Developing the Indigenous Studies Minor

September 3, 2014 Katherine Rudolph Leave a Comment

Vivian Howard, Associate Dean Academic, Faculty of Management

In 2013, Patricia Doyle-Bedwell (of Dalhousie’s Transition Year Program) and I submitted a successful Academic Innovation funding proposal for the development of an Indigenous Studies Minor. Our vision was to develop an innovative, interdisciplinary Minor which would consist of three full credits, second year and above, with core classes taught by Indigenous scholars and recommended electives drawn from multiple Faculties. Ideally we hoped that this Minor would ultimately be available to students in all undergraduate programs. We saw this Minor as fundamental to several key objectives:

To increase enrolment, successful transition, and retention of undergraduate Indigenous students.
To enhance communication and awareness within the community of scholars from across Dalhousie, and potentially from across the city, the province, and the Atlantic region, who research issues related to Indigenous people.
To increase the visibility of and respect for Indigenous students and Indigenous studies on campus.
To enhance institutional engagement with the Indigenous community in Nova Scotia.
To create a learning environment in which Indigenous students will be knowledge leaders.
To enhance recruitment of Indigenous scholars to Dalhousie.
To lay a foundation for potential further initiatives, such as a major or graduate program in Indigenous Studies.

One of the great pleasures of being involved with this initiative was working collaboratively with an interdisciplinary development committee consisting of Indigenous scholars and staff, non-Indigenous scholars who research Indigenous issues, Indigenous graduate and undergraduate students and alumni. In addition to Patti Doyle Bedwell and myself, members of the development committee included Dr. Debbie Martin (Health Professions), Dr. Heather Castleden (Resource and Environmental Studies), Dr. Howard Ramos (Sociology and Social Anthropology), Kara Paul (Aboriginal Health Sciences Initiative), Brad Wuetherick (Centre for Learning and Teaching), Dr. Krista Kesselring (Associate Dean Academic, FASS), doctoral student Diana Campbell, undergraduate students Krysta Sero and Rachelle MacKay, and recent graduate Killa Atencio. Our first priority was hiring Lisa Robinson, a graduate student in Sociology with an undergraduate Education degree and strong ties to the urban Aboriginal community, to work with the development committee as curriculum developer. Lisa’s responsibilities were to

Research Indigenous Studies programs at other institutions and make selective site visits.
Survey current Dalhousie students and local Indigenous communities to gauge potential interest/vision for the Minor.
Identify existing Dalhousie classes which could be included in the Minor as recommended electives.
Identify gaps in current course offerings and propose new core and/or elective classes.
Identify opportunities for experiential learning.

The formal program proposal for the Minor is now being drafted and FASS has successfully secured funding for both tenure track and limited-term hires of Indigenous scholars, through the Dalhousie Diversity Faculty Award and the Strategic Initiatives Fund. It has been a busy year for the Indigenous Studies Minor development committee, and it is exhilarating to see the Minor becoming a reality, something that most likely would not have happened without the support of Academic Innovation funding. We are confident that this new Minor will lead to further opportunities for collaboration, consultation and relationship-building with the Indigenous community…the future for this innovative program is exciting!

Support for innovation as renewal

September 10, 2012 admin Leave a Comment

by Suzanne Le-May Sheffield, Centre for Learning & Teaching

Like the recurring seasons, teaching and learning experiences compel us to engage in a continuing cycle of renewal. As teachers, I believe we are also life-long learners. We need to take time for ourselves to reflect upon possibilities and opportunities to enhance current practice and consider new directions. From my experience at Dalhousie, I find there are several determinants of success when exploring such directions:

seeking partners in conversation to inspire our innovations
making use of available resources and consultants to support our initiatives
sharing experiences to build and grow our teaching and learning communities.

The Centre for Learning and Teaching plays a role in supporting Dalhousie teachers to create exciting learning experiences for their students. We encourage you to join our teaching and learning community by attending Centre events, workshops and discussion groups. We also invite you to contribute to our ongoing programming throughout the academic year by sharing your ideas with colleagues across the campuses. Please also feel free to consult with us on an informal basis about your future plans and aspirations for your students’ learning.

We enjoy hearing from you, supporting your goals, and learning with you. Go to: http://learningandteaching.dal.ca/ for more information or visit us on the first floor of the Killam Library (G90).

Mixing it up across programs to aid learning

September 7, 2012 admin Leave a Comment

by Ed Ng, School of Business Administration

In my BUSI 6315/COMM 4315 course on International and Intercultural Management, students get first-hand experience in people management skills. I work with instructors in the Corporate Residency MBA program in order to foster learning for both groups of students in an interactive, experiential environment.

The graduate students are charged with leading a diverse, multicultural, and cross-functional team of undergraduate students in completing a country case study project. MBAs apply their leadership and coaching skills to motivate their teams to successful completion of a project which culminates in a “trade mission” presentation at the end of the semester. As team leaders, the MBA students experience everyday management challenges such as motivating teams on task, resolving dysfunctional behaviours, and facilitating problem-solving using their knowledge from organizational behaviour theories. They also develop coaching and mentoring skills such as providing their team with guidance and directions, leading by example, providing timely feedback, developing subordinates, and creating an environment of trust in a multicultural setting.

Meanwhile, the undergraduate students also learn to work as a team, resolve work issues, maintain healthy group dynamics, manage workflow and support each other and their team leaders. Teams must complete their project on time, meet all project objectives and guidelines, and deliver their presentations to the client in a boardroom setting.

At the conclusion of the project, both MBA and undergraduate students learn to conduct performance appraisals by participating in a 360/multisource performance evaluation with each other as peers, supervisors and subordinates.

A very beneficial outcome is that students gain self-awareness in their strengths and weaknesses as people managers and team members. This academic experience also helps them to develop their leadership and coaching skills, and functional competencies in communication, project management and performance assessment.

“SciVerse Web App Challenge” assignment

September 6, 2012 admin 7 Comments

by Anatoliy Gruzd, School of Information Management

In the fall of 2011, as part of the Information Management Systems class that I teach at the School of Information Management, I introduced a new assignment based on Elsevier’s new platform called SciVerse (http://www.info.sciverse.com).

SciVerse is a web-based platform that allows academic and professional developers to design and build next generation applications to improve search and discovery functionalities of Elsevier’s large database of bibliographic records.

As part of this assignment, students worked in groups of three and four. They were tasked to create a conceptual design for a new SciVerse application. The goal was to introduce students to the latest web-based information systems in the field of Library and Information Science.

Later that semester, students had the choice to submit their completed conceptual design into an open competition called “SciVerse Web App Concept Design Competition”. (The competition was not part of the class.) To participate in this competition, students had to create a poster to showcase their design idea and present it during a poster session.

Based on the students’ feedback, the SciVerse Web App Challenge assignment was a smashing success. Many students expressed their high satisfaction with the positive learning experience. Second, as a result of this assignment and the event, Elsevier put together a case study based on this unique-to-Canada format, so that other universities can learn from and organize a similar event in the future.

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