News releases.
The University of Mary Washington was represented by Department of Music faculty, students and alumni at the 2015 Root Signals Electronic Music Festival at Jacksonville University in Jacksonville Florida. Root Signals is sponsored by the Division of Music at Jacksonville University, and the Department of Music at Georgia Southern University and featured guest percussionist Tony Steve for the […]
Barbara Bishop Mann ’66 will share her insights from more than three decades as an educator and activist during the University of Mary Washington’s third annual College of Education Educator-in-Residence event on Wednesday, May 1. The lecture will begin at 6 p.m. at the North Building of UMW’s Stafford campus.
Barbara Bishop Mann ’66 will serve as the 2013 Educator-in-Residence.
Prior to the lecture, graduating students from the College of Education will present their research projects from 1 p.m. to 5:45 p.m. Mann’s lecture will be followed by recognition of the College of Education graduates at 6:30 p.m. and a reception at 7 p.m. The lecture, presentations and reception are free and open to the public.
Mann retired from Chesterfield County Public Schools in 2003, after 35 years as an elementary school teacher. She served on the Virginia Education Association (VEA) Board of Directors for 12 years and as president of the Chesterfield Education Association (CEA). Mann remains active in the VEA Retired Council, the CEA Board of Directors and the local chapter of Delta Kappa Gamma Society International.
An active member of the UMW alumni community, Mann has served on the UMW Alumni Association Board and its Executive Committee. She is a member of the College of Education’s first Advisory Board and is a supporter of UMW education students through two endowed scholarship funds.
Mann received a bachelor’s in history from Mary Washington and a master’s in elementary education from Old Dominion University.
For a full schedule of student presentations, visit http://education.umw.edu/wp-content/blogs.dir/81/files/2013/04/Grad_Pres_Sched.pdf.
We are currently soliciting participation in the third cohort of the UMW Online Learning Initiative, beginning in August 2013. All full-time, continuing faculty members in any of the three UMW colleges are eligible for this program.
The Online Learning Initiative began in 2011-2012 with an initial cohort of seven faculty participants, who engaged in a faculty development project to develop quality online or blended1 courses in the liberal arts and sciences tradition. It continued in 2012-2013, with another six faculty members developing new online courses.
The Initiative is designed to be collaborative, with participants working together and learning from each other as the process unfolds. The project is led by the Division of Teaching and Learning Technologies (DTLT), the Center for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI), and the Committee on Distance and Blended Learning. Project leaders from these three groups facilitate the process but do not prescribe outcomes, preferring to let course planning grow organically out of the conversations about liberal arts teaching and technology innovation.
The project will start with a series of summer workshops in August to explore what it means to teach a quality liberal arts and sciences course online. The workshops, which will be conducted like small seminars, will include conversation and response to selected readings, demonstration of various technology tools and approaches, and advice from former OLI faculty. Overall, what guides the workshops is a focus on teaching excellence in the liberal arts and sciences, and how technology can be used to explore disciplinary approaches, build creative and effective teaching environments, and offer learning opportunities that may not be possible in facetoface classes.
Upon completion of the workshops, participants will write a planning document to guide the development and implementation of their courses. These documents will then undergo a review process, providing faculty with useful feedback and advice for improvement.
Following the development of the course plan, faculty will work in conjunction with DTLT and CTEI to refine their plans and develop their courses, in time to teach either summer or fall 2014.
April 8, 2013: Deadline for Proposals
April 22, 2013: OLI Awards Announced
Summer 2013: OLI Program Workshops.
Attendance at these workshops is mandatory. Currently, we plan to have 2-3 full-day workshops in mid-August. However, we are requesting information about summer availability during the proposal process so that we can adjust the schedule according to participants’ calendars.
Fall 2013-Spring 2014: Course Development
Throughout the 2013-2014 academic year, faculty participants will work with DTLT and the Center for Teaching Innovation & Excellence on developing their courses. This will be an ongoing process, enveloping (and informed by) the course plan reviews.
October 1, 2013*: Course Plans Due
November 15, 2013*: Course Plan Review Complete
Summer & Fall 2014: Courses Taught
* These dates are tentative and are subject to change.
Please discuss your grant idea with your department chair/associate dean and college dean before applying. Your submission indicates that your chair or associate dean endorses your participation in this program and agrees to allow you to offer the course online no later than Fall 2014.
To apply, submit a letter of application with the following information:
Please limit your application to no more than five pages, double-spaced. Applications should be emailed to mkayler@umw.edu by 5:00 pm on April 8, 2013. Awards will be announced by April 22, 2013.
Preference will be given to proposals with any of the following characteristics: courses targeting UMW undergraduate students away from campus during the summer term, and/or courses with high demand and low time-slot availability.
Each participant will receive a grant of $3,500 to develop and teach a course in a fully online or blended format. The grant award will be distributed in two payments; $2,000 upon completion of the orientation seminars and $1,500 upon teaching the course online. The grant recipient authorizes the university to use the course as a model with other faculty members subsequently developing other online courses. The grantee otherwise retains the intellectual property rights to all faculty-created instructional content.
In order to ensure that the course delivery meets the traditional standards of excellence for a model UMW course, the faculty member acknowledges that during the semester of offering, frequent, if not daily, interaction with students in the course is expected. Grant recipients will be asked to share their experience developing and teaching their online class by participating in a campus event no later than Fall 2014.
If you have questions, please contact Mary Kayler (mkayler@umw.edu).
University of Mary Washington Associate Professor of Psychology Miriam Liss will discuss the link between attachment parenting techniques and feminism in an interview scheduled to air on the “With Good Reason” public radio program. The show, “Humor Works,” will air beginning Saturday, Feb. 23.
Miriam Liss
The interview will focus on the 2012 study “Feminism and Attachment Parenting: Attitudes, Stereotypes, and Misperceptions” by Liss and her colleague Mindy Erchull. The study, based on a survey of hundreds of self-described feminists and non-feminists, shows that attachment parenting techniques, like co-sleeping, breastfeeding and carrying a child in a body sling, are more popular with feminists than non-feminists. The study also reveals that people hold stereotypes about the ‘typical feminist,’ when in fact those stereotypes aren’t true.
Liss, a licensed clinical psychologist, is an expert on gender issues and autism and developmental disorders. She received the UMW Outstanding Young Faculty Member Award in 2005 and was a finalist for the SCHEV state award in 2006 and 2009. Her research has appeared in numerous journals including the Journal of Personality and Individual Differences, the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin and the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry and Allied Disciplines. The 2013 study “Helping or Hovering? The Effects of Helicopter Parenting on College Students’ Well-Being” and the 2012 study “Insight into the Parenthood Paradox: Mental Health Outcomes of Intensive Mothering,” both co-authored by Liss and her colleague Holly Schiffrin, garnered international media attention.
Liss earned a Ph.D. and M.A. from the University of Connecticut and a bachelor’s degree from Wesleyan University.
“With Good Reason” airs weekly in Fredericksburg on Sundays from 1-2 p.m. on Radio IQ 88.3 Digital. To listen from outside of the Fredericksburg area, a complete list of air times and links to corresponding radio stations can be found at http://withgoodreasonradio.org/when-to-listen/.
“With Good Reason” is the only statewide public radio program in Virginia. It hosts scholars from Virginia’s public colleges and universities who discuss the latest in research, pressing social issues and the curious and whimsical. “With Good Reason” is produced for the Virginia Higher Education Broadcasting Consortium by the Virginia Foundation for the Humanities and is broadcast in partnership with public radio stations in Virginia and Washington, D.C.
