Announcements
Inauguration Day 2013 at Augustana Viewing Event
Monday, January 21, 2013
9:00 AM - 2:00 PM
Evald Great Hall
President Barack Obama will be sworn in for his second term of office on Inauguration Day, Monday, January 21, 2013. The Augustana College Democrats are hosting an open viewing event from 9:00 AM to 2:00 PM in the Carlsson Evald Great Hall. Members of the Political Science and Communication Studies faculty will be in attendance throughout the day's events to answer questions. The swearing-in ceremony is scheduled to begin at 10:30 CST.
WINTER SYMPOSIUM DAY RESOURCES
Symposium Day: Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Our second all-campus Symposium Day is almost here. Please share the excitement of the Convocation Committee as you see the changes we have incorporated into this Symposium Day.
Symposium Day II
Nature and Human Nature
Wednesday, January 23, 2013
9:00 AM - 3:45 PM
There are no classes scheduled on Symposium Day, and all students and faculty are expected to participate in the day's activities from 9:00 AM - 3:45 PM. If you have student workers in your area who perform critical services, please schedule their work hours so that they can participate in at least part of the day.
The schedule and program for the day can be viewed at: http://www.augustana.edu/x52667.xml
Schedule
| 9:00-9:45 |
Advising Group Discussion |
| 10:00-11:00 |
Keynote Address I/ Concurrent Session I |
| 11:15-12:15 |
Concurrent Session II/ Lunch on your own |
| 12:30-1:30 |
Keynote Address II/lunch on your own |
| 1:45-2:45 |
Concurrent Session III |
| 3:00-3:45 |
Advising Group Meetings |
Keynote address:
"Healing the Relationship between Humanity and the Environment: We Each Have a Role"
presented by: Molly Steinwald, Director of Science Education and Research, Phipps Conservatory and Botanical Gardens in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania
Changes from the Fall Symposium Day:
- The keynote address will be presented twice in the day, once at 10:00 AM and once at 12:30 PM. Both presentations will be in Centennial Hall.
- There are three sets of Concurrent Sessions. Each session has nine or ten presentations. Symposium attendees will have the opportunity to attend the keynote address plus two concurrent sessions.
Please help our students prepare for the Symposium Day by:
- Being enthusiastic when you talk about the Symposium Day. We need to build positive buzz
- Discussing the Symposium Day in your courses. You might show the program and highlight the sessions that relate to material in your course. You might talk about the sessions you plan to attend. Talk about the goals and objectives of your course and explain how they fit into this alternate day of learning.
- Explaining how to plan your day (Decide which concurrent sessions look most interesting, decide which time you will attend the keynote address, decide when you will each lunch, etc.). As academics, we've been to many conferences with this type of schedule. Most students have not.
- Use the resources on the Symposium Day Moodle site (click here for site).
CIEE'S INTERNATIONAL FACULTY DEVELOPMENT SEMINAR GRANT DEADLINE
The deadline to apply for an Augustana International & Off-Campus Programs Grant for participation in one of CIEE's International Faculty Development Seminars is Friday, January 25, 2013. Click HERE for a brief description of the programs, a list of all the options on the CIEE slate for summer 2013 and the application instructions for both CIEE and for our grants. More detailed information on all the CIEE seminars this summer is available at www.ciee.org/ifds. IOP can offer three grants of up to $3,000 each to help faculty who wish to participate in these programs. You can use these experiences to freshen your expertise, expand your global scope or initiate a new interest within your field. Over 20 Augustana faculty and librarians have already participated and for many it has helped them realize the potential for global issues in their courses or the potential to participate in study abroad programming with Augustana. Please contact Allen Bertsche if you have any questions.
PROJECT PASTRIES: HOLIDAY EDITION
Project Pastries is a fundraiser for Habitat for Humanity. Staff, faculty and students make treats that are then sampled by students. The best cook will be crowned winner and awarded a prize! Email Jessica Allen if interested in baking for Project Pastries, or with any questions. All-you-can-eat treats will be served January 28, 2013 from 4:00 - 7:00 PM in Westerlin Lounge.
THE AUGUSTANA CENTER FOR POLAR STUDIES WINTER SCIENCE LECTURE
"Greenland Ice Climate Sensitivity"
Dr. Jason Box of the Byrd Polar Research Center at Ohio State University
January 31, 2013
7:00 PM
Hanson Hall of Science 102
Dr. Jason Box has been investigating Greenland ice sheet sensitivity to weather and climate as part of 23 expeditions to Greenland since 1994. His time camping on the inland ice exceeds one year. His research examines the interactions of ice with atmospheric and ocean systems, including the role of fire in darkening the cryosphere. Dr. Box is a contributing author to the Nobel Peace Prize-winning Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 2007. Contact Jennifer Burnham x 7845 with any questions.
HASSELMO PRIZE FOR ACADEMIC PURSUIT
Nominate your best grad school-bound student!
Deadline for Nominations is January 25, 2013
Dr. Nils Hasselmo recently funded a generous prize for an outstanding student who is planning a career in higher education. Department chairs are asked to nominate a student (Class of 2014) who shows promise as a college teacher or researcher. Funds from the prize can be used to support student research or creative endeavors, attend professional meetings, travel to special collections, laboratories or other resources, or any unique academically rigorous opportunity not typically available. The prize must be used during the 2013-2014 school year (including summer, 2013). Once the awardee is selected, the student will be asked to design a plan for using the funds to pursue his or her interests. A brief description of the award can be read HERE. Please contact Margaret Farrar if you have questions.
PARENT'S NIGHT OUT
January 26, 2013
5:00 - 8:00 PM
Carver Center
Augustana College Campus Ministries will be hosting a Parent's Night Out on January 26th in Carver Center from 5:00 - 8:00 PM. Money raised through this fund-raiser will be used for their Spring Break service trip to Appalachia. The cost of the event will be $10 per child for the night. Drop off your child(ren) for an hour or three and take some time to yourself. Your kids will be entertained with games, activities and fun. You will be able to relax. Due to limitations in our facilities, we cannot accept any child that is not potty-trained. Please feed your child a meal before the event as we will only have some snack food provided.
Please sign up in advance so that volunteers and activities can be coordinated by filling out the attached form and email it to rebeccapotenberg11@augustana.edu by Sunday, January 20th.
If you have any questions about the event, or about Campus Ministries' service trip to Appalachia, please email hannahbohn10@augustana.edu.
FACULTY DEVELOPMENT WORKING GROUP
The Faculty Development Working Group invites you to contribute to our ongoing discussions about the future of faculty development efforts at Augustana. Currently our committee is thinking about several areas of faculty development:
- New faculty orientation, new faculty programming, and mentoring
- Faculty development for visiting, adjunct, and part time faculty
- Engaging senior faculty, including emeriti faculty
- Faculty retreats for scholarship, course redesign, or career planning
- Building community through social events
- The Celebration of Scholarship
- The organizational structure of and faculty participation in a faculty development center
- Faculty awards, grants, and grant writing
We'll be hosting some sort of conversation on these topics later this academic year, but if you have something -- anything-- to say about any of these topics, please feel free to call or email one of the Working Group members: Katie Hanson, Mindi Mull, John Pfautz, Eric Stewart, Bob Tallitsch, Paul Weissburg, or Margaret Farrar. We'd love to hear from you!
Working Draft:
Mission Statement for Proposed Faculty Development Initiative
The Faculty Development Center at Augustana College provides faculty with the opportunities and resources to experience growth and renewal in the myriad ways they serve the College: as teachers, scholars, advisors, leaders, ambassadors, entrepreneurs, and campus citizens. Faculty development at Augustana is inclusive, collaborative, and ongoing.
Inclusive: We welcome all faculty, including those who are tenured, tenure-track, non-tenure track, administrative faculty, and staff whose work impacts our students. We offer a wide range of programs and support for faculty work.
Collaborative: Faculty development is a partnership that can only occur in a community characterized by mutual trust and respect. We help build that community in two ways: first, by facilitating conversations and building partnerships among those with common interests and goals. Second, we are attentive to faculty as whole people, whose professional development is intrinsically related to personal well-being.
Ongoing: The FDC aims to be relevant to faculty at all stages of their career, from those interviewing for positions to retirement and beyond. Our programs and workshops help faculty respond to the new challenges and possibilities of a rapidly changing academic environment.
11TH ANNUAL INTERNATIONAL FOOD FESTIVAL
Saturday, February 2, 2013
5:00 - 7:00 PM
College Center Dining Room
The Office of International Programs will host the 11th Annual International Food Festival. Join us for an all-you-care-to-eat buffet of dishes from Africa, Asia, the Middle East, Europe and Latin America. Tickets are $15 per person or $26 for two, and $7 for children age 9 and younger. Doors open at 5:00 PM and serving concludes at 7:00 PM. Seating is limited, and there are no reserved seats for this event. For additional information, please visit http://www.augustana.edu/foodfest or contact Jane Tiedge. Tickets for the 11th Annual International Food Festival are available through the Ticket Office. For menu and details, go to http://www.augustana.edu/x11272.xml.
PROMOTING UNDERGRADUATE RESEARCH:
SHARING BEST PRACTICES
Saturday, April 6, 2013
10:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Augustana College
CALL FOR PRESENTERS: Undergraduate research has been identified as a high-impact practice that fosters student development, leads to greater levels of retention and persistence, and encourages synthesis and engagement.
- What do you do at your college or university to promote student research?
- Do you offer programs or support for students?
- Do you reward faculty involvement in research?
- Do you celebrate the work students do?
- Do you assess outcomes?
- What issues have you encountered?
- What have been your successes?
If you are interested in sharing how your institution has addressed these and other related questions, contact Ellen Hay. This one-day conference is designed to stretch faculty development funds through collaboration and exchange. It will feature a keynote speaker, concurrent sessions and a working lunch. Submissions are due by Friday, February 22, 2013.
CVs FOR ACCREDITATION
As you know, preparations are getting underway for the Higher Learning Commission accreditation. One of the things we need to accomplish is an archive of all current faculty CVs. Please email a copy of your current CV to Steve Klien, Chair of Faculty Welfare Committee, at your earliest convenience.
MIDWEST FACULTY SEMINAR TOPICS 2012-2013
Again this year, Augustana College will participate in the Midwest Faculty Seminars sponsored by the University of Chicago. Participation permits the College to send two faculty members to any single seminar. Below are the dates and titles of the four 2012-2013 seminars. If you are interested in attending any of these, please contact Margaret Farrar. Margaret will nominate you and send the registration form to you for completion. You are responsible for making your own travel and accommodation arrangements. If you choose to reserve a single room, the Office of Academic Affairs will cover the costs associated with that. All Pcard receipts are to be submitted to Sherry Docherty.
Islam in/and the West
February 21-23, 2013
Deadline to contact Margaret Farrar: Friday, January 18, 2013
Deadline for Registration: Wednesday, January 23, 2013
Almost from its beginnings, Islam has been regarded by many European historians, theologians, political figures and others as a threat to the political and cultural traditions of the West. A great many Islamic thinkers, for their part, have participated in the construction of this relationship, too, treating the values espoused by Europeans and their heirs as fundamentally antagonistic to the ideals embraced by most of the inhabitants of the Islamic world. As a consequence, the history of this relationship has often been represented as one of ongoing conflict-a conflict that in many respects seems to continue to this day.
There is, however, another version of this story, one that the popularity of ideas about the "clash of civilizations" make rather hard to see. Indeed, while the history of Islam and the West often seems to be one of interminable conflict, there are numerous instances of conviviality and cooperation as well. Arab scholars were, for instance, instrumental in preserving and advancing the thought of the ancient Greeks. Generations of Christian theologians have looked with great admiration on the text of Islamic religious tradition. And in the past as well as the present, successive waves of population movements between East and West have made the putative opposition between Islam and Western Civilization harder and harder to believe.
This seminar, therefore, tries to go beyond the so-called "clash of civilizations" thesis in order to examine the shared histories of Islam and the West at sites throughout the Middle East, Asia, Europe and the United States. It begins with an examination of the relations among Judaism, Christianity and Islam from the time of Prophet Muhammad through to the Middle Ages, with a particular focus on the complexities of varied forms of intellectual and religious history. What defines the relations among the three Abrahamic faiths at the moment of Islam's founding? How do varied communities of believers come to understand the differences between one another? And in what ways have otherwise forgotten forms of cultural and intellectual exchange informed the histories of Christianity, Judaism and Islam as we understand them in the present?
The seminar continues with an exploration of Islam and the culture and politics of the West in the 19th and 20th centuries. How have colonial encounters between Muslims and Christians informed the meaning of modernity in the East and the West? How does the spread of Islam throughout the globe change the way we think about religion, secularism, and the nature of the public sphere? And what does the proliferation of new media technologies, transnational solidarities, and reformist political movements presage for the future of politics in North Africa, the Middle East and beyond?
While our ways of talking about "Islam" and "the West" often invoke a mutual antagonism that seems to span the ages, the historical realities this seminar tracks are much more complicated than such rhetoric suggests. By examining the often intimate forms of relation at work in the history of Islam and the West, the seminar hopes, in the end, to chart a new trajectory for thinking about Islam as a religious, cultural and political influence in the world today.
Presenters will include Rashid Khalidi (History-Columbia), Fred Donner (Near Eastern Languages and Cultures), Isa Hussin (Political Science), James T. Robinson (Divinity) in addition to other faculty in the humanities and social sciences.
Climate Change Across the Disciplines
April 18-20, 2013
The problem of climate change has of late become the source of numerous critically important academic debates. Often, however, academic discussion of the topic has been limited to the biological and physical sciences, those areas of inquiry that have done the most to bring its challenges into view. This seminar therefore proposes to examine the problem of climate change from the perspectives of the humanities and the humanistic social sciences in order to better understand the problems climate change poses for the project of humanistic inquiry. How does anthropogenic climate change challenge the way we think about ethics, politics and history? In what way does a problem like climate change alter our approaches to the study of literature and other cultural objects? Are the disciplines as constituted adequate to the task? Or does climate change foretell not just substantial changes in the way we organize our economic life, but in the way we organize our forms of knowledge as well?