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Summer 2023 Course redesign Workshop (virtual)

deadline: Wednesday, May 31 by 5pm CT

Expect great discussion with community college faculty colleagues representing a number of institutions and academic disciplines. Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted online through Google Meet.

The online Workshop

The Great Questions Foundation Summer Course Redesign Workshops focus on helping faculty members incorporate the discussion-based study of transformative texts in general education courses they teach at community colleges. In each workshop, 10 community college faculty members will collaborate with two experienced faculty leaders on developing discussion-based pedagogy, student-centered study questions, assignments and a redesigned syllabus for a general education course they teach at their home institution. Expect to have meaningful and helpful discussions with community college faculty colleagues representing a number of institutions and academic disciplines from all over the country. Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted through Google Meet.

open book

Focus

Each workshop will focus on a grouping of transformative texts from The Great Questions Foundation’s Transformative Text List. Workshops pair an ancient/classic text(s) with a modern or contemporary text, emphasizing the persistent human questions raised by each text across spans of time, place and culture. These workshops are less about engaging with these texts as experts and scholars and more about learning how they can help us productively raise persistent human questions with our students in the courses we teach. Each workshop will include four meetings over Zoom lasting two hours each, running for four consecutive weeks. Some texts will be read in excerpt. Upon completion of the workshop, faculty participants will each have incorporated the discussion-based study of one or more of the texts we will read into the curriculum of a general education course they teach.

Stipend

Participants will receive a $600 stipend stipend from The Great Questions Foundation upon successful completion of the workshop

eligibility

This opportunity is available to current community college faculty members who teach general education/core curriculum courses at accredited US institutions.

Deadlines

The application deadline is Wednesday, May 31 by 5pm CT.

Notifications and full program syllabus will be sent to selected participants by June 7

Join Our Workshop

Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted through Google Meet. 

Summer 2023 Course redesign Workshop

Workshop 1

Four Consecutive Wednesdays
June 21 – July 12
10:30 AM-12:30 PM CT

Led by:

Ted Hadzi-Antich Jr. (Austin Community College)
Andrea Fabrizio (Hostos Community College) 

Organizing Questions

What Is Beauty? What do I find to be beautiful, why do I find those things to be beautiful and how do/can/should I create beauty in the world?
 
What Is Love? Whom do I love, and how do I know? How do I know if I am loved?

Workshop 1 texts

Why is this text Transformative?

Of all the dialogues, the Symposium is the most charming presentation of the classical Platonic thesis—that the good, the beautiful, and the true are one. Each of the speeches in it captures a different facet of the complex nature love: passion, desire, sex, inspiration, affinity, and even anger and frustration.

Plato

Why is this text Transformative?

Complex characters sit at the center of every Toni Morrison novel. She creates all her characters, these flawed and human people, the admirable and disreputable characters, with great empathy and love, and we as readers love them as well... In a Toni Morrison novel, understanding one’s ties to these ancestors and healing the traumas of the past brought into the present are integral to self-acceptance and moving forward.

Toni Morrison

Workshop 1 Participants

David Liakos

Philosophy/Humanities

Houston Community College

Frank Waters

Philosophy

Los Angeles Valley College

Jacqueline Scott

English

Community College of Baltimore County

Janene Amyx Davison

Speech Communication

Galveston College

Kathryn Bockino

English

BMCC (Borough of Manhattan Community College)

Matt Della Porta

Psychology

Monroe Community College

Michael J. Lenaghan

Political Science

Miami Dade College, North and Padron Campuses

Michelle Peruche

Psychology

Tallahassee Community College

Theresa Gromek

English

Cuyahoga Community College

Andrea Oliver

American & African American History

Tallahassee Community College

Death and the King’s Horseman

Workshop 2

Four Consecutive Thursdays
July 20 – August 10
10:00 AM CT-12:00 PM CT

Led by:

Led by Grant Potts (Austin Community College)
Gayle Williamson (Cuyahoga Community College)

Organizing Questions

What Is Justice? What are my obligations to others and what are their obligations towards me?
 
Who Am I? Where am I going? And what difference does it make?

Workshop 2 texts

Why is this text Transformative?

Antigone confronts the audience with the questions- is what is legal always what is just? Creon’s law denies Polyneices a basic burial rite. It is illegal to break this law, but Antigone makes the case that Creon has no right to make this law since is flies in the face of the will of the gods. She refuses to obey an unjust law...

Sophocles

Why is this text Transformative?

Soyinka was the first African writer to win the Nobel Prize for literature, awarded to him in 1986. He is an author with remarkable range, having published plays, poems, novels, stories, memoires, and essays. He is equally renowned for activism, especially his opposition to military dictatorships...

Soyinka

Workshop 2 Participants

Adam Rosen-Carole

Philosophy

Monroe Community College

Dionisia Morales

English/Writing

Linn-Benton Community College

Glorian Provost

Philosophy

West Los Angeles College

Isabelle Havet

Art History

Linn-Benton Community College

Jacob Shaw Mills

Philosophy

Houston Community College

Nuala Mary Lincke

Composition & Literature

West Los Angeles College

Patrick Kenny

Philosophy

Onondaga Community College

Linda Graham

History/Humanities

Houston Community College Systems

Join Our Workshop

Workshops will feature seminar discussion in a collaborative and supportive environment, conducted through Google Meet.