PCCC Faculty-Staff Poetry Reading

Maria Mazziotti Gillan

On April 19, 2011, PCCC held the the third annual PCCC Faculty-Staff Poetry Reading, sponsored by the Writing Initiative. The reading, part of the College's celebration of National Poetry Month (April), was held in the Founders Hall Theater.

Ken Ronkowitz

Featured readers were: Dave Bolger, Reading faculty; Christine Redman-Waldeyer, English faculty; Mark Hillringhouse, English faculty; Ken Ronkowitz, Director of the Writing Initiative; and Maria Mazziotti Gillan, Founder and Executive Director of the PCCC Cultural Affairs Poetry Center. The event was coordinated and emceed by Elizabeth Nesius, Writing Center Coordinator.

The featured reading was followed by an open reading. PCCC faculty, staff, and students were invited to read  original poems of their own.

The reading was open to students, faculty, and staff. Tomas Feliciano, PCCC student and winner of the WI Writing Contest, was among those who shared their work with the audience. 

PCCC Writing Initiative Presenting at TYCA Conference

The Writing Initiative team and WI faculty fellows will have a major presence at the Two Year College Association (TYCA) Northeast regional conference next month. Five members of the PCCC community will be giving presentations.

"Capitol Improvements: The Two-Year College as an Agency of Change" will be held November 4-6, 2010 in Washington, DC. TYCA's regional conferences foster the intellectual and pedagogical growth of English teachers and administrators in the two-year colleges throughout the region.

On Friday, a session on "Writing Connection: Bridging the Gap between High School and College" will be done by Alexandra Della Fera, Elizabeth Nesius, and Ken Ronkowitz.  This presentation is on our Connections program to work with area high school teachers across disciplines to create varied opportunities in writing-to-learn rather than the traditional learning-to-write approach that might apply only to the English classroom.

One of three presentations on Saturday from PCCC is "Collaborative Assessment: Working Together toward Institutional Change" by Elizabeth Nesius and Kelly Bender. Their looks at methods of collaboration for course-and program-level assessment and data-sharing to help both faculty and program administrators. Instructors can improve the WAC elements of their courses without sacrificing content, while still furthering the program mission of helping students to write well and think critically in any discipline. Writing program administrators, on the other hand, can improve both the writing program implementation and the training of its faculty to teach WAC courses. Students will benefit by experiencing WAC courses that are clearly defined, engaging, and optimized for their learning.

Ken Ronkowitz will present a workshop on "Adopting Open Textbooks." Open textbooks are openly-licensed textbooks offered free online by authors. The open license sets them apart from traditional textbooks by allowing users to read online, download, and print. They are also editable so instructors can customize content, cross-platform compatible and work with adaptive technology. This session looks at the how to identify, evaluate, and adopt Open Textbooks, and training opportunities for those wanting to adopt open resources, do peer reviews or open their own writing. Ken is an Advocate/Trainer for NJ as part of the Community College Consortium for Open Educational Resources (CCCOER).

Also on Saturday, Christine Redman-Waldeyer will present on "Public Writing: Linking Journalism, the College Newspaper, and Composition." Teaching journalism is always challenging but more so in a community college setting where students may not be prepared to write academically. It is one opportunity to prepare our students how to research and because students’ work is often “public” because it is tied to the college newspaper it helps students understand accountability, teaches them the need to consider what is libelous, to consider expert opinion, and the need to observe without bias.

---

TYCA (Two-Year College Association) is an organization under the umbrella of the NCTE (National Council of the Teachers of English) specifically designed for two-year college English teachers. Within National TYCA, there are seven regional TYCA organizations. Each works to foster the intellectual and pedagogical growth of English teachers and administrators in the two-year colleges throughout the northeast region. Our specific goals include conducting our annual conference in the fall and publishing a newsletter, which features members' articles, fiction, and poetry.

Portfolio Mentoring

For the 2010-2011 academic year, we have added Professor Anita Kumar as a peer mentor for faculty teaching writing intensive classes.

Anita is full-time faculty in the Early Childhood Education department. She has been an enthusiastic proponent of writing in the disciplines. Though ECE courses cannot be offered under the Initiative as WI courses, she includes many of the WI components in her classes and has been using ePortfolios for two years.

She began using our eFolio product in her classes voluntarily because it was something that education departments at the 4-year colleges do as a regular practice.

Professor Kumar has presented to PCCC faculty at our WI Faculty Institutes. She also did a team presentation in March 2010 at the NJEDge.Net Faculty Best Practices Showcase at Seton Hall University along with Elizabeth Nesius and Ken Ronkowitz. That presentation, "Soft Launching An Institutional ePortfolio Initiative," highlighted PCCC’s decision-making process approach to piloting online portfolios to support student learning and assessment.

This year she was appointed by the Vice President off Academic Affairs, Dr. Jacqueline Kineavy, to lead a study on the adoption of portfolios across the college community. The committee will look at portfolio products, adoption strategies and methods of assessment. The plan currently is to introduce portfolios in the required College Experience course and in the Humanities department.

Because Anita brings a strong pedagogical background to portfolio use and has extensive use in the current portfolio product, we decided she would be an excellent choice to mentor WI faculty in portfolio use during this year.

Soft Launching An Institutional ePortfolio Initiative

Today, I presented along with Elizabeth Nesius and Anita Kumar at the NJEDge.Net Annual Faculty Best Practices Showcase at Seton Hall University. Our presentation, "Soft Launching An Institutional ePortfolio Initiative," highlighted the Writing Initiative's use of ePortfolios.

Beyond our portfolio use in WI classes, our experiences are acting as a pilot for PCCC’s use of eportfolios with all students.

We are using a decision-making process approach to piloting online portfolios to support student learning and assessment.

The Initiative has been using ePortfolios since Fall 2008 as a part of all writing intensive course sections.

Each of us looks at one aspect of portfolio use in the presentation.  First, I spoke about issues of concern about portfolio use at the institutional level. Anita addressed how she is using portfolios for departmental degree requirements in the Early Childhood Education program. Elizabeth then brought the focus down to the course level with both what we do in the WI classes and what she has done personally in her own English course.

Electronic portfolios are frequently used to enable students to use new media technologies, do reflective writing, and document and showcase their learning across courses, disciplines and semesters. Our presentation (available below) talks about the kind of data we have collected over the past four semesters that will be used to help make decisions about using portfolios with all students.

Soft Launching An Institutional ePortfolio Initiative

View more presentations from Ken Ronkowitz.

Making Our High School Connections

A component of PCCC's Writing Initiative five-year grant is to make connections with the area high schools that send students to the college during year three.

The Writing Connection involves collaborating with area schools to share the best practices in teaching writing across disciplines.

During Year 3, we have now added Professor Alexandra Della Fera as our mentor to work with high school teachers in our High School Connections. Alex was the clear choice not only because of her background in writing, but because she is already connected to area high schools by her work with the PCCC Dual Enrollment program.

In addition to her teaching in the English Department, she coordinates the English Composition teachers at county high schools who are teaching PCCC's college-level Composition I course in the high schools.

Professor Della Fera will be working with the Initiative team to invite teachers in all disciplines to apply for our Summer 2010 seminar.

How do high school teachers capture the attention of a visual, online, Net Generation of students in a time of fragmented instruction, high-stakes testing and the social and economic tensions?

Research shows that integration of critical thinking and writing skills into all classrooms helps student performance and understanding of the discipline being taught. The Initiative has created Faculty Institutes for PCCC faculty that offer hands-on, collaborative activities designed to strengthen the integration of critical thinking and writing skills in general educations courses. Using those Institutes as a model, participating teachers will work with classroom action-research activities and strategies for gaining immediate feedback on student learning.

Sessions for the two day event will be designed and facilitated by Professor Della Fera, Elizabeth Nesius (Coordinator of the Writing Center) and Ken Ronkowitz (Director of the Writing Initiative).

At least one summer session will be held at the Writing Center on the Paterson campus. Attendees will receive a stipend of $500 for attendance at the two days and completion of the activities, and also receive NJ professional development hours for their participation.

In year 4 of the grant, we plan to connect with the 4-year colleges where our students often matriculate after completing their Associate degrees.

For more information on our high school and college Connections program, see our site at http://pccc.libguides.com/connection.

Thinking Visually and Critically

Mark Hillringhouse is in the PCCC English department. He teaches one of our writing-intensive courses - Critical Thinking CT 101.

Besides using one of our LibGuides to post materials at pccc.libguides.com/ct101, this year he started using a blog to model for his students the idea of thinking visually.

"Sometimes I pre-visualize an image before taking a photograph. An image can have a powerful effect on the imagination," he says.

Mark is well known beyond our campus for his poetry and his photography. He brings both of those to his teaching in critical thinking.

Student in CT 101 created blogs and portfolios using their own photography and images by others to consider topics in critical thinking.

Mark uses some of his own images to model types of writing for his students.

Mark's Visual Thinking blog is at http://mhillringhouse.blogspot.com

Mentoring Faculty in Using Critical Thinking

Mark Hillringhouse will be the Writing Initiative mentor for critical thinking this academic year.

Mark developed and taught the WI section of Critical Thinking (CT 101).

Mark is known as both a poets and photographer and brought both of those talents into the critical thinking course as ways to teach creative and visual thinking.

He will do a presentation at our January Faculty Institute along with Kelly Bender to introduce the mentors to the new WI faculty fellows.

Mentoring Faculty in Writing

Professor Kelly Bender of the PCCC English department has been selected by the Initiative team to serve as our mentor to WI teaching fellows for writing for the academic year 09-10.

Kelly has developed the Writing Intensive section of  EN 212 and will be teaching a WI section of EN 205 next year.

She will present at the January Faculty Institute on creating writing assignments in other disciplines.

Mark Hillringhouse Donates Photo to the Writing Center

Mark Hillringhouse with his photo in the Writing Center

Professor Mark Hillringhouse is an instructor in the PCCC English department. He will be developing a WI course section for CT 101 Introduction to Critical Thinking this year.

Mark is also a talented poet whose work has been published in The American Poetry Review, The Literary Review, The New York Times, The New Jersey Monthly, The Paris Review, and in many other journals, books, anthologies and magazines. He was the founding editor of the American Book Review, and a contributing editor for The New York Arts Journal. He has won three fellowships for poetry from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts, and has twice been nominated for a Pushcart Prize.

This multi-talented professor is also known for his photography. Mark has been kind enough to donate a large print to the new PCCC Writing Center. The photography is of poet Gerald Stern's writing desk which he felt was an appropriate addition to the Center.

He recently published a series of his black and white portraits of the New York School poets along with an accompanying essay, and he has recently published a photographic essay on the Passaic River. His recent photography exhibitions include shows at the Paterson Museum, the Main Street Gallery’s "Juried Competition" and the Salmagundi Art Club's Juried Graphics and Photography Competition, and a one-man show titled “Parts of a World” at the Hamilton Club Art Gallery, and at the Ben Shahn Gallery at William Paterson University.

View of the Paterson Great Falls by Mark Hillringhouse

View some Hillringhouse photos at http://mhillringhouse.zenfolio.com/