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.

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.

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.