Faculty Dream Ideas 2006-2007 2006 - 2007 Sherwood Frey, Business administration My dream idea is to work with a group of students who are concerned about hunger and troubled about waste in an effort to establish a Campus Kitchen at the
The Campus Kitchen concept is a proven endeavor operating at ten universities (for example, Northwestern, Marquette, Wake forest,
The Mead Endowment funds would be used for the incidental expenses associated with travel to a $2,000 budget.
Irena Mitrea, Mathematics “Mathematically demonstrated to be perfect!” One expects to read this line at the end of a challenging and sophisticated mathematical proof much as Euclid and archimedes would end their mathematical works with “quod erat demonstrandum”. Imagine the surprise, confusion, and then delight to read this in a farm book! Employing his knowledge of mathematics, which, when he was young, he considered the passion of his life) Thomas Jefferson designed a moldboard of least resistance for a plow, which he considered ...”mathematically demonstrated to be perfect.”
My dream is to run a seminar in the department of Mathematics at the
The seminar will have a dual character: research and presentations. The goal is to get beyond the current status quo of such an activity and impact future generation of students interested in Mathematics at the
Besides the five undergraduate students, I plan to involve in the proposed seminar activities my PHd student, Katharine Ott. The idea is to offer the students a role model closer to their age (in my experience this aspect makes a difference). With whom they can easily share questions and concerns about a successful career in the sciences. Katharine is a promising young graduate student who got involved under my supervision in her first research projects in the area of Partial differential Equations. Katharine’s professional accomplishments since i came to UVa two years ago include securing summer support for 2005 and 2006 in the form of aerospace Graduate research fellowship” funded by Nasa, and writing (jointly with me) her first research paper which is to appear in the Proceeding of the American Mathematical Society.
Katharine has recently participated in and given her first presentations at national conferences and local seminars, which were very well received by an expert audience. among other things, she is currently engaged in a collaborative effort on a research problem I suggested with an outstanding undergraduate student, David C. Isaacs, an Echols scholar who made the dean’s list since fall 2003. Both were recently awarded a double Hoo research fellowship at the and sciences in mass media at the Milwaukee Journal sentinel newspaper by publishing eight articles.
Over the years I have learned the great value of mentorship and role models. I feel that Katharine’s interests and expertise are well suited to the purpose of the proposed seminar and her participation will have a positive impact on the undergraduate students involved. The Mead Endowment support would give me the opportunity to build on my experience and take it a step further in the challenging process of making the dream a reality.
Christian McMillen, History & American Studies Each fall I teach a course on American Indian History. Most students come to the class knowing next to nothing about American Indians; few have ever met an Indian much less spent time on a reservation. My dream idea—and this is something i’ve wanted to do for a long time—is to take several students in my class to indian country. There would be no better culminating experience.
I propose to take four students to the Hualapai indian reservation in northwestern
One topic we will surely explore on the trip—and one I explore in class quite a bit—is land claims to historically occupied areas. In doing so, students will learn that historical research can have a profound impact on Indian life. They will also begin to see that much of the history they learned during the semester is, for Indian people, much more than an abstraction. The past, both the good and the bad, is part of everyday Indian life.
Because I have both a professional and personal relationship with members of the tribe facilitating such things as a visit with the tribal chairman, a one day raft trip on the Colorado river, an overnight stay at Supai Village and/or an all day tour of otherwise off-limits areas of the Grand canyon will be possible. details of where to go and what to see will be worked out in conjunction with the tribe. I have already cleared the trip with the tribe’s cultural resources office.
The Cultural Resource Office, Lorretta Jackson, is eager to help plan a trip for my students which will encompass history, land-use, political structure, among other things. In the following fall I would then have the four students give a presentation to my current class and how it related to what they learned in the course.
I will base my selection of students on two things. first, each year my students write original research papers on 20th century reservation life. i will choose the top ten essays. Next, I will ask those ten students to write another essay explaining why they want to visit an indian reservation.
My only misgiving with this proposal is the necessarily limited number of students who can be involved. after giving some considerable thought to a project that would involve more students, but which would mean staying on Grounds, I kept coming back to this idea—it’s truly a dream idea, something that could not be done otherwise.
Budget**: 1) airfare: $1000 (4 students going from Dulles/National to 2) rental car: approximately $120 3) lodging: $800 (2 rooms at approximately $65 per night for 4 nights double occupancy; 1 room at approximately $65 single occupancy for 4 nights) 4) food: $80 (this is the remaining balance based on an award of $2000)** *fares subject to change. This was the fare as of 8/7/06, but it is a commonly available rate. ** This is the best estimate I can come up with at the moment. If selected, as planning proceeds I will either seek other funds or perhaps reduce the number of students by one. It is quite possible that the $2000 will not cover all costs such as food. I will either take 3 students instead of 4 or subsidize the cost of the trip out of my own travel funds.
Too often we read older literary texts in a sort of vacuum, as if they’re free-standing forms, independent of time and place, and we end up missing some of the richness of nuance and association that would have been available to contemporary readers. We have more interpretive possibilities if we understand how metaphors resonate within their own ordinary historical world. I try to rehydrate the power of words and images that have disappeared or become invisible to later generations. So in all my 300- and 400-level classes I have students research the cultural landscape of their literary texts: they give presentations on architecture, fashion, music, politics, transportation, food, parks, coffee houses, hermits, gardens, furniture–whatever helps us visualize what’s going on in the novel or play or poem, whatever clarifies the relation between the text and its world. What I would love to do in a 400-level seminar on drama and the stage is to coordinate all that research towards a real production. I’m currently teaching a version of this course, and I have students who already have experience with lighting, sound, stage design, music, and script writing, or who simply love plays. I envision pairs of students researching the various aspects of the theatre in the Restoration and eighteenth century: its technical innovations in scenery and spectacle (it was not until the middle of the nineteenth century, with Ibsen, that set design became an interpretive act specific to a particular play, but by the late 18thC Philippe de Loutherbourg was making the idea of scenery central rather than peripheral to action and interpretation, and earlier still, they gloried in spectacular effects of light and sound, not to mention elephants on stage); its seating, with the audience spatially divided by class into pit, boxes, and galleries (though some privileged people could sit on the stage itself, at least until spikes were added to deter rioters); the permeable boundaries between actors and audience, with the audience often throwing out witty lines that were later incorporated into the printed text; the actors and acting styles (who were the famous actors, and what made them so popular? what were their gestures? how did they speak?); the costumes (how did the Restoration and eighteenth century represent, say, the classical past?); the music–of Purcell, Arne, Handel, Mozart. Our investigations would determine our production. We would put all this research together, adapting a play or an opera (or writing our own “in the style of”), building a model stage set with lights and scenery (the flats and wings), designing costumes (or collaborating with the Drama Department and borrowing some), setting things to music, and at the end of the semester, giving a performance–in propria persona or with puppets–in the English Department Faculty Lounge to any interested spectators. We would, in effect, reconstruct a world.
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