On Wednesday, October 11^th, UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for SPSS, Julia Kuzovkina met with certified ECE SPSS Instructors at this professional development workshop at Southington High school.  This year the group implemented a different approach: instead of UConn faculty developing a program, the teachers designed their own workshop to provide them with relevant experiences.

The workshop included diverse activities: during a field practicum Brian Bostrom explained how to analyze the soil for specific purposes (photo 1); a representative from academia Nick Goltz provided a recent update on plant diseases; an owner of a landscape company Nicole Ali described new trends in the landscape industry;  a presentation by Dustyn Nelson, past president of the Connecticut Nursery and Landscape Industry, discussed  students preparation for future careers in the Green Industry (photo 3). In addition, there was a Hands-On Floral Workshop, run by a practitioner Paul Lumia from Nyren’s of New England, where teachers were introduced to beautiful fall arrangements which can be introduced in the ECE Floral Art courses at schools (photo 2).

Photo 1  

Photo 2

Photo 3

UConn SPSS courses offered through ECE.

On Thursday, October 12^th, UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for Natural Resources & the Environment, Prof. Morty Ortega met with certified NRE Instructors for their annual professional development workshop. The workshop was held at Sessions Woods Wildlife Management Area in Burlington, CT. Presentations by the Sessions Woods staff included:

• The private life of bears – Melissa Ruszczyk (DEEP)
• The private life of bobcats – Jason Hawley (DEEP)
• Habitat – Peter Picone (DEEP)

The presentations were well received by the teachers, and they had many questions for each of the presenters.

UConn NRE courses offered through ECE.

On Wednesday, April 26th UConn Early College Experience Earth Science Instructors met with faculty from UConn’s ERTH Department. ECE Faculty Coordinator for ERTH, Dr. Robert Thorson led a walking tour around campus. After leaving Rowe, they headed east to Augustus Storrs Hall, the oldest masonry building on campus, which set the precedent for the campus layout in 1906 to follow the glacial grain. Crossing Swan Lake, they examined in sequence: the Stone Pavilion, a rubble of glacial slabs, the local bedrock (the Paleozoic Hebron Gneiss), and ended the walking tour with a walk up to experience the view from Horsebarn Hill. Returning to the center of campus, the group stopped in Beach Hall—home to UConn’s Earth Sciences Department. They toured the building, visited teaching labs for introductory geoscience courses, research labs, and met with Department Head, Tracy Frank.  After lunch the group engaged in presentation by Prof. Thorson on the Connecticut Landscape. Thor shared an article from CT insider that he wrote and highlighted the Climate Underground podcast.

UConn Earth Sciences courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Tuesday, May 2^nd Early College Experience Allied Health Instructors visited the Storrs campus for a professional development workshop. After a welcome by Allied Health Sciences Department Head, Dr. Justin Nash, the group introduced themselves and discussed AH 4092: EMT Training, AH 1100: Introduction to Allied Health Professions, and AH 2001: Medical Terminology in roundtable sessions discussing best practices and strategies for engaging with students.

UConn Allied Health Sciences courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Wednesday, March 29th, UConn Early College Experience English Instructors and faculty from the English Department met for a virtual professional development workshop. The topic was “Infographics in ENGL 1007”.  Infographics can be a powerful tool for remediating one’s original written work, can be used to interpret data or other textual information, or can stand on their own as a way to present information to the audience in an engaging way. Visual design is a broad topic, and infographics can include anything from maps and graphs, to illustrated recipes, to collages! The group discussed these diverse examples and what tools/platforms can be used to design infographics, the affordances, and limitations of visual genres, and what it means to do visual in the composition classroom.

UConn English courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Monday April 3^rd, UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for HIST 1300, Prof. Sherri Olson met with certified ECE History Instructors for their annual professional development conference.

Guest speakers: Professor John Sexton, Bridgewater State University and Professor Andy Pfrenger, University of Mississippi presented to the group on “The Viking Sagas – and Board Games”.  They spoke about the game hnefatafl and its history and place in Viking culture and the sagas. Later the group learned how to play using gameboards and pieces.

After lunch, Prof. Olson led a discission on the stories of Ragnar Loðbrok with focus on the folkloric elements of Ragnar’s saga; the historical elements embedded in the text (and how to read such a text for historical reconstruction); the place of hnefatafl in the story; and some of the historical details buried in the stories, especially the Krakumal, a poem supposedly recited by Ragnar at his death c. 900.

To learn more about Profs. Sexton and Pfrenger and their podcast Saga Thing see: Saga Thing | a podcast by Saga Thing (podbean.com). 

UConn History courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Tuesday, April 4^th, UConn Early College Experience and the faculty from Educational Leadership met with EDLR 2001 Contemporary Issues in Sport Instructors for a virtual professional development meeting. UConn Adjunct Faculty member, Doug Glanville, discussed contemporary issues in sports and held a short question and answer period with participants. Later the group discussed EDLR 2001 and course updates.

UConn Educational Leadership courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Tuesday, April 18^th, UConn Early College Experience, and the UConn ECE Faculty Coordinator for English, Profs. Scott Campbell and Jason Courtmanche, and GA Maddie Gehling met with certified ECE English Instructors at this professional development conference.

Topics for the day included, reading in ECE English, using UConn library resources, and building text into the course inquiry. After a working lunch a brief Q&A period occurred before the day concluded.

For additional details see: https://ece.english.uconn.edu/spring-2023-conference/

UConn English courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Tuesday, April 25th UConn Early College Experience Environmental Science Instructors met with faculty from UConn’s NRE Department. ECE Faculty Coordinator for NRE, Dr. Morty Ortega invited Dr. Cynnamon Dobbs to share her talk, “Urban Forests for a Resilient Future” with the group.

Dr. Dobbs is an Assistant Professor in Urban and Community Forestry with University of Connecticut. Her research focuses on urban forest ecosystem services and its link to the sustainability and resilience of urban areas. She uses quantitative data from biophysical and social factors to distinguish drivers of change, and to produce evidence for improving urban decision making. She obtained her Ph.D. degree in Ecology at the University of Melbourne, Australia; her MS degree at the University of Florida; and her BS at the Universidad de Chile, Chile. Dr. Dobbs has a large number of publications in scientific journals, book chapters, and extension journals. As a teacher, she has instructed courses such as Forest and climate change, Urban ecology, Landscape ecology, and many others.

After the presentation, the group discussed class activities to teach about Urban Forest and their courses as they are dealing with post-covid student behavior and other struggles.

UConn NRE courses offered through Early College Experience.

On Thursday, May 18th UConn Early College EDCI (Education Curriculum and Instruction) and EDLR (Educational Leadership) Instructors met virtually with UConn ECE EDCI and EDLR Faculty Coordinators, Tom Levine and Danielle Derosa for their annual professional development workshop.

Instructors discussed the concept of justice as it relates to equity, within education specifically, and society broadly. In preparation for this portion of the workshop, instructors read “Justice a Short Story” by Mariame Kaba and engaged in a restorative justice workshop as a group. Later in discipline specific breakout sessions, instructors discussed effective instruction specific to the course taught.

UConn Education courses offered through Early College Experience.