November 17, 2024

EagleEye

A Newsletter for UMW Faculty and Staff

Thank You to the Co-Facilitators of the Common Read 2019!

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Book cover of Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover

The Common Read Committee would like to extend a big thank you to this year’s Common Read discussion facilitators! The Common Read couldn’t have happened without your time, effort, and willingness to engage over 900 incoming Eagles! Sixty-four freshman seminar sections discussed Tara Westover’s Educated: A Memoir, facilitated by approximately 140 upper-class students, faculty, staff, and members of the UMW community. As the first academic experience, first-year students had a voice in the discussion of themes in the book, including family, class, gender expression, and education (of course!). We are deeply grateful to everyone who made this a successful campus-wide discussion!

Join the Discussion – Become a 2019 Common Read Facilitator

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Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.

Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover.

The UMW Common Read is one of the first experiences for incoming first-year students to interact with members of the greater UMW Community. The Common Read is both an academic and social experience where incoming students have the opportunity to engage critically with each other, returning students, faculty, staff and community members. The 2019-2020 Common Read is Educated: A Memoir by Tara Westover. This book features a young woman who leaves all she knows in search of an education and how her identity is shaped by her own decisions and the actions of her family.

Please join the Common Read discussion with our incoming students on Friday, Aug. 23, at 9 a.m. First-year students will kick off their academic experiences in FSEM sections along with one or two community members. Question prompts and additional information will be provided in advance to help guide discussion. We hope that you will help shape the discussion as we welcome the 2019-2020 incoming students to UMW.

If you would like to volunteer to guide a discussion group as a co-facilitator, please indicate your interest and need for a copy of the book. Please let us know if you have any questions.

If the hyperlink above does not work please copy this address into your browser to volunteer: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfLemkstAR_HgZNFk53FACV6AmXaZhH4S84SXLMhIQbItjaHw/viewform.

For more information, contact April Wynn, Faculty Director of the First-Year Experience, at awynn@umw.edu.

Wynn Named Faculty Director of the First Year Experience

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Dr. April Wynn has accepted the position of Faculty Director of the First Year Experience.  Dr. Wynn is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences and the MWCF Herbarium Coordinator, having joined the UMW faculty in 2015.  She is the chair of the First-Year Seminar Committee and serves as a Faculty Fellow in the Office of Academic Services.

Dr. April Wynn was named Faculty Director of the First Year Experience at the University of Mary Washington.

Dr. April Wynn was named Faculty Director of the First Year Experience.

She received her Ph.D. in Genetics from North Carolina State University (2013) and has an M.S. in Student Affairs Administration in Higher Education from Texas A&M University (2006), and a B.S. in Natural Science from McMurry University (2004). Previously, she served as a Visiting Assistant Professor of Biology at St. Mary’s College of Maryland.

Dr. Wynn’s passion for working with First-Year students has been a consistent thread throughout her career and professional development. Prior to her graduate work in genetics, she served as a first-year student Resident Hall Director at Boston College, where she oversaw the Honors Living Learning Community. Preceding that, she oversaw the Peer Diversity Educators and trained and supervised Resident Assistants at Texas A&M University.

In this position, Dr. Wynn will work closely with the faculty, deans, and department chairs, as well as the Offices of Residence Life, Academic Services, Orientation, and Student Involvement as UMW strives to institutionalize and sustain elements of the Quality Enhancement Plan, and further develop the experiences of our first-year students.

 

Wynn Publishes Work on Student Misconceptions about Plants

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Assistant Professor of Biology April Wynn and colleagues had a recent paper published in the Journal of Microbiology & Biology Education. The paper is a meta-analysis of the misconceptions that students of all levels hold about plants biology. The goal of this work is to be a resource for instructors to identify misconceptions in order to focus on enriching the education in these areas of plant biology.

http://www.asmscience.org/content/journal/jmbe/10.1128/jmbe.v18i1.1253

 

Biology Professors Present at National Conference

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Deborah O’Dell and April Wynn presented a poster titled “Transforming the Biology Major Through Course Based Research” at the AAC&U/PKAL meeting “Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education” held Nov. 4-5 in Boston. The poster was co-authored by O’Dell and Wynn and Biology Professors Andrew Dolby, Lynn Lewis, Alan Griffith and Deborah Zies. The presentation described changes in the biology major that ensure that every biology student participates in authentic research before they graduate.