GCC Professors Develop Cutting-edge Courses to Prepare Students for Success
New courses, new ways of teaching and new slants on traditional courses keep Greenfield Community College's course catalog fresh and prepare students for a changing world. Here is a sampler of some of the latest offerings.
"Art and Film,"? designed and taught by Chelsea Dacres-Smith. "What I've noticed in my survey classes is that if I could find relevant films to tuck in here and there, students usually engaged with the material better,"? said Art History Instructor Chelsea Dacres-Smith, "and so I thought about how that would make a great course."?
Starting this spring, students can enhance their understanding of the major art movements by critiquing films and documentaries in which those art movements figure. For example, Islamic art and architecture: "When I show them my PowerPoint presentation, students are seeing a two-dimensional image. They don't really get the scope of how tall these mosques are, what it would be like to actually be inside of them, the quality of light, the atmosphere,"? explains Dacres-Smith. "But the documentary, 'Empire of Faith,' does such a good job of going into and around the buildings. There's all these pans with the camera going up to the ceiling and really watching the quality of light for several seconds. I think it just brings home how it would actually feel to be in that structure that students can't quite get in photographs."?
Another film, "The Gleaners,"? made in 2000, was inspired by the 1857 Milet painting of the same name. "The filmmaker, Agnes Farden, went to France to see if that society still gleans today,"? says Dacres-Smith. "She finds a lot of people who are down and out and still survive on the left-over harvest. Then she goes to Paris and starts looking at appliances that people recycle and artists who use recycled parts in their artwork. So this painting by Milet encompasses all these things that we're still worried about today. When I show this film, students understand how art relates to bigger topics that are still relevant to us today."?
Other films include "Girl with the Pearl Earrings"? (about 17th-century Dutch master Johannes Vermeer), "Impromptu"? (depicting the French salons of the 1830s) and " The Agony and the Ecstasy"? (about Michaelangelo and the Sistine chapel).
"Math and the Nurse's Role in Medication Administration,"? an interdisciplinary course developed by Math Professor Linda Cavanaugh and Director of Nursing Terri Mariani. "Most colleges have a course called something like "Math for Meds (medications)"? and it's just a straight math course,"? said Cavanaugh. "But we wanted to do something where pharmacology and mathematics were fully integrated so that students could see why they were learning the math and how critical it was in terms of their nursing careers."?
The result is a unique course, co-taught by Cavanaugh and a member of the nursing faculty, that combines the nurse's role and responsibilities in administering medications to patients with the critical math skills necessary to figure out IV flow rates and calculate how much of a certain drug to administer to patients.
"My role is to give them computational fluency,"? said Cavanaugh. "I teach students four different methods but show them the interconnectedness of the methods. So they have the flexibility to do a problem several different ways. but sometimes one way is more efficient over another way. So not only do they have multiple ways to solve problems, but they then can pick the most efficient way. And then, of course, we want them to be accurate, because it's critical."?
As challenging as all this sounds, this course is actually a prerequisite which prospective nursing students have to pass with an 84 or better just to apply for admission into GCC's highly competitive nursing program. "So we have very motivated students!"? quipped Cavanaugh.
Facts are stubborn things, but statistics are more pliable, said one wit. Possibly nowhere are statistics more ubiquitous than in the social sciences, hence this new course, "Statistics for Psychology and Social Sciences."?
It's a consumer-oriented course so that students and interested community members can learn about how statistics are used, particularly in psychological research, according to Professor Anne Wiley, chairperson of the social sciences department, "It's important for students to understand the various kinds of research methods that are used in psychology and social sciences so that they can analyze, first of all, whether the method was the appropriate way to gate the data and, then, whether the data was analyzed in an appropriate way,"? said Wiley.
"For example, there's a lot of data out there that tries to focus on the difference between the way men and women behave, or the kinds of psychological disorders men and women might have,"? says Wiley. "But when you actually analyze some of the data, you see lots of overlaps and more similarities than differences. That's where you want students to get kind of sophisticated and use critical thinking skills to be able to look at that kind of information more carefully. Then they can tell whether a study has validity."?
"Statistics for Psychology,"? which will be taught by Professor Melissa Burkett, will be offered Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 5:15 p.m. so that both day and evening students can take it. Students will get hands-on experience using the Social Sciences Studio's computers and a special software package to help them frame their questions and analyze data.
Two new art courses continue the exciting program leading to a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree from Boston's prestigious Massachusetts College of Art through actual MCA courses which students take at Greenfield Community College. "We are the only college offering Mass. College of Art classes, so we feel really privileged that they're letting us do that,"? says Professor Tom Young, who is teaching a 300-level course this spring called " Image and Object."?
"The class is really exciting,"? says Young. "It is about hybrid images, about making a photograph that is a different kind of image than what we traditionally think of as the identity of a photograph, which is a flat piece of paper on the wall. (It's about) exploring one's thought process as to how you can work with three-dimensional space and a photograph that no longer lives on the wall, but in space " and that's pretty exciting.
"But most of all, I'm excited about the program and what it offers area people who might want to get a BFA in a slightly different way. For people who cannot move to Boston because of family or jobs or monetary issues,"? says Young, "it allows them a very different avenue to experiencing Mass. College of Art-level classes."?
Professor Budge Hyde will be teaching Mass. College of Art course FA305, "Abstract Painting Critique,"? on Mondays from 1 to 5. "It examines abstraction from perspectives of history, color, collage and minimalism,"? says Hyde. "I'll probably start in the modern period, from the '50s on. But it is not a history course because students will be painting and drawing throughout the semester. I'll have a space set up for them so the painting room will be open Monday through Friday and possibly Saturdays for them. We'll talk about abstraction relative to their own work, but they can also work from literal themes as well. The idea of putting anything on a two-dimensional surface is an abstraction in itself. We'll take time out on Mondays to do the course in critique."?
Language professors Charlotte Gifford and Norma Quesada are piloting new courses in French and Spanish that use films and contemporary readings to engage intermediate-level language students: "French (Spanish) Film and Language"? and " French (Spanish) Readings for Communication."?
"In both film classes (French and Spanish), we choose about five films from varying regions of that language's world experience,"? says Gifford. "So there might be an Argentinian film, a Spanish film, a Mexican film, and then we use them as a vehicle for language and culture study.
"This all started because more and more of our students coming in to GCC had already had successful experience in language at the middle and high school levels, which was really the good news they were bringing us, and we knew we had to offer them something beyond the traditional courses. So these are upper-level, intermediate courses.
"These students have had a great deal of language study already, so everything that happens in the film can be exploited. There's the wonderful cultural context of the native country and the director's cultural perspective. In terms of just the words themselves, there is just 'gobs' of language bombarding the student. And now there's another benefit that DVD technology offers us and that is the original language subtitles, available to turn on or off at the teacher's discretion. When students are listening to language, reading language and experiencing the visual impact of the film itself, comprehension just goes through the roof!"?
The readings courses being offered this spring define readings in the broadest sense, according to Gifford. "These might be children's literature, it might be a Web site or an article off the Web. It might be a brochure or a flyer, an ad, an entry from an online encyclopedia. It could be a news article."?
The film and readings courses can be taken in any sequence; the readings courses will be offered this spring, and the film courses in the fall.
Professor Abbie Jenks is offering a new course in the Peace and Social Justice liberal arts option called " Peacemaking in Practice,"? which she describes as a seminar on nonviolence and social action.
"My orientation for the degree option and the courses I've developed is about teaching nonviolence but also encouraging social action on the part of the students,"? says Jenks. "There's a 21-hour service learning component built into the class, so students are required to do something out in the community."?
Some of those opportunities for advocacy include the Traprock Peace Center, the Citizens Awareness Network and the American Friends Service Committee.
Serving within an established organization offers students the bonus of feeling like they are part of a bigger movement, according to Jenks. "I think one of the issues is feeling powerless and ineffectual. I was just having a conversation with my kids, who are 22 and 19, and they're feeling discouraged about the state of the world and anything they can do about it. But if you get involved with a group of people and you see the results of group effort, then you sense the power of that kind of solidarity,"? says Jenks.
Jenks sees these courses as a collaboration between GCC and the community. "It is a collective effort to create social change and to bring an awareness of what nonviolence is to people because there are a lot of misunderstandings about what it is,"? says Jenks. "A lot of people believe it's passive, it's ineffective, that it just doesn't work. Whereas the growing research and participation in nonviolent action is showing that, in fact, it is powerful, it's quite active and it's effective."?
English Department Instructor Wendy Barnes is offering a new course, "Queer Literature,"? that addresses the questions, "What is 'queer' and why does it matter? How do race, class, gender and other social categories intersect with categories of 'queer'?"?
"In this course,"? says Barnes, "we will use literature as well as some film and media to explore, examine and analyze these questions. While it is difficult to predict how each of us will answer and process such questions, there is no doubt that by the end of the course, we will have a better understanding of the ways in which queer literature has become worthy of serious academic inquiry."?
One of the innovative course categories at Greenfield Community College is the "learning community,"? which combines two different courses that complement each other. A good example is a six-credit course being offered for the first time this spring that combines sociology and human ecology in a new learning community called " Our Earth, Our Choice: A Critical Analysis of Culture, Community and Environment."? It was developed by Assistant Professor Linda McCarthy and Professor Angel Russek.
"We are teaching it as a study of life on earth, combining ecology with people's relationship with the earth, the environment and each other,"? says McCarthy. "We're thinking about focusing on food and our relationship to food."?
Some questions students might explore include What do we choose to eat? What's culturally appropriate? How do we distribute food?
For instance, posits McCarthy, "we're eating mangos from Chile and avocados from Mexico and I can't get local produce! What's going on in our society right now that it's easier " or cheaper " to get food from Central America than it is to get local food? It really feel ripe for analysis."?
McCarthy and Russek hope that students will be able to analyze where their food comes from, the choices that they make and the impact that their choices have on our culture and environment. "If we rely on all this mass-produced food,"? says McCarthy, "eventually we won't have local people growing food because they can't make it. So that's the end of that and then you can't get local produce. So there are a lot of ramifications."?
Professor McCarthy is also reviving a course that has been absent from the GCC catalog for quite some time, "Sociology of the Family."? It will be taught by Adjunct Instructor Brian Kapitulik.
"It used to be called " Marriage and Family,"? says McCarthy, "but I didn't want to put marriage in the title because I think that's exclusive and fairly limiting in what a family is. This title seems more inclusive because your family can be your chosen family or your biological family or your partnership."?
McCarthy believes this course will meet the needs of a lot of students including nursing students, psychology students, education students and human service students. "The importance of recognizing the diversity in families is probably central (to the course),"? says McCarthy, who hopes that students will gain an appreciation for the impact of the family as an institution in our culture. "It's something so personal to students because we all have families of some sort."?
April Heaslip will be launching a new course this spring, "Women and Spirituality,"? that will create a discourse on the perspectives and roles women have played within religious institutions as well as outside of them and promises new possibilities for growth and understanding.
For more information about these and other courses at GCC, and to register, visit the college's Web site at www.gcc.mass.edu.
Opens Thursday at 7 p.m. and runs through Dec. 17
The GCC Theater Department will stage an original adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's children's classic, "The Wind in the Willows."? It will be the first production in the newly refurbished Sloan Theater, which has been undergoing renovations over the course of three years that have made both the stage and audience seating handicapped accessible, and provided a new lighting system and other equipment that will give students hands-on experience in the theater arts.
Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., plus a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. Tickets are $7 for the public and $5 for the college community.
Artistic Director Kimberley Morin worked on writing the script of "The Wind in the Willows"? as an acting intern and teacher at the Dallas Theater Center's Turtle Creek Children's Theater. The current production adds music by alum Michael Glazier and choreography by student Sara Gibson. GCC alum Marnie Tibbets is chorus director; the set was constructed by students under the direction of Katherine Gilbert-Espada and Laura Patnode. There are 21 in the cast, including a little boy, Caleb Joseph, son of student Emily Joseph, in the role of little portly otter.
"It's the story of Mr. Toad and Toad Hall and some of his antics that he goes through with the weasels and his friends, the badger, the rat and the mole,"? explains Morin.
"It's very exciting finally having the Sloan open for theater students again,"? says Morin. "Everyone is just ecstatic."?
Opens Thursday at 7 p.m. and runs through Dec. 17
The GCC Theater Department will stage an original adaptation of Kenneth Grahame's children's classic, "The Wind in the Willows."? It will be the first production in the newly refurbished Sloan Theater, which has been undergoing renovations over the course of three years that have made both the stage and audience seating handicapped accessible, and provided a new lighting system and other equipment that will give students hands-on experience in the theater arts.
Performances are Thursday, Friday and Saturday at 7 p.m., plus a Sunday matinee at 2 p.m. Tickets are $7 for the public and $5 for the college community.
Artistic Director Kimberley Morin worked on writing the script of "The Wind in the Willows"? as an acting intern and teacher at the Dallas Theater Center's Turtle Creek Children's Theater. The current production adds music by alum Michael Glazier and choreography by student Sara Gibson. GCC alum Marnie Tibbets is chorus director; the set was constructed by students under the direction of Katherine Gilbert-Espada and Laura Patnode. There are 21 in the cast, including a little boy, Caleb Joseph, son of student Emily Joseph, in the role of little portly otter.
"It's the story of Mr. Toad and Toad Hall and some of his antics that he goes through with the weasels and his friends, the badger, the rat and the mole,"? explains Morin.
"It's very exciting finally having the Sloan open for theater students again,"? says Morin. "Everyone is just ecstatic."?
Greenfield Community College | One College Drive | Greenfield, MA 01301-5129 | (413) 775-1000 (tel) | (413) 775-5129 (fax)