FY 2008 Tilford Fellows/Abstracts
Interactive Theater for Social Change
Exploring Man-Made Hazards in Our Communities: A Toxic Tour of Kansas
Practicing Veterinary Medicine in a Multicultural Society
Tilford Center for Multiculral Education Virtual Online Center
The Emerging Leaders Project: Recently funded under the Tilford Incentive Grants
Website - Multicultural Business Curriculum
Expository Writing Program Faculty Stipends
Sustainable Precedents in Vernacular Architecture
Latinas' Realities in College While Infusing Multicultural Competencies for Curricula Development
Enriching Multicultural Experiences Through Studies Abroad
Interactive Theater for Social Change
Kansas State University-Salina
Patricia Ackerman
Assistant Professor - Salina Arts Sciences & Business
The Interactive Theater for Social Change brings awareness to situations of diversity using performance to illustrate instruction in an ethnically and culturally diverse setting and to give instructors hands-on experience on how to manage and teach the diverse classroom culture. An open forum for dialogue follows, giving new and seasoned instructors a chance to learn from one another. This type of theater was a featured component of the 2007 Wakonse Teacher’s Retreat. Actors from the Missouri University Interactive Theatre group performed several scripts designed to illustrate classroom management and instructional dynamics in an ethnically and culturally diverse classroom.
Exploring Man-Made Hazards in Our Communities: A Toxic Tour of Kansas
Department of Communications
Marcus Ashlock
Assistant Professor- Department of Communications
Joye Gordon
Associate Professor-Mass Communication and Journalism
Christopher Lavergne
Instructor - Department of Communications
Research shows many disasters experienced by the public are man-made. Whether city planners allow residential building permits for flood planes or chemical plants to be erected to boost a local economy, many marginalized citizens may feel the adverse effect of this progress when disaster strikes. Sociological literature provides many examples of marginalized groups becoming more at risk than affluent citizens. For example, studies show women are at greater risk than men due to lower wages or child/family care responsibilities leading to the “feminization of poverty.” Race can impose cultural or language barriers resulting in less access to funding for disaster recovery or limited ability to move out of high-risk neighborhoods.
This project incorporates a combined experiential learning module in three (3) courses within two university departments. The Department of Communications in the College of Agriculture and the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism & Mass Communication in the College of Arts & Sciences will partner together to provide a field trip/direct experience opportunity for students enrolling in AGCOM 420 and AGCOM/MC 712 to see the effects of man-made hazards and disaster on marginalized Kansan populations.
Actualizing the Internet’s Global Reach: Digital Strategies for Fostering Inclusion, Sensitivity, and Diversity in Reporting
Department of Communications
Kim Baltrip
Assistant Professor-Journalism
Regina Beard
Assistant Professor - Hale Library
Journalists have become more adept in discovering the resourcefulness of digital media – with e-zines, news aggregators, blogs, podcasts and other interactive Internet features – but they have not used the Internet’s access to the world to draw greater attention to topics for diverse and global audiences. This project has two overarching goals: 1) to teach students to use Internet research, databases and computer-assisted reporting skills to gather data and information about multicultural groups and 2) to offer student journalists strategies for analyzing and using their sources for reporting on topics related to race, ethnicity, identity, and other issues.
Infusing and Assessing the Tilford Multicultural Competencies in the Academic Curricula at Kansas State University
Department of Family Studies and Human Services
Joyce Baptist
Assistant Professor
This project is developing multicultural teaching and learning materials, assignments, and assessments for FSHS 879: Systemic Treatment in Psychopathology. FSHS 879 is a core graduate marriage and family therapy course with the objective of providing students with an overview of mental illness and different conceptual frameworks for understanding the etiology, course, and treatment of diagnosable conditions. Students will be trained to use the DSM-IV-TR to diagnose mental disorders and to view DSM disorders from a cultural, biopsychosocial-spiritual, systemic, and developmental perspectives.
The main limitation of the mental health diagnostic criteria is the absence of cultural consideration. This project will, among other things, develop students’ sensitivity to the role of cultural diversity in the assessment and treatment of mental disorders, increase their awareness of the ways in which mental health diagnosis potentially perpetuates oppression among minority groups, and expand their ability to examine assumptions, behaviors, perceptions, values and biases about mentally challenged individuals.
Practicing Veterinary Medicine in a Multicultural Society
College of Veterinary Medicine
Ronnie Elmore
Associate Dean
James R. Coffman
Professor- Clinical Sciences
The development of an elective one hour course entitled Practicing Veterinary Medicine in a Multicultural Society is being used to supplement the recently approved curriculum change that includes allowance and requirement for elective courses. The purpose of this change is to provide an avenue for a broader experience for students. The course engages the Tilford Group multicultural competencies to prepare veterinary students for working in a diverse society.
Interdisciplinary Approach to Infuse Multicultural Experiential Learning: Northeastern State University Annual Symposium on the American Indian
Kansas State University-Salina
Leslie Hannah
Assistant Dean-Technology and Aviation
This project is providing a collaborative partnership between the Salina and Manhattan campuses. Students enrolled in English 450: Literature and Society and the Introduction to AMETH will have the opportunity to attend the Northeastern State University Annual Symposium on the American Indian at the Cherokee Nation Tribal Headquarters (Cherokee Nation Tribal Museum and Heritage Center). This experiential activity will provide the student with an authentic voice and cultural immersion. This experience has two overarching goals as outlined by the Tilford Group Multicultural Competencies: 1) to increase understanding of American Indian culture and its impact on social, political, economical and historical issues and 2) the ability to use inductive and deductive reasoning to understand the Cherokee (American Indian) perspectives.
Instructional Strategies in American Ethnic Studies Introduction Class: Pedagogy of Multicultural Education Teaching
Department of American Ethnic Studies
JohnElla Holmes
Coordinator of Minority Recruitment and Retention in the College of Arts and Sciences
The teaching profession is evolving from an emphasis on teacher-centered, lecture-based instruction to student-centered, interactive learning environments. Designing and implementing successful multicultural teaching strategies and programs is the key to fundamental, wide-ranging education reforms (McGowan, 2007). There are five key areas in the pedagogy of multicultural teaching model as developed by Dr. Juanita McGowan, 1) content, 2) instructional strategies, 3) assessment, 4) student/faculty interaction, and 5) student/student interaction. We are developing additional multicultural teaching strategies and assessing our student’s progression, utilizing the Cross Cultural Progression Scale (CCPS) through pre- and post-assessment strategies.
Tilford Center for Multicultural Education Virtual Online Center
Department of Communications
Larry Jackson
Information Technology Coordinator
Sandy Anderson
Department of English Instructor
Larry Havenstein
Systems Engineer
Neal Wollenberg
Web Coordinator
This project creates an opportunity for educators, state employees, and students from our university community and others around the state to interact and create spaces that build on the Multicultural Competencies outlined by the Tilford Group in such a way not possible in the physical space of real life. In order to meet this objective, our group has bought virtual land in Second Life (SL), an online virtual world. We are constructing a virtual “Tilford Center for Multicultural Education.” This space will house any number of projects, including classrooms and meeting rooms, exhibits of multicultural awareness information, teleports to other locations within the SL world that seek to enhance the multicultural awareness of SL community members, interactive exhibits where students and faculty can have new experiences with other cultures in a safe and non-threatening environment, video and audio file storage and presentation, and many more. This is a virtual representation of the type of center that could someday be constructed in real life.
The Emerging Leaders Project: Recently funded under the Tilford Incentive Grants
College of Education
Judith Lynch
Academic Assistance Center Director
Gabriela Sabates
Women’s Studies Instructor
Rebeca Paz
PILOTS Program Coordinator
The Emerging Leaders Project is led by three outstanding PILOTS students and one graduate student leader, selected through an interview process. They are promoting cross cultural learning experiences for students in the PILOTS class, PILOTS peer assistants and mentors, and instructors of the University Experience class through the presentation of a diversity workshop.
Through the Emerging Leaders Project, we are instilling in the participants a respect and empathy for other cultures and an appreciation of the value of diversity. We also hope to inspire a life-long commitment to effective and positive cross cultural communication in the participants. We intend to provoke critical thinking among students to develop their self-cultural identities and to give them a historical understanding of the diverse cultural/ethnic groups in our country, as well the valuable contributions these groups make to our changing and diverse society.
Website – Multicultural Business Curriculum
College of Business
Dawne Martin
Instructor-Marketing
Donita Whitney-Bammerlin
Instructor-Management
Erick Valentine
Jane Chen
Assistant Professor-Finance
We are developing a web site to provide content, instructional techniques, and add-ons, like cases, to enhance the multicultural content in the business curriculum. Ultimately, we would like to develop modules for use in various courses across the business curriculum. We are also providing a faculty seminar to introduce the web site and content during the fall 2008 semester. The teaching resource section will be finished by the end of the fall 2008 semester.
Expository Writing Program Faculty Stipends
Department of Arts and Sciences
Phillip P. Marzluf
Assistant Professor-English
Deborah Murray
Instructor-English
This grant has funded the purchase of diversity-based materials for new GTAs and stipends for four expository writing program faculty members. Working with the Director of the Expository Writing Program, these faculty members are helping to plan and act as co-leaders and presenters during the orientation. Currently, there is no university support for these important activities. The Tilford funding is being used to assist in the teacher training of approximately 25 new graduate teaching assistants (GTAs). These new GTAs will be teaching English 100, an intensive writing course that focuses on impressing important diversity issues upon approximately 2,000 first-year students. For many Kansas State University students, English 100 serves as their introduction to the terminology and issues of diversity. One of the main teacher training experiences for new GTAs is the pre-service teacher training orientation. New GTAs, who have little prior teaching or diversity education experience, are being trained to manage their classrooms effectively, create a teaching persona, develop active teaching strategies, build lesson plans, troubleshoot student problems, and engage students with diversity content.
Health Literacy for HIV/AIDS Prevention among Minority Women: A Community-Based Participatory Approach
A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communication
Nancy Muturi
Assistant Professor
HIV/AIDS is devastating the world’s population and is currently viewed as a global health catastrophe that requires intervention from various perspectives. Epidemiologic data indicate that in the United States, the minority population is disproportionately affected by the disease accounting for more than 66% of the Nation’s AIDS cases. African Americans, for example, account for about 40% while the Latino accounts for 19% of all AIDS cases.
Students in the Public Relations Campaign course (MC 645) are promoting health literacy for HIV/AIDS prevention among minority women in the Kansas Communities. The course uses a Community Service Learning approach in addressing issues that impact society. Students are producing culturally appropriate HIV/AIDS materials and messages and making recommendations on the most appropriate approaches to HIV/AIDS communication based on research and involvement of community participants. The project will focus on African American women in the first semester and on the Latino women in the second semester.
The is being implemented through collaboration with the Huck Boyd National Center for Community Media, Regional AIDS Project (RAP), a non-governmental organization that addresses AIDS-related issues in Kansas, and the Kansas State Extension Geary Country Office in Junction City.
Sustainable Precedents in Vernacular Architecture
Department of Architecture - Kansas State University
Miriam Neet
Assistant Professor
The objective of this project is to further develop the multicultural teaching and learning materials for the seminar “Sustainable Precedents in Vernacular Architecture” in the Department of Architecture and for future architecture courses designed to encompass the larger world context.
The objectives of these courses and the content to be infused are as follows:
To broaden the field of architectural study in the academic context to encompass the indigenous, vernacular, and marginalized architecture of the world as a whole, i.e. Asia, Africa, India, Australia, South and Central Americas as well as North America and Europe and to increase the understanding of cultures and people of the world who give shape to vernacular architecture.
To examine the huge variety of vernacular dwellings that exist throughout the world, as an overview, and in-depth on a selected case-study basis, to see whether such a study can yield any useful ideas and strategies for a more sustainable architecture in contemporary architectural design. Much of the vernacular architecture of the world evolved from times pre-dating the Industrial Revolution when people relied on natural building materials and methods as well as using passive means to heat and cool their dwellings. The advent of mechanization and industrialization required intensive energy which has led to harmful human impact on the environment. Our impending environmental crisis makes the study of the multicultural vernacular precedents a matter of pragmatic importance.
Latinas’ Realities in College While Infusing Multicultural Competencies for Curricula Development
Department of Women’s Studies
Gabriela Sabates
Instructor
Torry Dickinson
Professor
Jacqueline Spears
Director of the Women’s Studies Department
What are the realities lived by Latinas at K-State? How do they bridge their home cultures and the college environment? What teaching practices are best for them? This interdisciplinary project will generate practical tools to serve educators, K-State students, and administrators in learning about Latinas' realities in college while infusing multicultural competencies for curricula development, instructional practices, and policy planning and implementation.
Enriching Multicultural Experiences Through Studies Abroad
Department of Education
Linda Trujillo
Assistant Professor-Elementary Education
The purpose of this project is to enhance and to provide experiences to fulfill the Vision of KSU’s College of Education, “Preparing educators to be knowledgeable, ethical, and caring decision makers," and to enrich the lives of KSU students seeking to build leadership skills within the profession and cultural involvement in community-based programs. Across the United States, our public and private schools are becoming more diverse. Many of the students are not only culturally different from their teachers but linguistically different as well. These differences, between student and teacher characteristics and cultures, set the stage for possible cross-cultural misunderstandings. This project is providing pre-service teachers with authentic multicultural experiences, meaningful to their chosen profession. These experiences enable these individuals to grow and to make personal changes that will benefit them as well as their future students.
