9:00 AM to 5:00 PM
“Teacher or Learner?: Graduate Teaching Assistants’ Negotiated Identities and Student Response” Presenter(s): Sarah N DelMar Advisor(s): Patrick Thomas English Graduate Research
3:20 PM-3:40 PM Kennedy Union - 331
For many Graduate Teaching Assistants the assigned responsibilities require a new professional identity for this may be their first teaching experience as well as their first professional experience. Graduate Assistants within the University of Dayton’s Department of English require a complex identity as both a full-time student and a composition course instructor. Teaching loads for Graduate Teaching Assistants require professional identities that are constructed and performed for a significant number of undergraduate students; therefore, it is worth investigating how graduate students’ ethos - or credibility - as composition instructors are interpreted by students in their composition courses. A recent survey of undergraduates at the University of Dayton provides insight into the Graduate Teaching Assistants’ perceived ethos. The survey explored whether there is a correlation between students’ perceptions of their instructor’s ethos and students’ perceptions, in their later years, of the usefulness of their composition courses. Results from this survey indicate that while Graduate Teaching Assistants construct a professional identity in order to receive a response from students, undergraduates also respond to the teaching performance and develop perceptions of instructors’ ethos. Graduate Teaching Assistants are in part underscored by their pedagogical communication as well as judged by undergraduate students on the effectiveness of the teaching and the composition course. Furthermore, the survey results ascertain specific practices Graduate Teaching Assistants, as well as other instructors, may assimilate in order to establish an advantageous perception of ethos.
America Singing Loud: Shifting Representations of American National Identity in Allen Ginsberg and Walt Whitman Presenter(s): Eliza K Waggoner Advisor(s): Albino Carrillo English Graduate Research
4:20 PM-4:40 PM Kennedy Union - 311
Much work has been done to study the writings of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg. Existing scholarship on these two poets aligns them in various ways (radicalism, form, prophecy, etc.), but most extensively through their homosexuality. While a vast majority of the scholarship produced on these writers falls under queer theory, none acknowledges their connection through the theme of my research-Americanism. Ideas of Americanism, its representation, and what it means to be an American are issues that span both Whitman and Ginsberg’s work. The way these issues are addressed and reconciled by Ginsberg is vastly different from how Whitman interacts with the subject: a significant departure due to the nature of their relationship. Ginsberg has cited Whitman as an influence on his work, and other scholars have commented on the appearance of this influence. The clear evidence of connection makes their different handling of similar subject matter, and most importantly a subject matter that conveys personal and national identity, a doorway into deeper analysis of the interworking of these two iconic American writers.
FITZ CENTER FOR LEADERSHIP AND COMMUNITY
Destination Dayton: Dayton Civic Scholar Junior Cohort Capstone Project
Presenter(s): Kyle M Grabowski, Zachary S Hadaway, Briana M Hollis, Marina S Locasto, Katherine B Repic, Nicholette T Smith, Amy M Sullivan Advisor(s): Richard T Ferguson, Suzette Pico, Donald A Vermillion Fitz Center for Leadership in Community 2:20 PM-3:00 PM Senior/Capstone Project Kennedy Union - 222 A program of the Fitz Center for Leadership in Community, the Dayton Civic Scholars gives students the opportunity to become civic leaders within the Dayton community. Over three years, Dayton Civic Scholars complete 360 hours of community engagement, academic course requirements, and a capstone project. Presented by the junior cohort of Dayton Civic Scholars, this session will discuss their capstone project, Destination Dayton. The mission of Destination Dayton is to organize and facilitate a series of events that occur in the city of Dayton (outside of the “UD bubble” ) in 116