FY 2009 Tilford Fellows/Abstracts
Seminar: “Merging of Old and New—Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century”
Practicing Veterinary Medicine in a Multicultural Society
Northeastern State University Symposium on the American Indian and Alumni Powwow
Black Man in the White House: The Civil Rights Act of 1957
Integrating Diversity Management and Multicultural Competencies into Management Concepts
Multicultural Development Project
Enhancing Diversity through Communication and Social Change
Seeing Me: Reaching Diverse Populations with Multicultural Children’s Literature
Integrating Multicultural Competency into ENGL 415 Written Communication for Engineers
Seminar: “Merging of Old and New—Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century”
Department of Architecture
Miriam Neet
Assistant Professor—Department of Architecture
The objective of the proposed project is to develop the multicultural teaching and learning materials for the future seminar, “Merging of Old and New – Sustainable Architecture in the 21st Century” which is an off-shoot from the seminar “Sustainable Precedents in Vernacular Architecture”. The objectives of this course and the content to be infused are as follows:
(a) It is the intent of the seminar to encourage students to “think outside the box” and to examine vernacular buildings in a multicultural architectural framework to gain understanding and draw inspiration in designing and conceptualizing architecture. The vernacular architecture of Asia, Africa, the Middle East and South America as well as the United States and Europe will be critically studied. In addition, we will study contemporary architects in various parts of the world who have adapted such a strategy in forging a new path in defining architecture that address sustainability issues as well as embody the enriching influence of the multicultural vernacular in the material, formal and tectonic vocabulary of their work.
(b) The seminar will explore the notion that vernacular buildings throughout the world – which have evolved largely from pre-Industrial times - can provide a rich field of precedents from which to glean ecologically sound ideas and may inspire new ideas in adapting age-old building materials, methods and strategies toward a more sustainable modern architecture in the 21st century in the developed and developing countries.
(c) The seminar will be structured such that architecture students can critically study and analyze age-old vernacular building materials, methods and strategies from various cultures of the world with the specific intent of adapting what they learn to their own work as modern architects today. The knowledge gained will be of pragmatic use as well as understood in a theoretical framework.
Multicultural Perspectives on Child Development and Education in the Early Childhood Education Curriculum: Professional Development and Practice with Children
Department of Family Studies and Human Services
Bronwyn Fees
Associate Professor –Department of Family Studies and Human Services
Professional standards in Teacher Education require students to be knowledgeable of cultural diversity and possess the skills and attributes to work effectively as teachers in with children diverse in culture, to work with diverse colleagues. This project will integrate into the early childhood and life span human development programs culturally specific knowledge of child development and educational practices with both young children and University students as drawn from observations of children and interviews with teachers and University faculty at South China Normal University in Guangzhou, China. Electronic media will provide opportunities for communication between students at both universities.
Preparing Pre-Service Teachers for a Diverse and Multicultural World: Exploring the Civil Rights Movement through Literacy and Technology
College of Education
Lotta C. Larson
Assistant Professor—Department of Elementary Education
Cyndi Danner-Kuhn
Education Technology Integration Coordinator
The broad goal of this proposal is for KSU pre-service teachers to gain knowledge and understanding needed to live and work in a diverse world while promoting awareness of diversity and multiculturalism in area schools. Specifically, KSU pre-service teachers will research the events and people involved in the Civil Rights Movement through the use of multicultural literature and Internet resources; create multimedia projects which reflect diverse perspectives and experiences relating to the Civil Rights Movement and its impact on today’s society; and share their projects/instructional ideas with teachers and students in K-12 classrooms.
Developing a Community Space for Multicultural and Gender Inclusion in Women’s Studies and American Ethnic Studies Programs
Departments of Women’s Studies and American Ethnic Studies
Valerie Carroll
Instructor—Women’s Studies
Cheryl Ragar
Assistant Professor—American Ethnic Studies
This project will develop new, interdisciplinary frameworks in a co-creative, collaborative environment through a collaborative partnership between the departments of American Ethnic Studies and Women’s Studies. The goal of the project is to create an explicit framework and teaching tools, which foster a deeper examination of teaching the “everyday lives” and inclusion of all people in both curricula. Through the establishment of a co-creative community space—launched through a workshop, an online resource center, and a film library—faculty can learn authentic infusion of gender and multiculturalism and interact with colleagues across disciplinary lines. The development of this interdisciplinary framework will be valuable to organizations across campus looking for models of cross-disciplinary collaboration.
Practicing Veterinary Medicine in a Multicultural Society
Veterinary Medicine
Ronnie Elmore
Associate Dean for Admissions and Diversity Programs—College of Veterinary Medicine
Jim Coffman
Professor, Clinical Sciences
Provost emeritus—College of Veterinary Medicine
The following course was approved by the faculty of the College of Veterinary Medicine during a February, 2009, faculty meeting.
CS 777. Practicing Veterinary Medicine in a Multicultural Society. (1) I, II. Diversity in the broadest sense of the word (cultural, racial, sexual, gender, age, religious, etc.) will be explored in the context of the practice of veterinary medicine. Understanding diversity issues can positively affect the bottom line of nearly every veterinary practice. Pr.: First, second or third year standing in the College of Veterinary Medicine.
This course will be taught for the first time during the 2009-2010 academic year. Dr. Evan Morse, a black veterinarian from Cleveland, Ohio, gave a presentation on practicing in a multicultural society for approximately 200 veterinary students during February as a celebration of Black History Month and consulted with us regarding CS 777. This KSU course could become the model for teaching veterinary students about multicultural issues at each of the 28 veterinary colleges located throughout the United States.
During the last three years we have consulted with Dr. Lila Miller, black veterinarian from New York City, Dr. Debbye Turner, black veterinarian and former Miss America, and Ms. Lisa Greenhill, Associate Executive Director for Diversity for the Association of American Veterinary Medical Colleges in Washington, D.C. In addition, we are seeking outside funding to bring the most knowledgeable veterinary authorities to our campus to address practicing veterinary medicine in a multicultural society for our students.
Northeastern State University Symposium on the American Indian and Alumni Powwow
College of Arts and Sciences—Manhattan/Salina
Leslie D. Hannah
Assistant Dean of Academics/ Assistant Professor—Arts, Sciences, and Business, KSU – Salina
Jennifer Molidor
Assistant Professor—Arts, Sciences, and Business, KSU – Salina
Lisa Tatonetti
Assistant Professor—English and American Ethnic Studies
JohnElla Holmes
Coordinator for Multicultural Recruitment and Retention—American Ethnic Studies
This 2009 Tilford project is an enhancement of an English 450 class and the American Ethnic Studies classes with a field trip to the Cherokee Nation and the annual Northeastern State University Symposium on the American Indian and Alumni Powwow. During this trip students and professors alike are immersed into many of the traditional and contemporary cultural practices of the Cherokee Nation.
Black Man in the White House: The Civil Rights Act of 1957
College of Arts, Sciences, and Business—Salina
Judith Collins
Associate Professor of English—Arts, Sciences, and Business—Salina
This project draws on the extraordinary resources of the Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Archives in Abilene, Kansas, to develop a module for technical writing students to study selected primary documents of the President, correspondence with Adam Clayton Powell, and foremost, papers of E. Frederick Morrow, Administrative Officer for Special Projects. Morrow was the first African American to hold an executive position at the White House. Further, the documents reveal a range of leadership approaches to complex social issues and demonstrate the ethical dimensions of professional/technical writing which include skillful information management, and inclusive leadership.
Dwight D. Eisenhower served as president during a critical period in the Civil Rights Era. He integrated military schools in anticipation of Brown versus Board of Topeka (1954), signed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, and integrated the armed services, to name a few essential policy initiatives.
One fascinating group in the White House was the “kitchen cabinet” made up of African-American unofficial advisors to the president who advocated strong executive action on civil rights issues while broadly representing the interests of black civil rights leadership.
Integrating Diversity Management and Multicultural Competencies into Management Concepts
College of Business Administration - Departments of Management and Marketing
Brian Niehoff
Department Head of Management
Sabine Turnley
Instructor of Management
Valerie Evans
Instructor of Management
Dawne Martin
Assistant to the Dean for Diversity
The grant will focus on developing and implementing a course module of 2 – 3 days across all sections of Management Concepts (MGMT 420). This course is required for all business majors and minors, and so provides a targeted learning opportunity. The focus of the grant activity is on the “Knowledge” competencies in the Tilford model and applying those to identify and understand implicit or latent bias, corporate culture issues and the business case for diversity. The learning module will also include methodology for self learning, including exercises, cases and research.
Multicultural Development Project
American Ethnic Studies and Department of Psychology
E. Allen Eason
Assistant Professor—American Ethnic Studies
Brenda McDaniel
Assistant Professor—Psychology
The objective of this study is to evaluate the effectiveness of multicultural discussion groups with adjunctive journaling as an instructional strategy in developing multicultural knowledge and awareness. Students enrolling in an introductory course in the Department of American Ethnic Studies will be asked to participate in a six-week multicultural learning laboratory. Participants will also write journal entries visible to their peers through an online content management system between each of the sessions. Participants will be asked to complete short questionnaires prior to and following the multicultural learning laboratory. The primary independent variables are journaling and group work. The primary dependent variables are multicultural knowledge and awareness and group process. Multicultural knowledge and awareness are assessed with the Miville-Guzman Universality-Diversity Orientation Scale-Short, the Color-Blind Racial Attitudes Scale-Short Form, the Munroe Multicultural Attitude Scale Questionnaire, and the Multicultural Awareness-Knowledge-and-Skills Survey. Group work variables are assessed with the Group Selection Questionnaire, Therapeutic Factors Inventory Cohesiveness Scale, and the Harvard Community Health Plan Group Cohesiveness Scale – Version II. Group session transcriptions and participant journal entries will be analyzed as additional sources of data. It is hypothesized that participation in the multicultural learning laboratory will result in significant increases in multicultural knowledge and awareness.
MUSIC 511, 512, and 670
Music Department/Music Education Division
Frederick Burrack
Assistant Professor—Music Education
Jana Fallin
Distinguished Professor—Music Education
This proposal is designed to create strategies to infuse and assess the Tilford multicultural competencies within the music education student’s educational experience and teacher preparation. The plan is to redesign the music education curriculum across all teaching methods courses at the departmental level by developing multicultural teaching and learning materials, assignments, and assessments involving global/cultural song within each of these courses; engage music teacher candidates to identify themselves in relation to others through global and cultural song; investigate disciplinary practices that foster multicultural learning opportunities for them and their future students through incorporating global and cultural song within antiracism, multicultural music education practice; and help the teacher candidates to discover how multicultural subjectivity might emerge within the context of music performance.
A Social Networking Group That Share Common Experiences Through Eyes of Multicultural Students: How Are You Surviving College
College of Education and Academic Assistance Center
Judy Lynch
Director, Academic Assistance Center
Kay Ann Taylor
Assistant Professor—Secondary Education
Jonathan Berhow
Academic Counselor and PILOTS Advisor—Academic Assistance Center
In order to survive college, multicultural students can greatly benefit from the community and wisdom of their more senior peers who were recently in their shoes and are currently succeeding. The “How Are You Surviving College?” Online Project provides the interactive medium of a social networking site with first-hand, peer-generated content of multicultural students’ personal educational experiences at transitioning to and navigating through their lives at K-State. Such a connection of shared experience at successfully managing college will increase awareness, sense of community, retention, and identity within the changing diverse demographics of our campus. The visible exposure of a student content-generated and accessible medium will enhance the educational experience and development of the entire K-State body.
Phase II of the Virtual Tilford Multicultural and Diversity Center in Second Life
Departments of Communication and English
Larry Jackson
Director of Information and Educational Technology—Department of Communications
Sandy Anderson
Instructor—Department of English
Larry Havenstein
Systems Engineer—Department of Communications
Neal Wollenberg
Webmaster and Web Developer—Department of Communications
Carol Russell
Instructor—Department of English
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 is going to buy virtual land in Second Life (SL), an online virtual world, and our first endeavor will be to construct a virtual “Tilford Center for Multicultural Education.” This space could 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 would be a virtual representation of the type of center that could someday be constructed in real life.
Enhancing Diversity through Communication and Social Change
Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
Nancy Muturi
Assistant Professor—Department of Journalism and Mass Communication
The Tilford grant for spring 2009 semester will be used in the Communication, Diversity and Social Change course (MC531) offered at the A.Q. Miller School of Journalism and Mass Communications. The goal of the course is to expose K-State students to various diversity issues that are considered important to understand as consumers and producers of media. Students in the course will critically examine the role of media and other communication strategies in enabling, facilitating and challenging the social construction of diversity issues in society. The course takes into consideration mass media among many other social institutions such as religion, education and family, which strongly influence everyday notions of race, religion, gender and sexual identity, disability and aging. In addressing race issues, this course will focus on African Americans, Asian-American, Latinos and people of other ethnicities. The Tilford grant will therefore be used to assist in bringing in guest speakers to class who will address various diversity issues, and to support students’ participation in local, national and international events that will enhance their understanding of various diversity issues in relation to mass media and other communication strategies for social change.
Seeing Me: Reaching Diverse Populations with Multicultural Children’s Literature
Department of Elementary Education, College of Education Equity and Access Partnership, College of Education
Laurie Curtis
Assistant Professor—Department of Elementary Education
Gayla Lohfink
Project Coordinator/Access US Instructor—Southwest Kansas Equity and Access Partnership
This project seeks to strengthen the goals of the Equity and Access Partnership, an interdisciplinary collaboration among the KSU Colleges of Education and Arts and Sciences and five school districts in Kansas, by increasing teacher understanding of cultural and linguistic diversity and the practices of culturally responsive teaching. To accomplish this task, literacy methods courses will serve as vehicles to increase the knowledge, skills, and dispositions of pre-service teachers’ use of culturally authentic and meaningful texts to enhance literacy learning. Three libraries of rich, multicultural children’s literature will be provided as a resource for pre-service teachers to use in methods courses, children’s literature courses, and then in practica within the partnership schools to meet the needs of the diverse student populations. Presentations of culturally authentic and relevant literature for children and the strategies and techniques to implement culturally responsive practices will be provided within the pre-service teachers’ preparation program as well as in professional development and consultation to the partnership schools. To further enhance the quality of teaching within the Equity and Access Partnership, an electronic support network of collaboration among teachers will be established and maintained to share resources, ideas, and reflection on one’s teaching.
Integrating Diversity into the Gerontology Curriculum: Using Introduction to Gerontology as the Catalyst
College of Human Ecology
Gayle Doll
Director, Assistant Research Professor—Center on Aging
This project will develop and purchase teaching and learning materials related to diversity for the UGE course GERON 315: Introduction to Gerontology. GERON 315 is the foundation course for the Interdisciplinary Secondary Major in Gerontology with the objective of giving students a broad overview of aging from social, psychological, developmental, organizational, and economic perspectives. The current instructional curriculum uses information from contemporary American society, providing little information about diversity or its impact on the experience of aging. This course will be broadened to provide students with an understanding of diversity related to core course topics including but not limited to physical health, healthcare, familial relationships, living arrangements, finances and retirement.
Through case studies, discussion questions, cultural comparisons, videos and activities, students will increase their awareness of the diversity of older adults by expanding their ability to examine assumptions, behaviors, perceptions, values and biases about older adults with diverse backgrounds, and developing sensitivity to the role of diversity in the experience of aging. This multi-faceted approach will prepare students from colleges across campus for their professional careers in an aging and global society.
Integrating Multicultural Competency into ENGL 415 Written Communication for Engineers
Department of English
Han Yu
Assistant Professor—Department of English
The project proposes a pilot version of ENGL 415 that integrates multicultural competency into an existing curriculum. ENGL 415 Writing for the Engineers is offered by the English department and required of engineering majors at K-State. In this class, students learn to gather, use, and present technical information in a professional setting and produce both writing projects and oral presentations. The current ENGL 415 curriculum does not fully and explicitly emphasize students’ ability to communicate cross-culturally, which, in turn, does not fully prepare them for the increasingly multicultural and internationalized engineering work environment. The project thus proposes to pilot one ENGL 415 section offered in Spring O9 to emphasize multicultural competency as a key learning objective and infuse cross-cultural knowledge into existing contents of the course. Student feedback and writing samples will be examined to assess this pilot course. Based on the assessment, modifications will be made and additional sections of the pilot version will be run in Fall 09. Pending the success of these further pilots, a curriculum-wide implementation may follow.
