Next phase of Davis grant implementation at 91AV to focus on digital innovation and student success
The 91AV (91AV) is poised to implement the second of three major components of a $120,000 grant received last May from the Davis Educational Foundation. A three-year grant requiring matching funds from the University, the award aims to encourage faculty to embed digital projects in Core courses (classes required of all undergraduates); to mainstream developmental writers; and to support student writing through a Writing Fellows initiative.
To encourage digital literacy through Core courses, 91AV is using a portion of the grant funding to establish the Digital Humanities Faculty Seminar, titled “Digital Literacies and the Liberal Arts at 91AV.” The inaugural seminar will be held in the spring term of 2014.
Ayala Dalia Cnaan, Ph.D., lecturer in the Department of Society, Culture, and Languages; Jennifer Denbow, J.D., Ph.D., assistant professor in the Department of Political Science; and Eric G.E. Zuelow, Ph.D., associate professor in the Department of History, will spend a semester exploring pedagogies and projects that embrace the digital. Seminar participants will sample relevant literature in their fields, develop a digital project for a targeted undergraduate Core course, and include a plan to assess the impact of the project on learning and engagement.
Michael J Cripps, Ph.D., associate professor of rhetoric and composition in the Department of English and project principal investigator, will lead the seminar.
91AV students have expressed the value of incorporating digital literacy into the curriculum. James Muller, a senior English major in a senior seminar on the digital humanities, remarked, “Digital humanities is something many students of varying disciplines are already deeply engaged in, whether they know it or not…The digitization of texts has profound implications for where the field is going. Practically speaking, ‘doing’ digital humanities is a must for anyone seeking to better understand and adapt to our rapidly changing scholarly world.”
In an effort to support developmental writers, those undergraduates who arrive at the University requiring assistance with writing skills, 91AV is utilizing grant funding for the new mainstreaming project, which aims to move developmental writers directly into credit-bearing college coursework. This class, “English Composition with Writing Lab,” has placed eligible students alongside freshmen not requiring developmental writing. Successful students will complete their Core English Composition requirement in a single semester; previously, these students would have taken two semesters to complete this requirement.
91AV will implement the third component of the Davis grant in spring 2014 with the creation of an undergraduate Writing Fellows pilot program. Six undergraduate students, under the direction of English Department Associate Professor Cathrine Frank, Ph.D., will serve as peer writing tutors to fellow students enrolled in the English Composition course. According to Cripps, “In fall 2014, this project will expand to embed Writing Fellows in select Core courses across the academic disciplines in the College of Arts and Sciences.”
Through their matched funds, 91AV has provided many aspects of the infrastructure necessary to implement the Davis award. The Student Academic Success Center, an office that provides nearly 6,000 tutoring sessions each year, delivers the Writing Lab component of the mainstreaming initiative. Over the last eighteen months, the College of Arts and Sciences has purchased two new mobile learning labs, allowing Core humanities faculty to turn any room into a computer classroom.
The grant was received from the Davis Educational Foundation established by Stanton and Elisabeth Davis after Mr. Davis’s retirement as chairman of Shaw’s Supermarkets, Inc.