Images courtesy of Agora Dance, Avenue Magazine, Twitter, and the UAlberta.ca.
Great teachers and researchers share two important qualities: open minds and inventive imaginations. It's these qualities that help to inspire those that their efforts serve - and this week we get to celebrate eight members of our community who have done just that through the integration of their teaching and research.
Here's a look at this year's recipients of the McCalla Professorships:
Emily Block - Alberta School of Business
Stabilizing and growing frontier economies has been a global concern for decades as strong economies are needed to improve the lives of the global poor. Through a combination of teaching, scholarship and service, Emily's McCalla Professorship project will focus on this through the lens of The Frontiers of Business Initiative in the Alberta School of Business. The program will serve as a forum and a launching pad for business development related projects that significantly impact underserved markets.
Sherry Dahlke - Faculty of Nursing
Image courtesy of https://twitter.com/sherry_dahlke
Older people are the largest demographic utilizing health care resources due to the increased incidents of chronic conditions with age. Thus, it is essential that nurses understand how best to work with this population. Sherry's McCalla Professorship project will engage undergraduate and graduate students to help in the development of learning activities that can be incorporated into courses throughout the baccalaureate-nursing program. The findings of this study will support decisions about which interventions to implement and which may need to be further developed.
Vijay Daniels - Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry
Image courtesy of Avenue Magazine.
Postgraduate medical education across Canada is transitioning from a primarily time-based model to more of an outcomes-based model called Competency-Based Medical Education where learners are expected to demonstrate evidence of competence on various tasks. These defined tasks, called Entrustable Professional Activities (EPAs), are activities than can be entrusted to the learner once there is enough evidence to support their judgment.Vijay plans to use his McCalla Professorship to understand the primary barriers and motivation to achieving an EPA observation both from the learner's perspective and from the teacher's. The findings of this will be used to help create a website where learners and teachers can access short, focused resources on demand.
Jim Denison - Faculty of Kinesiology, Sport, and Recreation
Coaches must be knowledgeable across a broad range of domains and subject areas from both the social and natural sciences. However, as many coaching scholars have shown, this can be difficult for a coach to achieve given that all ways of knowing about coaching are not spoken from the same vantage point, nor are they equally represented (Barker- Ruchti, & Tinning, 2010; Gearity, & Mills, 2012; Johns, & Johns, 2000). As a result, Jim's McCalla Professorship project will bring social theory, in particular Foucault's concepts related to discipline and the body, to the forefront of coaches' minds so they better understand the relevance that 'the social' has to performance when they design their athletes' training plans.
Rebecca Gokiert - Faculty of Extension
In June, a one week evaluation institute, called UEval, will be piloted to bridge theory with practice through experiential learning, while creating a mutually beneficial co-learning space for students and community. Rebecca's McCalla Professorship project will focus on an evaluation of the UEval model to determine if this experiential model of learning is impactful for students, faculty, and community. She'll also look to see how UEval might be used to inform future course development and programming.
Zaher Hashisho - Faculty of Engineering
Student understanding of the concepts related to the science and engineering of environmental pollution can be enhanced through hands on learning opportunities. As a result, Zaher plans to use his McCalla Professorship to enhance the learning experience of students by offering interactive visuals, demos, and hands-on learning tools. These tools might have the potential to be shared with a wider audience through open access teaching resources.
Kurt Konhauser - Faculty of Science
Indigenous Traditional Knowledge derives from an intimate relationship to the land that in many ways parallels the knowledge every Earth Scientist acquires through living in, and interacting with, complicated Earth systems. The potential for intersecting perspectives suggests knowledge systems could be shared through an integrated educational approach and personal interaction with the landscape. Kurt's McCalla Professorship project will organize a pilot Geosciences Education Outreach Program in conjunction with Indigenous community Elders, educators, etc. to develop an approach that will integrate traditional knowledge and traditional geology.
Lin Snelling - Faculty of Arts
Image courtesy of Dance Web.
Our connections to each other as a society, as people, and as a culture, remain vital as we continue to share stories and speak across disciplines to open up dialogue and fresh perspectives on the present-day world. Lin's McCalla Professorship project, A Sounding Line, will look at how dance/theatre/and music can gain depth as storytelling devices through collective problem solving. The project will also research the relationship between pedagogy to performance as experiential learning.