State University, Mankato’s CETL Quality Improvement in Online Teaching faculty fellowship program and the University of Michigan’s TeachingWorks fellowship program.
Abstracts from this Cohort:
Decreasing Opportunity Gaps in Gateway Courses
Facilitator
Dr. Jeffrey R. Pribyl teaches Chemistry. His research focuses on chemistry education issues related to teaching and learning chemistry as well as initiatives incorporating guided inquiry into the curriculum.
Fellows
Dr. Başak Bektaş is an Assistant Professor of Civil Engineering at Minnesota State University. Previously, she was a program director at the Iowa State University (ISU) Institute for Transportation (InTrans). Her interdisciplinary background includes a master’s degree in industrial engineering with a focus on systems management. Dr. Bektaş’s research experience is on infrastructure asset management with a focus on bridges, pavement and pavement markings, bridge preservation, performance measurement, asset performance modeling, risk and reliability analysis, engineering economic analysis, and transportation safety. Dr. Bektas has served as the PI on projects that addressed asset management and preservation with the Federal Highway Administration, U.S. DOT, National Cooperative Highway Research Program, Iowa Department of Transportation, Iowa Highway Research Board, Minnesota Department of Transportation and Wisconsin Department of Transportation. She chairs Transportation Research Board AHD35 Bridge Management Committee and IRF Asset Management Committee. She is a founding member of AHD37 Bridge Preservation Committee and Federal Highway Administration Bridge Preservation Expert Task Group. Dr. Bektas is experienced in applying statistical methods and data mining to a variety of transportation problems and her asset management research has had included quality control, management and analysis of various data sets. Dr. Bektas also teaches courses on structural engineering, transportation engineering, infrastructure asset management and engineering economics.
Dr. Pavan Karra is working as Assistant Professor in Mechanical and Civil Engineering at Minnesota State, Mankato. He started working at MSU in Fall 2019. Prior to joining MSU, he taught for 10 years in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Department at Trine University, Indiana. He has some experience in educational research. He reviews papers for American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference, where the focus includes improving engineering educational outcomes in students, improving gender gap, and improving diversity and inclusion. He published two papers over the past three years in ASEE (conference) which dealt with providing cost-effective alternatives to expensive equipment with the hope that, this cost-effective equipment, will help improve retention in undergraduate students. Students these days are more concrete learners than abstract learners and the designed cost-effective equipment is expected to help students perform experiments and obtain an improved undergraduate educational/research experience. He teaches ME 201 at MSU and this course includes students with diverse backgrounds. He has made some efforts to be inclusive and reach out to students of diverse background. This includes providing one-on-one (or one-on-group) interaction with students outside classroom. Some of these efforts have born fruit and he sees a stark difference from Fall (2019) to Spring (2020), based on Exam 1, but the final results will only be available at the end of this semester (Spring 2020). In ME 201, which includes programming (problem-solving), he noticed that students from atypical background struggle in the programming aspect. He planned the syllabus (without changing learning outcomes) to cover topics which were entirely part of their prior experience but covered under a new paradigm. He learned from his prior experience that, students learn best when either the physics of the problem is novel to them or the mathematics of the problem is novel to them, but no both at the same time. He used this insight to design the course to include only one challenge, but not more, at a time.
Academic Year 2021-2022
The Social Just Classroom: Teaching for Equity 2030
Fellows
Quality Improvement In Online Teaching and Learning
Fellows
Joe Rodgers- In my application for this cohort, I am for size the need to vastly improve my own skills in the use of technology and broaden the set of skills that I can bring to the table to enhance student learning and bolster the success of our students.
