Grant Awards Recipients

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Campus Working Group Grant Recipients

2020-2021

Anthropology Department Syllabus Updates

Matthew Amster (Anthropology), Amy Evrard (Anthropology), Kirby Farah (Anthropology), Lewis Jones (Anthropology), Ben Luley (Anthropology), and Donna Perry (Anthropology)

Supporting underrepresented minority students at Gettysburg College: Synthesis of literature in STEM fields

Kathy Berenson (Psychology), Shelli Frey (Chemistry), Darren Glass (Provost’s Office & Mathematics), Ryan Kerney (Biology), Matt Kittelberger (Biology), Sarah Principato (Environmental Studies), and Alex Trillo (Biology)

Political Science Fourth Credit Hour Virtual Workshop Series for Introductory-level Courses

Yasemin Akbaba (Political Science), Scott Boddery (Political Science), Caroline Hartzell (Political Science), Bruce Larson (Political Science), Kevin Pham (Political Science), Lindsay Reid (Political Science), and Ashley Woo (Political Science)

Teaching During Covid-19: Strategies for Effective Instruction

Christopher C. Oechler (Spanish), Gokcer Ozgur (Economics), Douglas Page (Political Science), Tres Lambert (German Studies), and Gregory Suryn (Chemistry)

2019-2020

Effectively Teaching Data Science and Statistics with R

Megan Benka-Coker (Health Sciences), Sharon Birch (Educational Technology/Sociology), Natasha Gownaris (Environmental Studies), Lauren Klabonski (Biology), and Bruce Larson (Political Science)

Creating an Affordable and Relatable Textbook for Intro to Psychology

Kathleen Cain (Psychology), Sahana Mukherjee (Psychology), Katherine Delaney (Psychology), and Brian Meier (Psychology)

2018-2019

The Role of Internet Translators in Foreign Language Courses

Anne Kerns (French), Bérangère Collobert (French), Jenny Dumont (Spanish), Covadonga Arroyo Garcia (Spanish), and Jen Cole (Academic Advising)

Open Access Readings for ES 121, Environmental Issues

Irene Hawkins (Environmental Studies), Rud Platt (Environmental Studies), and Andy Wilson (Environmental Studies)

A Proposal for a New Pluralistic Methods Course in Philosophy

Lisa Portmess (Philosophy), Gary Mullen (Philosophy), Nathifa Greene (Philosophy), Jennifer Gaffney (Philosophy), and Mercedes Valmisa (Philosophy)

De/Post Colonial Environmentalisms

Salma Monani (Environmental Studies), Vivek Freitas (English), Aaron Lacayo (Spanish), and David Walsh (Religious Studies)

Animal Behavior Studies

Connie Devilbiss (Sociology), Cassie Hays (Sociology), and Monica Ogra (Environmental Studies)

Digital Literacy Assignment Grant Recipients

2023-2024

Cassie Hays Assistant Professor, Sociology

Awarded funds to develop a semester-long digital research project for Sociology 400 that will help students present their independent research in digital form.

2021-2022

Alecea Standlee Assistant Professor of Sociology

Prof. Standlee received funds to work with librarians and a Digital Scholarship Fellow. She will develop resources that will allow her to integrate digital literacy assignments into her new course, “Digital Culture and Online Behavior”.

2020-2021

Christopher Oechler Assistant Professor of Spanish

Awarded funds to support a digital assignment in Spanish 365: Female Authors and Agency in Golden Age Spain, to be taught in the spring of 2021. Students will create and publish an online critical and annotated edition of short novellas from Mariana de Carvajal y Saavedra’s Navidades de Madrid y noches entretenidas (1663).

2018-2019

Jill Ogline Titus Associate Director of the Civil War Institute

Jill received funding to work with librarians and a Digital Scholarship Fellow. Jill will revise HIST 301, “Introduction to Public History,” to include assignments that help students become proficient in the use of two digital tools, Timeline JS and StoryMap JS.

Dina Lowy Associate Professor of History

Received funding to develop an assignment that would ask students to develop their own timelines for the course, “East Asia to 1800.”

Marta Robertson Associate Professor in the Sunderman Conservatory

Prof. Robertson received funds to work with librarians and a Digital Scholarship Fellow. Marta will develop resources for her MUS_CLAS 442 course that will help students work with digital tools such as the Genius annotation software, Word Press, and Timeline JS.

Melissa Forbes Adjunct Instructor of English

Received funding to develop a module on digital mapping and the use of maps as a rhetorical device in the course, “Writing Across Media.”

2017-2018

Stefanie Sobelle Associate Professor of English

Prof. Sobelle received this grant to work with librarians and a Digital Scholarship Fellow. Prof. Sobelle will develop a more robust online platform for her students to use in the course, ENG 308, Writing the Literary Review.

Salma Monani Associate Professor of Environmental Studies

Prof. Monani was awarded this grant to work with librarians and a Digital Scholarship Fellow. She will develop a digital assignment as the final project for the course, ES 225, Introduction to Environmental Humanities.

Excellence in Teaching Award Recipients

2022-2023

Kimberly Spayd Associate Professor of Mathematics

Professor Spayd has been teaching at Gettysburg College since the fall of 2012. She has a B.S. from Notre Dame, a Masters in Statistics from the University of North Carolina (Chapel Hill) and a Ph.D. in Math from North Carolina State University. Her primary research area is partial differential equation models of fluid flow. Other research interests include the intersection of math and art and using fractal geometry to characterize an instability that can occur when one fluid tries to displace another.

Chris Kauffman

Chris is a Professor of Theatre Arts at Gettysburg College where he teaches Acting and Directing. He has directed over thirty productions for the college, including Shakespeare in Love; Love and Information; Everybody; King Lear; Speech and Debate; Circle Mirror Transformation; Into the Woods; The Imaginary Invalid; The Story; Measure for Measure; A Streetcar Named Desire; Sense and Sensibility; The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee; and A Chorus Line among others.

He spent six seasons at the Williamstown Theatre Festival as co-director of The Greylock Project, teaching Playmaking, directing, and acting in the program that paired at-promise youth with theatre professionals in the process of creating original theatre.

Prior to teaching at Gettysburg, Chris lived in New York City for ten years performing in productions at Bleecker Street Theatre; HERE Arts Center; The Brick Theatre in Brooklyn; and PS 122 among other venues. He has also acted regionally at Merrimack Repertory Theatre in Lowell, MA; Perseverance Theater in Juneau, AK; The Wellfleet Harbor Actors Theatre on Cape Cod; Theatre Project in Baltimore; a national tour of The Miser; a tour of Brazil with contemporary dance company Dona Orpheline.

With collaborator Richard Harrington, he co-authored and performs in three award-winning, interactive comedy pieces: Hotel California (Official selection, HBO U.S. Comedy Arts Festival); Nharcolepsy; and Cabaret Terrarium, all of which played in New York City and in several theatres or festivals throughout North America.

He has extensive experience acting for the camera, including the feature 1000-1: The Cory Weissmann Story; the David Simon HBO limited series We Own This City; the upcoming Apple TV series Lady in the Lake; and the upcoming feature Audrey's Children.

He has an M.F.A. in Acting from Brandeis University and studied with Philippe Gaulier in New York and at Ecole Philippe Gaulier in France, as well as with Aitor Basauri, David Shiner, and Jango Edwards. Member Actors Equity Association and the Screen Actors Guild.

Zhining Hu

Zhining Hu is Associate Professor of Economics at Gettysburg College. Her major research interests are Monetary Economics and East Asian Economy. Her published work mainly focuses on economic development and growth of East Asia. She has continued her research on this economic region. Her current research involves modeling the role of government in financial markets and the linkage between income inequality and human capital.

Hu teaches courses in Capstone Seminar in Mathematical Economics, Quantitative Methods in Economics, Money and Financial Intermediaries, East Asian Economic History and Development, Intermediate Macroeconomics, and Principles of Macroeconomics.

During recent years, Hu has been serving on the Academic Policy and Program Committee, Global Studies Program Committee, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Advancement (I.D.E.A) Council, and Asian Studies Committee. She is also faculty advisor to the Omicron Delta Epsilon, the International Honor Society for Economics.

2021-2022

Felicia Else Associate Professor, Art and Art History

Felicia Else has been pursuing research on water, art and festivals in 16th-century Florence, including the well-known Neptune Fountain in the Piazza della Signoria in Florence by Bartolomeo Ammannati. In conjunction with the Society for European Festivals Research, she has completed a book for Routledge Press, The Politics of Water in the Art and Festival of Medici Florence: from Neptune Fountain to Naumachia and contributed a chapter on wine and water fountains to Architectures of Festival in Early Modern Europe.  Fashioning and Re-fashioning Urban and Courtly Spaces (2018). She has published articles in Burlington Magazine, Sixteenth Century Journal, Imago Mundi and Medicea. Rivista interdisciplinare di studi medicei, Sculpture Journal and Explorations in Renaissance Culture.

2020-2021

Clif Presser Associate Professor of Computer Science

Clif Presser came to the Gettysburg College Department of Computer Sciences (CS) in 2000. He is an engaged and valued member of his department and committed to the learning and success of his students. Since his arrival at Gettysburg, he has taught more than fifteen different courses in the discipline, ranging from the Introduction to Computing course for non-majors to courses in Advanced System Design, Operating Systems, and the Theory of Computation.

He regularly teaches the CS capstone course, in which seniors work side-by-side with clients from various offices across campus, along with the greater Gettysburg community, to develop software solutions to issues they face. Professor Presser’s versatility as an instructor is underscored by his remarkable dedication to his students. He is known to spend many hours working with students on coursework and research projects, and for his focus on student feedback to design and improve upon new assignments or classroom experiences.

Beyond his classroom teaching, Prof. Presser is also the system administrator for the computer science department’s labs and manages the software loads for the whole department. Prof. Presser’s commitment to Gettysburg College is exemplified by his many teaching and administrative responsibilities, his ongoing research in scientific and information visualization, and his substantial service to the department and the college community.

2019-2020

Eric Remy (IT/ET), Sharon Birch (Educational Technology/Sociology), Kaylynn Kibler (IT/ET), Travis Mathna (IT/ET), Mark Rosensteel (IT/ET), Carrie Szarko (IT/ET), and Josh Wagner (IT/ET)

Educational Technology Department/IT Division

This marks the first time that the JCCTL Excellence in Teaching Award goes to members of our community who do not serve the College in a primarily faculty role. During the transition to online instruction in the spring of 2020, the well-recognized strengths of our Educational Technology team became a key factor in maintaining educational integrity at Gettysburg College. We continued to rely on our “Ed Tech” colleagues for their technological expertise; more importantly, their skills and knowledge in how to sustain effective pedagogy in remote environments allowed us to succeed.

2018-2019

Megan Sijapati Professor and Chair of Religious Studies

Since receiving tenure, Megan has demonstrated a commitment to the kind of innovative and creative pedagogy that the JCCTL seeks to support. She has helped her students develop digital literacy skills through the creation of interactive maps of sacred sites in South Asia. As a Community Based Learning fellow, she has incorporated experiential learning into her courses, such as in-depth interaction between her students and members of a Sufi Muslim community. Last semester, Megan received support from the Mellon grant, Enlivening the Humanities, to pair her new First-Year Seminar with one taught by a colleague in the social sciences to investigate the connections between religion and conflict. In all her courses, Megan encourages students to be active learners and critical thinkers as they grapple with some of the most compelling and divisive issues of our times. Her dedication to teaching goes hand in hand with an impressive record of scholarship and service to the College.

Learn more about Megan’s work.

2017-2018

Brendan Cushing-Daniels Professor of Economics

Dr. Cushing-Daniels research focuses on welfare expenditures and Social Security. Past projects include studies on welfare use and migration within the United States, the generosity of Social Security by race and ethnicity, and the adequacy of Social Security benefits in retirement. His current research interests also include criminal recidivism and the long-term effects of having received welfare benefits as a child. Dr. Cushing-Daniels teaches microeconomics and finance.

2016-2017

Dr. Laurel Cohen Professor of German

Just how well can a non-native learn to speak German? Ask Prof. Laurel Cohen: she was the first non-native speaker permitted to teach German at an international summer language program at Johann-Wolfgang Goethe Universitaet in Frankfurt.

In addition to her language prowess, Cohen is embedded in German culture and history. Her courses have run the historical gamut:

• Generational Perspectives on 21st Century German Literature
• From Tacitus to Frederick the Great: German Culture from Origins to 1790
• Historical Consciousness and German National Identity: The Past as Future

A prestigious German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD) fellowship led Cohen to graduate study at Eberhard-Karls Universitaet, Tuebingen, followed by additional work at Wilhelm Pieck Universitaet in the former German Democratic Republic. She earned a Ph.D. in Germanic Languages at the University of California at Los Angeles, where she wrote her dissertation on East German literature in the 1980s.

2015-2016

Dr. Sharon L. Stephenson Chairperson/Sahm Professor of Physics

Sharon Stephenson received her B.S. in physics from Millsaps College and her Ph.D. in nuclear physics from North Carolina State University. Her research is in the specific structure of nuclei and in the nuclear weak force, which takes her to the Triangle Universities Nuclear Lab on the campus of Duke University, as well as to the Los Alamos National Laboratory near Santa Fe, New Mexico. Besides teaching courses and labs in introductory physics, modern physics, and classical mechanics, as well as a first year seminar on gender in science and technology, Dr. Stephenson serves as advisor to the Gettysburg chapter of the Society of Physics Students and as coordinator for the Department's Dual-Degree Engineering Program.

2014-2015

Dr. Timothy Shannon Chairperson and Professor of History

This academic year’s recipient of the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning Excellence in Teaching Award is Tim Shannon, who holds the position of Department Chair and Professor of History. Tim Shannon stands out for his conscientious and highly effective teaching, while maintaining an active research agenda and providing significant service to the college.

Professor Shannon teaches Early American, Native American, and British history. His most recent books are The Seven Years’ War in North America: A Brief History with Documents (Bedford, 2014), and with David N. Gellman, American Odysseys: A History of Colonial North America (Oxford, 2014). His book Indians and Colonists at the Crossroads of Empire: The Albany Congress of 1754 (Cornell, 2000) won the Dixon Ryan Fox Prize from the New York State Historical Association and the Distinguished Book Award from the Society of Colonial Wars. His articles have appeared in the William and Mary Quarterly, the New England Quarterly, and Ethnohistory. His work has been supported by fellowships from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the John Carter Brown Library, and the Huntington Library. Professor Shannon is currently working on a biography of eighteenth-century Indian captive Peter Williamson.

Professor Shannon’s students consistently rate him as an excellent instructor, a thoughtful and yet intellectually demanding professor. His commitment to student learning also extends outside the classroom through advising, serving as the faculty director for individualized summer internships, and offering an independent study course.

Professor Tim Shannon exemplifies the qualities we seek in our faculty. Because he is an exceptional teacher, scholar as well as leader within the college community, he richly deserved this recognition.

2013-2014

Dr. Bela Bajnok Alumni Professor of Mathematics, Mathematics - Sciences

This academic year’s recipient of the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning Excellence in Teaching Award is Bela Bajnok, who holds the endowed position of Alumni Chair Professor in Mathematics. Before joining Gettysburg College in 1993, Professor Bajnok had a wide range of experience, teaching at an Ivy League institution, a large state university, a prestigious European university, highly selective residential colleges as well as at an inner city university with an open enrollment policy. His favorite courses to teach here at Gettysburg College are the Abstract Mathematics I and II sequence and the Mathematics Department’s three research classes for which he provides his own materials. As for Professor Bajnok’s research interests, they are numerous, and he has published widely in such periodicals as The Journal of Combinatorial Theory, The Journal of Approximation Theory, Advances in Geometry, and TheInternational Journal of Number Theory. In addition, Professor Bajnok has published an important textbook entitled An Invitation to Abstract Mathematics. Within his department Professor Bajnok has served as chairperson, coordinated the International Math Olympiad and directed the International Mathematics Talent Search. But it is in the classroom, as one colleague points out, that Professor Bajnok has the uncanny ability to push students to their limit while still maintaining their love of and excitement about mathematics. Students concur and comment that they are grateful that Professor Bajnok has obliged them to think clearly and critically. Indeed, it is important to note that Professor Bajnok’s exemplary work in the classroom has been recognized nationally. He won the 2012 Crawford Teaching Award from the Mathematical Association of America.

2012-2013

Dr. Kristin Stuempfle Department Co-Chair of Health Sciences

Kris Stuempfle, who completed her Ph.D. at the Pennsylvania State University College of Medicine, joined the Gettysburg College Health Sciences Department in 1997. She quickly had a very positive impact. Her expertise in Human Anatomy and Physiology, the very foundation of the Health Sciences curriculum, immediately increased the scientific rigor of many upper-level courses. Furthermore, she added breadth and depth to the program with new courses such as Environmental Physiology and Chronic Disease. Professor Stuempfle, however, always continues to seek ways to improve her courses despite ongoing positive feedback from her students. She expressly attended a pedagogical conference to learn how to use case studies in the classroom, a welcome addition because so many students in the Health Sciences Department will be going into the medical field. But it is not simply Kris’s students who benefit from her knowledge and experience. Colleagues new to the department do as well. Kris is always ready to mentor new faculty and to share her teaching materials with those less experienced so that they, too, may find the same success that she has had. Preparing to teach Human Anatomy and Physiology, one colleague wrote: “When I began to work through her teaching materials, I was certain that I would find an impeccably prepared two-semester course sequence that would provide me with a road map of how to teach these complex courses, and also give a student an excellent scientific foundation of the inner workings of the human body. What I discovered was much more than that: a curriculum that demonstrated the beauty of human physiology and forced students to think critically by taking an interdisciplinary approach.” This same colleague made a point of saying that Kris Stuempfle had been instrumental in making him more effective in the classroom. An innovative, conscientious and gifted teacher, Professor Stuempfle is held in high regard by students and colleagues alike, and with this in mind, the Johnson Center for Creative Teaching and Learning Advisory Board was proud to give its first Excellence in Teaching Award, an award expressly given to an individual at mid-career, to Professor of Health Sciences Kris Stuempfle.

Johnson Creative Teaching Summer Grant Recipients

Summer 2019

Russell McCutcheon Associate Professor in the Sunderman Conservatory of Music

Attended workshops at the Academy of Music Production on audio recording and editing, and video recording and editing during the summer of 2019. The skills developed through these workshops benefited Dr. McCutcheon’s new course, “Music Technology and Media Production.”

Summer 2018

Sahana Mukherjee Assistant Professor of Psychology

Sahana used her funds to cover attend the 2018 Institute for Academic Feminist Psychologists two-day workshop in June to assist in revising PSYC 210, “Cultural Psychology”. This is a 2-day workshop for early career psychologists who teach and/or do research that adopt a critical feminist approach. This institute also presents a venue to discuss, and receive feedback on pedagogical approaches as well as opportunities to learn more about intersectional approaches to pedagogy.

Joanne Myers Associate Professor of English

Joanne's funds were used to attend a week-long course at the University of Virginia’s Rare Book School to assist in developing a new course, Eng 297, “Introduction to Book History”. The course covers a topic not otherwise present in the English department’s curriculum.

Summer 2017

Sarah Sillin Visiting Assistant Professor of English

Sarah was awarded $1265 to cover expenses associated with attendance at the Center for Historic American Visual Culture (CHAViC) Summer

Seminar, “In Black and White: Race and American Visual Culture.” Learning more about how to incorporate visual culture into teaching will benefit two of Prof. Sillin’s courses.

McKinley Melton Assistant Professor of English

McKinley was awarded $2000 to cover expenses associated with travel to the United Kingdom to develop the course, Black London and “Bloody” Liberation: Social Justice and the City, that will be offered in the Fall 2018 semester as part of the Gettysburg London program.

Summer 2016

Kim Spayd Assistant Professor, Mathematics – Sciences

Kim received funding to support development of her new First Year Seminar, “Math as Muse: Exploring the Relationship Between Math and Art.”

Chipo Dendere Gondwe Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies

Chipo received funding to support bibliographic research in Zimbabwe with the goal of diversifying and expanding the reading lists for her courses on African politics.

Divonna Stebick Associate Professor, Education

Divonna received funding to support the continued development of a database of Young Adult literature for her course, “Cultural Implications of Young Adult Literature and Media.”

Summer 2015

Cassie Hays Assistant Professor, Sociology

Cassie was awarded a fellowship for transportation to and lodging at the International Sociological Association World Congress meeting in Yokohama, Japan. Professor Hays teaches Sociology 209: Race & Ethnicity routinely and wanted to internationalize this course. Because racism and race-thinking are not just American problems and resonate across the world in often terrible and violent ways, Professor Hays wanted to develop a global version of the course that examines historical bases and contemporary outcomes of colonialism, post-colonialism, race-thinking, and racism. She attended a variety of panels, such as “Racism, Nationalism, and Ethnic Relations,” “Social Stratification,” “Comparative Xenophobia,” “Challenges for Muslim Minorities,” and “Politics of Masculinities Racialized as Deviant and Dangerous.”

Jackie Milingo Associate Professor, Physics

Jackie attended the Research-Based Active Learning in Introductory Physics workshop in Portland, Oregon as well as up to $200 for ground transportation. Part of the National Chautauqua Short Course Program, the workshop is designed primarily to serve undergraduate education in the sciences and brings together undergraduate faculty with physics education Research (PER) specialists to introduce new teaching concepts and techniques that are relevant, current and effective. This particular workshop presented PER-validated strategies for increasing active learning in introductory physics courses, including interactive lecture demonstrations, RealTime physics labs, personal response systems (clickers), activity-based tutorials, collaborative problem-solving tutorials, workshop physics, physics with video analysis, and strategies for analytic mathematical modeling.

Laurel Cohen Professor, German Studies

Laurel received funding to attend the international faculty development seminar, “Ruin and Revival: History, Modern Memory & Identity,” in Germany and Poland. The seminar addressed “the role of historical memory in the formulation of individual and national identities in contemporary post-Holocaust and post-communist Poland and the former East Germany.” It examined how memory is constructed and transmitted and explored these processes “through multiple lenses—art, literature, and culture; institutions, education, and politics; place, monument, and memorial” with a special focus on “the consciousness and relations of a new generation of Poles and Germans, their past, their present, and their future.” Lectures, discussions with experts and opinion leaders combined with site visits to Berlin, Warsaw, and Krakow provided the framework. Professor Cohen participated in order to (1) design German 331: Politics of Memory in German Media; (2) to connect with museum curators, educators, memorial site directors, faculty, researchers, and public officials to use as resources in class through Skype; and (3) to develop a course-embedded trip to Holocaust and political memorial sites in Berlin and Poland.

Summer 2014

Laurel Cohen Associate Professor, German Studies

Laurel received funding to a seminar on "Ruin and Revival: History, Modern Memory & Identity" in Germany and Poland. The seminar addressed "the role of historical memory in the formulation of individual and national identities in contemporary post-Holocaust and post-communist Poland and the former East Germany."  is questioning how memory is constructed and transmitted. The seminar explored how memory is constructed and transmitted "through multiple lenses—art, literature, and culture; institutions, education, and politics; place, monument, and memorial" —with a special focus on "the consciousness and relations of a new generation of Poles and Germans, their past, their present, and their future." Laurel used this information for the development of her GER 331, Politics of Memory in German Media.

Jacqueline Milingo Associate Professor, Physics

Jackie used her summer fellowship to attend a workshop Portland, OR that concentrated on Research-Based Active Learning in Introductory Physics. The techniques and discussion surrounding physics education research were applicable to the classes she teaches and benefits the physics department. The new strategies and methods learned in this workshop were immediately applicable to her lectures and labs.

Cassie Hays Assistant Professor, Sociology

Cassie received funds to attend the International Sociological Association World Congress meeting in Yokohama, Japan to ‘internationalize’ the course she teaches regularly: SOC 209, ‘Race & Ethnicity.’  The global version of the course focuses on the historical bases and contemporary outcomes of colonialism, post-colonialism, race-thinking, and racism. This enables students to better understand that racism is a worldwide problem.

Kathleen Cain Associate Professor, Psychology

Kathy used her JCCTL funds to travel to Ethiopia to enhance my ability to teach my first-year seminar, FYS 102-3: The World’s Children. Her goal was to get firsthand knowledge of challenges facing women and children in Ethiopia, to learn more about experiential education in collaboration with GRAB, and to explore possible long-term collaboration opportunities between Project Gaia in Ethiopia and students in my seminar. Kathy offered this course for the fifth time in Fall 2014. The course addresses issues of culture, children’s development, and children’s rights, and it examines a variety of challenges to children’s rights in a global context.

Summer 2013

Felicia Else Associate Professor, Art and Art History, and Kay Etheridge Associate Professor, Biology

Felicia and Kay received a grant to develop a hands-on component to their team-taught course, Wonders of Nature and Artifice: The Renaissance Quest for Knowledge. The funds received supported preparation for an exhibit to take place November 2012, construct an inventory of materials in Special Collections, the Biology department and other locations on campus suitable for students to use, and a student worker to assist with these tasks.

Yumi Takamiya Assistant Professor, Asian Studies

Yumi received the Creative Teaching Fellowship Grant to travel to Japan to collect books, DVD's, an authentic materials needed to enhance her 305/306 Japanese Language courses.

Paul Austerlitz Associate Professor, Sunderman Conservatory of Music

Paul received a grant to support his attendance to the Barry Harris study group, New Roads in Jazz Pedagogy.  Paul writes, "In addition to leading to new pedagogical approaches, this summer's labors revitalized my own playing: combining study with Harris with hands-on application of his ideas in collaboration with top-level players on a near-nightly basis was exhilarating!"

Salma Monani Assistant Professor, Environmental Studies

Salma received a grant to acquire the video production skills that are required of her students in her Environmental Film and FYS: Green Eggs and Government Cheese courses.  This film module exposes students to both theory and practice.

Summer 2012

Eleanor Hogan Associate Professor, East Asian Studies

Eleanor received a Summer Fellowship to develop a First-Year Seminar on Japanese popular culture. In this course, students are asked to contextualize various video games, animated films, comics (manga), popular music and other assorted products and media imported from Japan. Professor Hogan asked her students to conduct this analysis with the assumption that American preconceptions about Japanese culture are formed by entertainment mediums that are not originally intended for Westerners, and that does not give a whole or accurate picture of Japanese culture and society. The course, taught last fall, examined Japan’s “Gross National Cool” and “soft power,” terms used by scholars to discuss the Japanese cultural invasion with regard to entertainment. By the end of the semester, students were able to assess and discuss what these products reflected about Japanese society and what they portray about Japan beyond its borders. The Johnson Center grant allowed Professor Hogan to conduct research on Japanese popular culture and media through site visits in Japan and to hire a student assistant to work with her over the summer to incorporate Japanese video games into the course.

Leo Yip Associate Professor, East Asian Studies

Leo used his Summer Fellowship to develop a Business Japanese course. Professor Yip traveled to Tokyo to gather printed, audio, and visual materials for this new course. Despite growing interest in business Japanese language education, Professor Yip found that textbooks and teaching materials available in the United States are outdated. With these materials, Professor Yip designed a course organized around a series of situations that simulate the Japanese marketplace and that allow students to acquire culturally appropriate interpersonal communication skills needed to deal with a variety of business transactions. Professor Yip was able to call upon his professional experience and connections in a Japanese company to accumulate particularly authentic materials.

Summer 2011

Jonathan David (Classics)

Combined his Summer Fellowship with other sources of financial support to work as a staff member for two archaeological research projects—the ‘Ain el-Qubbi Exploratory Excavation and the Megiddo Expedition—in the Jezreel Valley in northern Israel. At both excavations, Professor David was able to include a certain number of Gettysburg College students as team members, providing them with hands-on experience and field instruction in archeological methods, ancient history, and biblical studies. Following their visit, Professor David collaborated with these students to develop a new course that surveys the history and archaeology of the Ancient Near East, with emphasis upon the material cultures of the Syro-Palestinian region during the Late Bronze and Early Iron Ages.

Anne Xu-Cobb (Asian Studies)

Used her stipend to attend the summer program in Chinese film history and criticism at the Beijing Film Academy. During her visit, she attended lectures, field trips, and film screenings; met with Chinese filmmakers and producers; and researched at the Beijing Film Archives. The information she gained will inform the use of film in her literature classes—in particular, her 30 Years of China in Literature and Film course. These findings will also allow her to offer cross-disciplinary courses in both literature and film, since many contemporary Chinese novels and short stories are adapted into films and television dramas.

Stefanie Sobelle (English)

Attended a summer studio in architecture to obtain basic training in architectural design in preparation for her Fall 2010 senior seminar, Space in the American Imagination. Focusing upon the imagination of space in 20th-21st century literature, art, and architecture of the United States, this course considers the dynamics between public and private places, how American cities and towns are characterized and represented, American ideas of “safety,” and how Americans inhabit and conceptualize the home, the town, the city, a landscape, “outer space,” and imagined space. Experiential in nature, this course also guides students to be engaged, interdisciplinary thinkers.

Chris Fee (English)

Created a new course, The Medieval North Atlantic: The Burning of Njal as an Introduction to Saga Age Iceland. The JCCTL grant allowed Professor Fee to become better acquainted with the manuscripts of Njal’s Saga and the current scholarly publications examining this text. He worked at the Arni Magnusson Institute for Icelandic Studies in Reykjavik, and Vidar Hreinsson, the General Editor of The Complete Sagas of Icelanders and Executive Director of the Reykjavik Academy, provided a home base for him. Professor Fee also assembled digital images of the relevant folia from the manuscript tradition of this saga, using the growing quality of digital archives to introduce his students to the problems of editing and translation.

Kent Yager (Spanish)

Following the Spanish department’s decision to add accelerated Portuguese to its regular curriculum, Professor Yager utilized JCCTL funding to support a summer visit to Brazil. During this time, he lived with a Brazilian family, reinvigorated his Portuguese, traveled, and updated his cultural knowledge of Brazil. Additionally, he took photographs of different regions, collected regalia, and purchased video and other teaching materials for use in this course.

Rob Bohrer (Political Science)

The Political Science Department received a grant in the 2009-2010 academic year to better incorporate research methods across the Political Science curriculum, but Professor Bohrer was unable to utilize his funds until the 2010-2011 academic year. He used these funds with the following goals in mind: to better integrate research methods in all Political Science courses; to systematically evaluate the current use of social science research techniques in all Political Science courses; to systematically evaluate student learning as it corresponds to the research process in the discipline; and to develop comprehensive exercises, databases, and standards for each level of political science course and determine the effectiveness of the project.

Dave Powell (Education)

Each semester, students in Professor Powell’s Education 306:Educational Purposes, Methods, and Instructional Media in Social Studies, Art, and Music complete a “gallery walks” project, during which they are immersed in a particular piece of social studies content and are asked to research different ways of representing that content to others. This project is designed to help students develop the research skills they need in order to interpret subject matter content for teaching. Using JCCTL funding, Professor Powell accumulated his students’ research to create a website that showcases their work and intermingles it with other content related to social studies teaching. He anticipates that this website will be utilized by college graduates, future students, cooperating teachers, and others to explore and expand their skills in teaching social studies. Interested parties may visit the site and garner new ideas.

Kevin Wilson (Psychology)

In Professor Wilson’s Advanced Laboratory in Cognitive Neuroscience lab, students have traditionally designed and implemented a functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) research project. However, due to the high cost of fMRI data collection, students must work in large groups and can only collect a single data set, which prevents them from carrying out a full study, analyzing a complete body of data, or drawing significant conclusions based on their results. Using JCCTL funding, Professor Wilson adapted this course so that small groups now re-analyze existing data from a published research study; this allows them to complete a full research project, test new research hypotheses, and draw meaningful conclusions based upon whole group statistical analysis. This course makes Gettysburg College the only undergraduate-focused institution in the country to offer students the chance to conduct a course-based project of this depth, and it also provides students with the opportunity to perform research that can yield student-authored publications in peer-reviewed journals.

Kay Etheridge (Biology)

Used her JCCTL funding to digitize books and other resources for use in her First-Year Seminar: Creativity in Art and Science. She also developed a new software program that allows users to combine these digital resources with images from ARTstor to create an interactive visual timeline. In her seminar, students explore selected topics in Western art and science history from medieval through contemporary times. Since an understanding of relationships between key individuals, world events, and

cultural events are integral to students’ understanding of course materials, Professor Etheridge’s software helps students familiarize themselves with these figures and events by developing their own interactive timelines.

Summer 2010

Beth Campbell Hetrick (Mathematics)

Created a new course for her department on wavelets, a family of functions used to represent data or functions with applications in such areas as image compression, signal processing and de-noising, pattern recognition, and computer graphics. Her goal was to develop a course that introduces students to the mathematical theory of wavelets and motivates their interest through the exploration of applications. To meet her goal, Professor Campbell Hetrick attended a summer workshop in June 2009 organized by the Mathematical Association of America’s Professional Enhancement Program and entitled “Wavelets and Applications: A Multidisciplinary Undergraduate Course with an Emphasis on Scientific Computing.”

Tim Funk (Chemistry), and Don Jameson (Chemistry)

Inspired by an effort to be more environmentally friendly, created a “green” organic chemistry laboratory manual in Summer 2008 with the help of a Mellon Summer Scholar. They focused on three areas: the development of a lab manual that encompassed the entire organic chemistry lab curriculum while, at the same time, emphasizing the importance of health and environmental safety when doing lab work; the modification of existing labs to decrease the environmental footprint the organic laboratory places in the community; and the creation of new labs that both teach the fundamental concepts of organic chemistry and illustrate how creatively science can solve environmental problems. It was the last of these three goals that needed further attention and Professors James and Funk used their follow-up grant to complete the development of a new “green” organic chemistry laboratory experiment.

Rob Bohrer (Political Science), Roy Dawes (Political Science), and Bruce Larson (Political Science)

The Political Science Department agreed on the need to better incorporate research methods across the Political Science curriculum. Two external reviews echoed this need as well in 2004. However, because such an effort is so time-intensive, little progress 2 was made. Professors Bohrer, Dawes, and Larson used their fellowship to address this problem with the following goals in mind: better integrate research methods in all Political Science courses; systematically evaluate the current use of social science research techniques in all Political Science courses;systematically evaluate student learning as it corresponds to the research process in the discipline; develop comprehensive exercises, databases, and standards for each level of political science course and determine the effectiveness of the project.

Summer 2009

Jing Li (Chinese), and Takeshi Sengiku (Language Resource Center)

Developed interactive multimedia tools to help students learn and improve their Chinese pronunciation.  With increasing enrollments in Chinese, it becomes more difficult for instructors to give enough time and attention to the performance of each student.  The project goal is to focus on the errors and weaknesses of beginning students’ pronunciation so that students can achieve the accurate reproduction of the original Chinese sound system and build a solid foundation for advanced learning of the language.  The technology incorporated to enhance learning includes digitization and animation to illustrate the “invisible” movements and positions of the tongue and air flows to link sounds to the corresponding images, and speech analysis to impart interactive aural-visual feedback similar to a real instructor.  These tools are available without time or place limitations, greatly enhancing the ability of the student to learn the language without hands-on help from an instructor.  Sengiku completed the pinyin1]chart, with sounds recorded by native speakers.  A series of quizzes is nearly completed and will be accessible to students enrolled in CHN101 next fall.  Each time a quiz is accessed, the questions are randomized.  Students hear a sound recorded by a native speaker of Chinese, then select their answer.  The creation of the animation is ongoing; a template draft for one sound has been created, and a programmer will be hired for the summer of 2009 to continue the project. [1]The Pinyin is the Romanized symbol system, a tool that native speakers use to learn the sounds of Chinese.

Kent Yager (Spanish)

Had to postpone his 2007 award because of an injury, and worked on his fellowship in summer 2008.  He created units for the Spanish Department’s new Spanish linguistics methodology course “Spanish in Today’s World.”  Current introductory texts for Hispanic linguistics present the major topics (e.g., Spanish phonetics and phonology, morphology, and sociolinguistics), but provide little or no practical work with data collection, analysis, or presentation.  It is important for students to do work in linguistics and not just read about such work. Yager developed student projects for each of the major topics.  The projects have been very successful in that students are in contact with native speakers of Spanish, they are collecting language samples from the Spanish speakers, they are analyzing the samples, and they are presenting their results in oral and written reports.  A Web page provides access to a database related to each unit project.  Eventually, the database should include both data and samples of oral Spanish that future students will be able to analyze.

Daniel Drury (Health Sciences)

Developed a creative approach to teaching “Neuromuscular Physiology” by formulating a new set of laboratory experiences that use various methods of musculoskeletal biofeedback.  These laboratory experiences are unique because they demonstrate the dynamic interplay between the brain and the skeletal muscle system.  His three-step approach includes: (1) using traditional classroom-based instruction to expose students to the structure and function of the intact neuromuscular system; (2) introducing the students to the procedures and equipment necessary to quantify muscular function by employing a variety of laboratory machines often used in medicine and rehabilitation to provide an external source of data to analyze; and (3) internalizing information by having students kinesthetically experience and analyze each procedure.  Drury continues to refine and fine-tune all of the labs for future classes.

Summer 2008

Roy Dawes Associate Professor of Political Science, and Ann Harper Fender Professor of Economics

Received a shared fellowship to support summer preparation for a new service-learning-based course, “The Political Economy of Disaster,” that focuses on the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the Gulf Coast and includes a class service-learning trip to New Orleans.

Bela Bajnok Professor, and Chair of Mathematics

Received a fellowship to develop undergraduate research projects suitable for three levels of courses involving research in mathematics.

Johnson Information Literacy Grant Recipients

2022-2023

Megan Adamson Sijapati Associate Professor of Religious Studies and Co-Director, Globalization Studies

Megan redesigned her advanced level Religious Studies seminar, Islam in South Asia, to include a major research paper project developed over the course of the semester.  The goal of this project was to develop students’ library literacy, research skills, and research paper writing skills in and through their exploration of a focused topic pertaining to South Asian Islam.  Throughout the semester she conducted librarian-assisted workshop sessions with Mallory Jallas, Research and Instruction Librarian, to work with students in developing strategies for the careful development of a working research question and the production of original research.  This collaboration gave students an opportunity to develop the skills necessary to navigate primary and secondary source materials, including audio-visual resources, and to develop advanced research skills.  She also worked closely with Jeremy Garskof, Acquisitions Librarian, to help to build South Asia related resources for the library's Middle East and Islamic Studies collection for use in this course and beyond.

2020-2021

William O’Hara Assistant Professor in the Sunderman Conservatory of Music

Planned to substantially revise the course “Form and Analysis” to make it an introduction to scholarly research, writing, and communication in music theory.

Nathifa Greene Assistant Professor of Philosophy

Prof. Greene worked with Research & Instruction Librarian Clint Baugess. The grant was designed to improve students’ research and critical thinking skills in the course, Philosophy of Peace and Nonviolence (PHIL 219).

Sahana Mukherjee Assistant Professor of Psychology

Wished to collaborate more formally with the library to increase students’ achievement of some of the course learning outcomes in the course, “Cultural Psychology.” Based on previous iterations of the course, Sahana identified persistent weaknesses in the ability of students to find appropriate journal articles and make connections among them.

2019-2020

Monica Ogra Associate Professor of Environmental and Globalization Studies

Monica redesigned the Globalization Studies Capstone course which she taught in Spring 2012.  The primary objective of this course was the successful completion of a semester-long independent study project that integrates core elements of each student’s unique, self-designed major, in particular as related to the student’s self-designed “thematic” track.  Throughout the semester she conducted librarian-assisted workshops with Janelle Wertzberger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications and Ronalee Ciocco, Director of User Services.  These sessions complemented and reinforced existing curricular exercises in scholarly research design.

Chipo Dendere Gondwe Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor, Africana Studies

Prof. Dendere used the grant to develop a staged approach for her students working on research papers in the course, “Introduction to Contemporary African Politics.”

Dina Lowy Associate Professor of History

Dina received a $1,000 grant to revise History 325: Tokugawa Japan to include a more thoughtful and cohesive research plan. Typically 300-level history courses require a 15-page paper to prepare students for their more extensive senior thesis. The 300-level courses represent a critical juncture where students should be able to synthesize the research skills they have learned and do more advanced work. She met with Research and Instruction Librarian, Clint Baugess to map out this research plan. In the revised course, students first decided upon a research topic in consultation with Professor Lowy followed by a library session with Reference Librarian Baugess on how to conduct an effective search for sources. Students were grouped topically and in each research group they conducted peer reviews and organized a group presentation based on their findings. Professor Lowy used the Library’s bibliography rubric to give group members feedback and to evaluate students’ primary source analysis.

Anne Douds Assistant Professor of Public Policy

Worked closely with a reference librarian to improve the research and writing skills of her students in the course, “Introduction to Public Policy,” taught in the Spring 2019 semester. Anne reports that “I revised the course to add three modules on information literacy and one-on-one sessions with Kevin Moore and/or another librarian and/or me to train students on how to define issues, distinguish between fact and opinion, assess quality of resources, and integrate research into their analysis.”

2016-2017

Shannon Egan Adjunct Assistant Professor of Art and Art History and Director of the Schmucker Art Gallery

Prof. Egan worked with Research & Instruction Librarian Kerri Odess-Harnish. The grant was designed to improve students’ research abilities and presentation skills in the course, Art and Public Policy (ARTH 267/PP 322).

2015-2016

Zakiya Whatley Gondwe Scholar and Visiting Assistant Professor, Biology

Prof. Whatley worked closely with Research and Instruction Librarian Meggan Smith to incorporate activities that improved students’ research skills in the course, “Microbiology.”

2014-2015

Stefanie Sobelle Assistant Professor of English

Stefanie used a $1,000 grant to overhaul English 299: Critical Methods, a rigorous reading/writing intensive seminar that functions both as an introduction to literary theory and as an advanced training course in the research and writing skills essential for an English major. The Critical Methods course transforms students from English language and literature enthusiasts into actual scholars, and Professor Sobelle had two primary goals in revising this course. She wanted to cultivate students’ intellectual curiosity, with the intended outcome of strong and self-motivated research abilities. She also wanted to strengthen students’ research dexterity in order to open up the opportunities implied in her first goal. Furthermore, by the end of the course she wanted students to be able to read between a range of analogue and digital sources, understand the contexts out of which they were produced, evaluate their arguments and their reliability, and converse productively with them. Finally, she also wanted students to be able to evaluate the forms of sources they find, know when and where they might dig deeper, and interpret and synthesize the information they find as they develop their own arguments.

Julia Hendon Professor of Anthropology

Julie received an Information Literacy grant from the JCCTL to improve student research skills in the course, Precolumbian Civilizations of South America which she taught in the Spring 2014 semester. This course is cross-listed with Anthropology and Latin American Studies. It is an elective for the anthropology major and minor, an elective for the Latin American Studies minor and the Latin American Studies-Spanish major. It is also a Conceptualizing Diversity and Global Understanding course.

The course has always featured a research project that requires students to study a topic using scholarly books and articles beyond what were assigned in class. This project has always been challenging for me. Students come to the course from several paths as it has multiple possible prerequisites (either Anth 103, Anth 105, LAS 140 or LAS 147). Students’ backgrounds and motivations vary. Some are anthropology majors or minors. Others are LAS minors, LAS-Spanish majors or Spanish majors. Some have taken a prerequisite at some point in their career and need to satisfy one of the requirements. Others are back from study abroad in Latin America. Some have a lot of experience in library research, others have almost none. Julie always used a staged process approach to the project. In an effort to improve the ability of students’  research skill, she worked with Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications, Janelle Wertzberger and Research Librarian, Jess Howard. During the Spring 2014 semester, the class met five times with Julie and the librarians in sessions devoted to finding and assessing different kinds of information, including publications and images. Students used RefWorks to compile and order their information. The final paper differed from previous years in that it was a kind of review article in which each student discussed the kinds of research questions prevalent in their particular area. Julie believes that overall the end results were better. There was certainly less variation in the quality of the research – for the better – although significant variation still existed in students’ writing and analytical skills. Some students needed this kind of training less than others, making for some unevenness in student reactions but all benefited from a more detailed discussion of different kinds of sources and how to use them.

2011-2012

Amy Dailey Assistant Professor of Health Sciences

Amy redesigned and upper-level elective course to help students develop the skills to critically examine population-level health problems.  She included four interactive classroom sessions at Musselman Library with Health Sciences Reference and Instruction Librarians Kayla Lenkner and Meggan Smith.

• Making IL Relevant: Inspiring Student Engagement through Faculty-Librarian Collaboration (presentation)

Johnson Teaching Grant Recipients

2021-2022

Alice Brawley Assistant Professor of Management

Alice used her grant to provide an honoraria for two guest speakers in the course, OMS 405. Both speakers are representatives of the “gig” economy, a focus of the capstone seminar.

Beth Campbell Hetrick Associate Professor of Mathematics

Beth received funds to attend a the regional workshop of the Metric Geometry and Gerrymandering Group at Tufts University in preparation for developing a First Year seminar.

Kim Spayd Assistant Professor, Mathematics

Kim was awarded $600 for materials needed to demonstrate the Heat Equation in Mathematics 381, a special topics course that focused on Partial Differential Equations.

Jocelyn Swigger Associate Professor of Music (Sunderman Conservatory)

Jocelyn's grant allowed her to attend a workshop on teaching the Dalcroze technique of movement and dance. The technique will be incorporated into a First Year seminar.

2020-2021

Sarah Sillin Visiting Assistant Professor of English

Sarah used her funds to visit museums and historic sites in New Mexico as part of the development of a new course on Latinx literature.

Aisha Mershani Assistant Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies

Attended the Decolonizing Knowledge and Power summer school this summer (note: online conference). Its materials, lectures, dialogue and diverse participants assisted Aisha in her quest to decolonize her teaching by providing her with various perspectives on topics she teaches in her classes and building relationships with scholars from around the world. The school was a model for her own classes; such as Intro to Arab Culture, Youth and New Media in the Middle East, and Arab Film, where she plans to diversify the classrooms by inviting Middle Eastern studies scholars and practitioners in the field to speak to students through various forms of digital media. This will allow Gettysburg College students to be in direct dialogue with scholars and practitioners outside of our campus community about issues relevant to the course work. This dialogue will enhance student understanding of the region and give the content deeper meaning as a direct result of these personal decolonial perspectives.

Rachel Lesser Visiting Assistant Professor, Classics

Rachel was awarded $550.00 to attend the Paideia Institute’s Living Latin annual conference as well as a supplementary one-day pedagogy workshop, “Active Latin with Justin Slocum Bailey” at Fordham University Law School, NY. Professor Lesser reports that the three days of professional development to be extremely helpful and potentially transformative for how she teaches Latin and ancient Greek. The training opened up an entirely new way of engaging with the ancient languages—hearing and speaking them instead of only interacting with them on the printed page. The class sessions and the follow-up workshop were also helpful as pedagogical models, particularly for developing her sense of exactly how to use spoken Latin or ancient Greek in the classroom and in giving her new pedagogical tools that she looks forward to implementing with her students.

Megan Sijapati Professor of Religious Studies

Attended a four-semester intensive training course (online) in Quranic Arabic (a specialized form of Classical Arabic). With Quranic Arabic skills, she will be able to build entire class units around the didactic and ritualistic uses of Quranic language both historically and in contemporary Muslim societies and cultures, connecting it to units she already has on Muslim textual and visual cultures in South Asia and the North American diaspora. She will build these in creative ways into image-focused and text-focused exercises in REL 271 Introduction to Islam, REL 272 Islam in the Modern World, and REL 271 Sufism: Islamic Mysticism, and possibly REL 358: Islam in South Asia. She will also offer this expertise to colleagues in her department and in the MEIS program in the form of guest lectures/visits or 4th hour creative learning activities.

Salma Monani (Environmental Studies)

Received $705 to attend the 2014 Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference March 19-March 23 at the University of California at Santa Barbara. Professor Monaniparticipated in a pedagogy panel entitled “Green Media Studies: Integrating Environmental and Media Studies in the Classroom and Beyond,” a panel designed to help faculty share and discuss innovative ways of teaching courses such as Professor Monani’s ES 319: Environmental Film and ES 225: Introduction to Environmental Humanities. Professor Monani, the only environmental humanities and media scholar in her department, used her attendance at this conference to connect with other similar scholars who could serve as content-specific resources. Attendance at this particular conference was also a crucial means of keeping up to date in her field.

2019-2020

Tyeshia Redden Assistant Professor of Africana Studies

Funding to cover some of the costs associated with attendance at the Transnational Decolonial Black Feminism in the Americas Summer School in Cachoeira, Brazil. Information and materials learned at the summer school will be incorporated into AFS 250, Black Feminism—Film & Hip Hop.

Kathy Delaney Lecturer in Psychology, and Sahana Mukherjee Assistant Professor of Psychology

Attended the Teaching Institute sponsored by the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for the Teaching of Psychology in May, 2019. The training offered at the institute connected directly to the Change-Making grant awarded to both faculty.

Jeff Williams (Interdisciplinary Studies)

Jeff teaches Film Studies 220: Video Production, and was awarded $2818 to attend the Maine Media Workshops and College and participate in a week-long, hands-on course on Avid editing. His goals were to increase the instructor’s skill level to improve instruction in the course and to use Avid for more advanced student work. This would allow those enrolled in the course to have an edge in career development since Avid is the industry standard.

Sarah Jacobs Adjunct Assistant Professor, Art & Art History

Sarah was awarded $788 to cover the cost of materials needed for her Advanced Painting Mural Project. The goal of this project was to produce a large-scale artwork in the community and to teach her students career-related skills through hands-on experience planning and executing the project.

Jenny Dumont (Spanish)

Awarded $1,060 to purchase five copies of the textbook and workbook Conversaciones Escritas to teach Spanish to native and heritage speakers. This is a follow-up to the workshop held in August 2013 that addressed teaching Spanish to this type of student (See Johnson Center Department/Program Grants).

Rud Platt Professor of Environmental Studies

Funding to support attendance at the Pecora 21& ISRSE 38 Workshops and Symposium from October 6-9, 2019, in Baltimore, Maryland. Dr. Platt attended a workshop, “Demonstration and Application of the LCMAP Product Suite,” and a technical session entitled “How No-cost Landsat Data is Reshaping College Level Remote Sensing Courses.” Ideas and skills learned in these session will be incorporated into three courses, ES 230, ES 312, and ES 363.

Rud Platt (Environmental Studies)

Received $1,050 to attend Google’s “Geo for Higher Ed Summit” July 22-24, 2013 in San Francisco. This conference was devoted to web mapping in the cloud, a skill that Professor Platt wanted to incorporate in his courses. He planned to design, in particular, a new unit on web mapping for ES312: Environmental Applications of GIS that would require students to design an interactive web map related to their final project.

2018-2019

Natalie Barlett Adjunct Assistant Professor of Psychology

Natalie received a grant to cover expenses for a facilitator from the Pennsylvania Behavioral Health and Aging Coalition to lead the session of the learning experience, “A Taste of Dementia”. Participants, who were students in the course, “Human Development across the Lifespan”, were given a sense of what it must be like to live with dementia.

Robert Patierno Adjunct Professor of Art and Art History

Robert was awarded $1000 to support a large-scale collaborative printing project carried out by students in his printmaking courses. Over the course of the semester the students prepared themselves with a working knowledge of relief printing. They then designed and executed three techniques of relief printmaking with the last print being black and white and 26” x36”. A mobile large woodcut printing company to edition each student’s design and carving. The actual printing took place during Get Acquainted Day.

2017-2018

Bob Patierno Adjunct Assistant Professor, Art & Art History

Bob received $1000 to cover expenses associated with his project to produce large-scale steam roller prints with his students in Intermediate Printmaking.

View photos of the Block Printing Demo on Flickr!

Eleanor Hogan Associate Professor, East Asian Studies: Japanese Track

Eleanor will be using her award of $1000 during the Fall semester of 2016 to support her travel to Japan to visit the Autumn Festivals which will provide important cultural materials for her classes.

Christopher Oechler Assistant Professor of Spanish

Christopher received funds to attend a performance of the Spanish drama, Valor, agravio y mujer in New York. This rarely performed work is a key text in SPAN 310 course on the golden age of Spanish literature.

2015-2016

Nicholas Mitchell Assistant Professor, Health Sciences

Nicholas was awarded $2,000 to attend the Santa Fe Science Writing Workshop to identify best practices for teaching scientific writing. Professor Mitchell’s goal is to improve how scientific writing is taught in his department. Currently writing projects are one-off exercises designed to meet the needs of individual instructors, an isolated approach to writing instruction that makes it difficult to provide the appropriate scaffolding necessary to support skill development and establish assessment milestones. Professor Mitchell will evaluate all Health Sciences syllabi in his department and will work with his colleagues to design a scientific writing and assessment curriculum for Health Sciences majors.

2013-2014

Eileen Stillwaggon (Economics)

Awarded $1,000 to help defray the cost of a workshop held at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Stillwaggon wished to increase her ability to use TreeAge software so that she is comfortable with its advanced features and is more comfortable teaching the basics as well as the advanced features to her students. The two courses that have most clearly benefitted from the workshop are Economics 401 Senior Seminar: Research Methodologies in the Sciences and Social Sciences as well as the senior seminar for International Affairs.

Hakim Mohandas Williams Associate Professor of Africana Studies/Education/Peace & Justice Studies

Funding to cover some of the costs associated with Dr. Williams participation in the conference, “Minority Seminar: Curriculums for Social Justice” in Vaasa, Finland, from May 6-8, 2020. During his time at the conference, Dr. Williams plans to gather resources to add topics on international education in parts of Scandinavia to his course AFS/EDU 264, “Education for Social Change.” Dr. Williams will use the information gathered to help in the development of a new course, “Introduction to Peace and Justice Studies.”

Johnson Teaching with Special Collections Grant Recipients

2020-2021

R.C. Miessler (Musselman Library)

Awarded a Special Collections Grant to support his integration of assignments incorporating primary sources within Special Collections into this new First Year Seminar course. Specifically, the two assignments are a book-making exercise and Digital stereograph collection. These assignments will introduce students to Special Collections and working with primary sources early on during their time at Gettysburg College.

2017-2018

Ian Isherwood Visiting Assistant Professor in Civil War Era Studies

Ian plans to develop a series of assignments for the students in his First-Year Seminar, “The Soldiers’ Tale.” The research project will be focused on a particular collection related to the experience of war, helping students build important research skills from the start of their college career.

Kathy Delaney Lecturer in Psychology

Kathy plans to have her students prepare a historical study of the Department of Psychology at Gettysburg College in order to build research skills for working with primary documents.

Shirley Anne Warshaw Professor of Political Science

Plans to have the students in her First-Year seminar, “How the White House Works,” explore various sets of papers in the President Eisenhower collection, giving them insight into his character and management style.

Suzanne Flynn Professor of English

Suzanne plans to have the students in her First-Year seminar, “Shakespeare’s Sisters: Women’s Literature in English,” create a pamphlet detailing the rich holdings in Musselman Library’s Special Collections of first editions of important works by major nineteenth and twentieth-century women writers.

2016-2017

Sarah Sillin Visiting Assistant Professor of English

Prof. Sillin will develop assignments for her First-Year Seminar, Graphic Novels: Sex, War, and Literary Revolution. Students will be introduced to the library’s holdings of early graphic novels and collections of cartoons, leading to analytical essays written by the students.

Open Educational Resources Grant Recipients

2023-2024

Kurt Andresen Professor of Physics, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology Affiliate & X-SIG Coordinator

Kurt will be remixing OER for his course Physics 111 to a mostly open source/free course. Physics 111 is part of a three-part introductory sequence (in addition to Physics 112 and 211).

Christopher Rick Professor of Public Policy

Christopher will be remixing OER for his course PP221: Politics, Analysis and Alternatives. PP221 is taught each semester with an average enrollment of 27 students.

Rachele Salvini Emerging Writer Lecturer - English

Rachele will be adopting an OER textbook for her Eng. 205: Creative Writing course. This course fulfills an art requirement for students from a wide range of majors and specialties. She teaches two sections in the fall, and one in the spring of every academic year, and these classes are typically overenrolled. Each class has an average of fifteen students.

Jennifer Dumont Associate Professor of Spanish

Jennifer will be remixing OER for her courses, Spanish 101 and Spanish 102 and adopting an existing open textbook. Most students take these courses as a requirement. Average enrollment in each section is 18 students; she teaches three sections during the fall that are fully enrolled with some students on a waiting list. She also teaches 5 sections a year, totaling 90 students/academic year. She plans to make this resource available to any other instructor of Spanish 101/102.

2020-2021

Meg Blume-Kohout Assistant Professor of Economics

Meg will be remixing an OER textbook for her section of ECON 103 – Principles of Microeconomics.

William Bowman Professor of History

Bill will be adopting an OER textbook for his course, History 110: Twentieth-Century World History, a foundational class for the history and IGS (International & Global Studies) major.

Natasha Gownaris Assistant Professor of Environmental Studies

Tasha will be remixing OER for her course ES 211- Principles of Ecology, which is a core course in the Environmental Studies major. This course is taught every fall semester and, on average, has an enrollment of 36-38 students.

Alecea Standlee Assistant Professor of Sociology

Alecea will be remixing OER for her course SOC 296- Introduction to Sociological Theory. She teaches this course every semester to about 40 students total and it is a required course for both sociology majors and minors.

Kimberly Spayd Associate Professor of Mathematics

Kim will be remixing OER for her course MATH 225: Differential Equations. She will teach three sections of MATH 225 for the upcoming Academic Year and anticipates the savings from this remix affecting about 50 students.

Alice Brawley Newlin Assistant Professor of Management, and Marta Maras Assistant Professor of Management

Alice and Marta will be remixing OER for their course MGT 235 – Statistical Methods. They are the only faculty members who currently teach this course a total of six times per year, with 20 students per section. With a total reach of 120 students, these OER changes will impact many students and have a long-lasting impact on the management department.

Christopher Oechler Assistant Professor of Spanish

Christopher will be remixing OER for his course SPAN 301 – Spanish Composition, Conversation and Culture: Topics. This course is taught every semester and in Academic Year 2021, a total of 84 students were enrolled.