Nucleus Vol.4 Issue 2

Nucleus

A Faculty Commons Quarterly Volume 4 - Issue 2

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

December 2012

VOLUME 4 - ISSUE 2 | DECEMBER 2012

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NEW YORK CI T Y COLLEGE OF T ECH NOLO GY of the City University of New York

Russell K. Hotzler President

Faculty Commons

A Center for Teaching, Learning, Scholarship and Service

Bonne August Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs Miguel Cairol Vice President for Administration and Finance Marcela Katz Armoza Vice President for Enrollment and Student Affairs Gilen Chan Special Counsel/Legal Affairs Designee Compliance and Diversity Officer

Julia Jordan, Acting Director Avril Miller, College Assistant Kevin Rajaram, College Assistant Assessment and Institutional Research Tammie Cumming, Director Raymond Moncada, Institutional Analyst Rachel Tsang, Assessment Analyst Olga Batyr, Research Aide Albert Li, College Assistant Office of Sponsored Programs Barbara Burke, Director Patty Barba Gorkhover, Associate Director Eleanor Bergonzo, Assistant Director

Stephen M. Soiffer Special Assistant to the President/ Institutional Advancement

Grants Outreach Coordinator 2012-2013 Professor Pa Her

Pamela Brown Associate Provost Karl Botchway Interim Dean, School of Arts and Sciences Barbara Grumet Dean, School of Professional Studies Kevin Hom Interim Dean, School of Technology and Design Carol Sonnenblick Dean, Division of Continuing Education

US Department of Education Title V A Living Laboratory Charlie Edwards, Project Manager National Science Foundation I3 Cinda Scott, Project Manager Coordinator of Integrated STEM Projects Design Team Professor Anita Giraldo, Artistic Director Professor Reneta Lansiquot, Web Master Jonathan Campoverde, Angelica Corrao Matthew Joseph, Designers

Professional Development Advisory Council (PDAC) Norbert Aneke Isaac Barjis Ian Beilin Nadia Benakli Karen Bonsignore Candido Cabo Sanjoy Chakraborty Gwen Cohen-Brown

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Susan Davide Lynda Dias Mary Sue Donsky Aida Egues Boris Gelman Maria Giuliani Karen Goodlad Joel Greenstein

George Guida Pa Her Louise Hoffman Neil Katz Darya Krym Karen Lundstrem Zory Marantz John McCullough

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

Djafar Mynbaev Susan Phillip Estela Rojas Walied Samarrai Ryoya Terao Shauna Vey Debbie Waksbaum Denise Whethers

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Gail Williams Adrianne Wortzel Farrukh Zia

Pamela Brown, Chair

CONTENTS Re-vising, Re-viewing, Re-imagining

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“Revision

Try, Try Again

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in writing

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is also a

Bonne August

Barbara Burke

Contexts for Revision WAC Writing Fellows

City Tech Writer

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Steel, Ice & Stone

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Jane Mushabac

Anita Giraldo

revision of the thinking that went into the

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writing.

Laureen Park

Co-director Writing Across the Curriculum

Front and Back Covers Photographs by Anita Giraldo

Editors, Barbara Burke and Julia Jordan | Desig ner, Matthew Joseph | Pr inting, Digital Imaging Center at City Tech

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VOLUME 4 - ISSUE 2 | DECEMBER 2012

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Re-vising, Re-viewing, Re-imagining

S

ome years ago, my daughter and I went on a house tour in a historic Brooklyn neighborhood. These events are popular fundraisers for local civic associations. For a fee, the curious or those afflicted with houseenvy, are given the opportunity to enter houses of people they don’t know. As we traveled from one stately Victorian row house to another, each more beautifully renovated than the last, we were at first enchanted by the abundance of burnished and detailed woodwork, carved and veined marble, and intricately patterned wallpaper.

completely gutted his centuryold house. Instead of four fixed stories, each with its fixed set of rooms, he had created five or six intersecting levels that opened up the house and created a variety of spaces, each designed for the occupant or task. Exploring this unique dwelling, decorated simply but warmly with an eclectic collection of art and furniture, although we found none of the grandeur of its neighbors, we were continually delighted with the imaginative and fresh ideas.

The 19th century house had been artfully re-imagined for a contemporary family.

Oh, the wallpaper!—sometimes

How skillfully the planners of this event had arranged the sequence of houses. First, visitors explored increasingly glorious variations on a well-known theme, determined in large measure by the external realities of the Victorian-era row house.

Then, by introducing this sharp contrast at the very end, they were able at once to illuminate both the limits and the possibilities of this familiar genre and then to show how a talented hand might transcend those constraints in a way that few who walk these brownstone-lined streets every day would have imagined.

five or more patterns had been artfully trimmed and pasted to create unique and richly layered designs. These houses were softly lighted nests, cushioned from the outside world by tripletiered window treatments. Each house was perfect of its kind, a gorgeous revision of a 19th century prototype. After leaving the fifth or sixth house, however, visual fatigue began to set in. A bit guiltily, my daughter whispered, “I don’t think I am supposed to say this, but I’m getting tired of wallpaper.”

As we mounted the steps of the last house, expecting more filigree and curlicue, we noticed that the windows were uncovered, offering glimpses of unadorned brick walls. Stepping inside, we nearly gasped at the feeling of space, openness, and light.

The owner, an architect, had

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point up the potential value of re-imagining, that is to say not merely tweaking or polishing a well-worn space or practice, but dismantling it to open up possibilities as yet unseen.

In our work, so constrained by regulations, policies, and traditions, to say nothing of the blinders of familiarity, it is essential from time to time to ask not only, “How can this be better?” but also “What can’t I see?”

Re-imagination has been the goal of the General Education Committee in its work over the past three years. Rather than simply re-arranging the familiar place-holders, this large committee composed of representatives from every academic department started from a different perspective.

Following the directive of the 2008 Middle States visiting team that the faculty must “determine the knowledge, skills, and values” needed for students graduating

I don’t mean to suggest that either approach to home design—respectful restoration or creative re-envisioning—is superior. Undoubtedly, despite their large mortgages, residents live contentedly in both sorts of houses. Rather, I want to

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VOLUME 4 - ISSUE 2 | DECEMBER 2012

Bonne August

from our College, the members of the Gen Ed Committee created and debated lists of desirable outcomes.

Well aware of the impossibility of addressing every worthy goal presented, they looked for convergences and overlaps.

National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) grants

The result is a set of outcomes well suited to twenty-first century graduates of a college of technology. Instead of merely being “exposed to” the learning of the traditional academic disciplines, City Tech students will experience a general education that is integrated, coherent, and actively connected to their study in the major.

Retentions and Transfigurations: The Technological Evolution and Social History of Five New York City Neighborhoods.

Marta Effinger-Critchlow, Project Director (2006)

Water and Work: The Ecology of Downtown Brooklyn.

Richard Hanley, Project Director (2007)

Looking for Whitman: The Poetry of Place in the Life and Work of Walt Whitman; Looking for Whitman II. Digital Humanities.

Matthew Gold, Project Director (2008 and 2009)

Along the Shore. Landmarks Summer Workshops for Community College Faculty. Richard Hanley, Project Director (2009 and 2011)

Comparative Perspectives on Health, Illness, and Healing.

Barbara Grumet, Project Director (2012) US Department of Education Title V grants

The Gen Ed Committee has created a framework in which, while taking gen ed courses that meet the specific prerequisites and demands of their majors, students will be making meaningful connections among the different facets of their study. Our hope is that rather than “getting the requirements over with” students will come to understand the special value general education offers them.

Learning Communities. Estela Rojas, Project Director (2000)

A Living Laboratory: Revitalizing General Education for a 21st-Century College of Technology. Maura Smale, Project Director; Charlie Edwards, Project Manager (2010)

Requirements by themselves make nothing happen, however.

This effort has been anticipated and prepared for through many other major efforts at City Tech focusing on classrooms and teaching and learning and expanding the possibilities for interdisciplinary thinking and faculty collaboration across disciplines:

National Science Foundation (NSF) grants

The Brooklyn Waterfront 2050. NSF CCLI. Huseyin Yuce, PI (2010)

The City Tech I3 Incubator: Interdisciplinary Partnerships for Laboratory Integration. Bonne August, PI; Cinda Scott, Project Manager and Coordinator of Integrated STEM Projects (2009) Creating and Sustaining Diversity in the Geo-Sciences among Students and Teachers in the Urban Coastal Environment of New York City.

NSF OEDG. Reginald Blake, PI (2011)

City Tech’s Assessment for Learning further complements Gen Ed. At least one-third to one half of City Tech’s faculty has been involved in one or more of these efforts and, going forward,

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

this is the work that will make the re-imagining of general education at City Tech real, transcending requirements and transforming constrictions into enabling constraints.

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Try, Try Again

An Insider’s View of What It Takes to Win a Grant

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he sense of elation that comes with winning a grant on the first try is hard to beat, as Professors Marta Effinger-Critchlow, Matthew Gold, and Richard Hanley—all successful novice applicants for grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and Provost Bonne August (ADVANCE Catalyst and I3), Professors Reginald Blake (OEDG), and David Smith (TUES)—all NSF grantees funded on their first submission, can attest.

More often, proposals are funded upon resubmission. For example, the Learning Project Design through Hands-On Mechatronic Projects (Zhang, PI, ATE), Fuse Lab: Collaborative Education for Tomorrow’s Technology in Architecture, Engineering, and Construction (Shelley Smith, PI, ATE), The Brooklyn Waterfront 2050 (Yuce, PI, CCLI), and Engineering the Future (Jang, PI, S-STEM) projects were all funded

by NSF the second time around.

How do first submissions fare in the NSF Merit Review process?

NSF research grant applicants who applied between 2009 and 2011 submitted an average of 2.3 proposals each before receiving an award. For the Division of Education and Human Resources (EHR), to which the majority of City Tech proposals are submitted, the funding ratio for new applicants was more favorable: an average of 1.4 proposals was submitted per investigator prior to winning a new award.1 Report to the National Science Board on the NSF’s Merit Review Process, FY 2011. NSF: Arlington, VA, 2012.

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2 Published online 29 March 2011 Nature 471, 558 (2011) | doi:10.1038/471558a

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In contrast, NIH reports that in 2010 42% of applicants were funded the first time and 37% were funded on the first resubmission; only 27% of proposers were funded on their third try.2 NIH has since implemented a “two strikes” policy in which proposals will be reviewed a maximum of two times—as a new application and as a resubmission. This policy has had a positive impact on the review process at NIH: the time from submission to award has grown shorter because fewer weak proposals are “clogging” In our case, the most important change was in the organization of the proposal. The objectives, many of the activities, and much of the narrative remained the same, but the resubmission included three very tightly organized components that were consistent with one another and gave a clear picture of our multifaceted project: a summary list of objectives and activities, an activities table, and an organizational chart. Clear and consistent organization is essential. It allows reviewers to understand the project easily, but most important it gives them confidence that you understand the project and how it will be executed. A second important change was a reduction in the number of proposed activities. This made the project easier to explain and it focused us on the activities that were most doable—some of which had actually moved forward in the interval between the first and second proposal.

Shelley Smith, PI, ATE Fuse Lab

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the system. Despite significant pushback from the scientific research community, NIH will continue its policy of allowing applicants just one resubmission if their proposal is rejected the first time.

NIH funding ratios suggest that the funding likelihood of third submissions drops significantly.

Perhaps the research field has advanced and what was initially cutting-edge is no longer so; or the initial inspiration for the project has dissipated; or the institutional context has changed and the fit between the idea and the conditions that generated it no longer obtains.

All funding decisions at federal agencies are made through a competitive process of peer review. Small teams of scholars reflecting diverse expertise and types of institutions are empanelled to review and rank applications against the selection criteria contained in the grant solicitation. All decisions are arrived at openly and all individual reviewers’ written comments are made available to the applicant, whether the proposal is funded or not.

The comments may contain a recommendation on whether the applicant should revise and resubmit the proposal or whether the identified weaknesses are so significant that resubmission is not advised.

Revision presents an opportunity but is not a panacea, as Professor Jane Mushabac wisely notes elsewhere in this issue: it doesn’t always make things better. The goal

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of the proposal revision process is to produce a competitive document that retains the intellectual inspiration, commitment, and esprit of the original while strengthening the logic and operational details of the project so that all the pieces fit together smoothly and the anticipated benefits appear to be an inevitable outgrowth of your activities.

Once the proposal team has the reviewers’ comments in hand, it should analyze them to identify points of consensus among reviewers. Professor Huseyin Yuce credits success with his resubmission to “carefully going over reviewers’ comments line by line and addressing each and every one of them, while communicating with the NSF program officer about how best to address their concerns.”

Examples of proposal weaknesses that may cause reviewers to have serious concerns might include a poor fit between the mission of the college and the goals of a proposed project, or between the goals of the federal program and the thrust of the project. Project goals must be tightly coupled with NEH’s or NSF’s goals, so that your project outcomes support federal program goal attainment as well as your own.

Other serious concerns may have to do with the rank and experience of the project leadership team vis-à-vis the broad institutional changes that the project promises to effect. Does the team collectively have the power to effect change at the promised lev-

el of impact? Is there sufficient demonstration of institutional commitment? How has it been shown? How convincingly have proposers presented evidence of need? Have the proposers addressed the identified needs with solutions that are grounded in the literature of educational theory and practice?

Have the proposers described the project in terms that are possible to evaluate? Too many variables or ill-defined terms may make rigorous project evaluation impossible. Concerns such as these will require the team to go back to the drawing board with the appropriate chairs and deans to address the feasibility of producing the necessary alignments. Where the institutional will to support these deeper alignments is lacking, there is little choice but to let the opportunity go.

An intermediate level of concern among reviewers may pertain to how the elements of a project work together to produce the broader impacts that are sought.

Concerns about particular program components may require only that you provide additional information and rest your argument where possible on more data and scholarship. Often additional program details, presented in tables or charts, can provide convincing evidence of care in project conceptualization and augur well for successful implementation.

Among the easiest concerns to address are those that pertain to document organization, connections among sections, consistency

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

of information, other formal concerns about the document, or supporting documentation.

Every institutional grant proposal represents an investment of resources—the precious time and expertise of the PI and his or her faculty colleagues, the critical consideration and support lent to the proposal by college administrators, and the knowledge brought to bear by OSP staff in supporting proposal development. Opportunity costs must also be considered—in pursuing one direction in a grant proposal the college forfeits potential gain that may have come from pursuing an alternative direction.

In view of these considerations, if a proposal is worth developing initially it is usually worth revising. A resubmission should be fully responsive to the concerns of the reviewers while retaining an all-important quality of originality that helps it stand out.

Whether you are a novice applicant or an experienced hand, the Office of Sponsored Programs is ready to help you negotiate this iterative and ultimately rewarding process.

Barbara Burke NEH has just awarded City Tech $75K for a faculty development project entitled Comparative Perspectives on Health, Illness, and Healing.

The project director is Dean Barbara Grumet; Professor Mary Sue Donsky is the Co-director. The award falls under Humanities Initiatives for Institutions with High Hispanic Enrollment.

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Contexts for Revision

WAC Writing Fellows and Co-directors Park and Rosen Discuss the Process of Revision Revision

Revision and Assignments

Learning can be seen as a process of revision. We hear an idea for the first time or think of an idea we would like to share, and we try to make sense of it or express it using familiar words and concepts. Initially, we may stumble and make imprecise word choices, but with help and feedback from our mentors, teachers, or peers, we begin to see which words and concepts best capture what we are trying to understand or communicate.

With sufficient time and practice, we eventually gain enough facility with the idea that we are ready to demonstrate our knowledge, which a student might do for an exam or essay.

Learning to write is learning to revise—to re-visit, re-view, re-evaluate. Indeed, revision is the embodiment of the thought process.

Informal writing is often the first step students take as they learn to see writing—and thinking—as a multi-stage process. But students are not the only ones who benefit from this type of writing. Instructors who get a chance to see and respond to student writing early in the learning process have an opportunity to reflect on and revise their own teaching. For example, students may look—albeit unconsciously—to their professors for exemplars on which to base their writing. If assignment instructions are not clear, students may not produce their best possible work. One tactic is for faculty to ask a colleague to peer review assignment instructions to help identify ambiguities. Further, student writing can prompt instructors to reconsider some of the assumptions they make about their students’ prior knowledge or experience, which in turn can lead to changes in the structure and quality of their lessons.

Evelina Mendelevich and Zachary Aidala

When students are asked to write a formal assignment, their initial efforts will reflect the process of discovery—their writing might be rambling, confused, and full of ideas that have not yet ripened.

Yet this early grappling with material is what students often turn in as their final, and perhaps only, draft. Revision in writing is also a revision of the thinking that went into the writing. This is true of writing for academic journals as well as many other forms of writing and thinking.

Here, the Writing Across the Curriculum Program (WAC) participants discuss the process of revision as it is played out in student writing, in collaborations between Writing Fellows and faculty members, and in our own work.

Laureen Park

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Revision and Feedback Successful revision depends greatly on the type of feedback students receive during the writing process. The purpose of teacher or peer comments at this point is, as John Bean (1996) puts it, to “coach revision” and “to provide useful instruction, good advice,

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

and warm encouragement” (241).

It is not yet to evaluate the student work as a finished product.

Professors across the disciplines acknowledge the long-term benefits of revision for their students.

Renata Budny, professor of restorative dentistry (RESD), uses writing assignments to “provide her students with exceptionally valuable communication skills” which she sees as essential “in today’s rapidly changing digital business world existing between the dental laboratory personnel and the dentist’s clients.” According to Budny, “writing through numerous revisions enables students to develop into better thinkers, learners and experts in the field of dental laboratory technology and beyond.” Based on her observations, “being able to revise their assignments, RESD students are able to come up with a final product that reflects in a more cohesive way their perception and understanding of professional literature, dental processes, techniques, and the latest trends.”

Myrto Mylopoulos

Revision and Metacognition A cornerstone of much academic writing is the posing and solving of problems. Writers identify an issue and propose solutions, test ideas, and craft arguments, but how do we identify and solve problems within the writing process itself?

Meta-cognition, thinking about thinking, can be an important component of revision which can

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lead to long-term growth. It involves the active process of monitoring ourselves as we write and revise, carefully observing our own thinking as we go. As a result, writers can gain a better understanding of their own thought and writing processes. Revision becomes a more reflective activity. From a place of deeper selfunderstanding, we can generate strategies that not only address the technical struggles of writing, but also help us tackle cognitive and creative obstacles. We can improve our writing while expanding our sense of who we are as writers and why we write the way we do.

Jeremy Benson

Revision and the Abstract Writing Fellows conducted a workshop on the scholarly abstract aimed at guiding Honors and Emerging Scholars in their preliminary abstract-writing efforts. Our discussion highlighted the importance of abstract writing in several ways. First, the short form of an abstract requires concise, precise writing. By working through several drafts, students will find both the right language to express the goals of their research, and more importantly, will reorient research to meet clearer goals. Secondly, we emphasized the importance of revising the abstract itself to make it more thorough, scholarly, and audienceappropriate: to include data from a competing study, for example, showing both writing and scholarly research as processes.

Eric Lynch

Revision and Lab Reports Lab reports and science research papers written for college classes are typically students’ written exemplars of their mastery of a major course topic. Accordingly, these assignments tend to be formal, requiring that the student demonstrate not only sufficient content knowledge but also a certain polish that other writing assignments do not necessarily possess. Revising such writing requires students to grapple with the difficulties of composing a concise yet informative and analytical narrative. In addition to the benefits to students’ thought processes and their improvement in content acquisition, revision also provides students the opportunity to engage in a writing process that is essential to career success. Technical fields require of employees substantial writing that must be clear and concise— revision is a major component of producing such writing.

Zachary Aidala

Revision and the Workshop The WAC program offers monthly workshops, which the Fellows plan and facilitate in pairs. In the past, Fellows went from planning the workshop on their own to performing in a high-stakes environment without any feedback until after the workshop, and so without the opportunity to incorporate it in a revision process. In revising our program’s method of workshop development, asking Fellows to share their plans for the workshop in our weekly meet-

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

ings, not only are workshops now revised more thoroughly, but the group as a whole benefits: everyone in the discussion learns the WAC principles that support the activities, as well as the requisite organization, time management, and facilitation skills. As a group we can reflect on what works and what doesn’t work, which the facilitators can take into account as they revise and finalize the workshop. The result is not only a more effective workshop, but one that all fellows have helped to create.

Jody R. Rosen

Feedback and Revision in Second Language Writing Lubie Alatriste, ESL Coordinator and English professor, has her students go through multiple revisions, focusing on both content and language. Her students keep “Grammaring logs” to keep track of these specific grammatical units: “Every time they receive grammar feedback from the instructor, they enter 2-3 specific problems that the instructor indicated. In this way, they can track their language development and use the log to do editing before handing in a paper or a writing exam.” ESL students have strong language needs, and by having them go through these layered and focused revisions, the instructor can address the layers of issues that confront ESL students.

Kayla Yuh

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City Tech Writer The Backstory

the writing is among the ten percent of the papers that I accept for publication, I start the next step, reading the piece for any revision I feel it needs.

The result is City Tech Writer, our journal of distinguished undergraduate writing nominated by faculty. So far the writing in the journal has emanated from an impressive twenty-nine different disciplines at the College. To date seven volumes have appeared, garnering high praise from Chancellor Matthew Goldstein, President Russell Hotzler, and Provost Bonne August.

Jane Mushabac But a little Q. & A.

“I have a great piece for City Tech Writer,” a colleague said as we passed each other on the stairs last week.

“But,” she added, “let’s see if the student gets the revision back to me.”

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’ve heard this many times since 2005 when I founded the journal. The good news is that faculty generally do get those revisions back and submit them to me, and so begins the process. If

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Must a professor require a revision before submitting a paper to City Tech Writer?

Use your judgment. If you can target a few revisions that are necessary and explain them clearly, excellent. If the proofreading has been decidedly weak, it’s important to go over the paper closely with the student to get a readable text. But sometimes the student has reworked the paper in the various stages of writing it for the course; that’s bliss, frankly, and further pre-submission work isn’t needed at all.

What is the revision process like for the thirty or so pieces I accept each year for the journal?

It’s extensive. Sometimes, as a first step, I meet once or twice with professor and student together in my office. Sometimes I do a longer-than-you’d-think series of phone calls or emails with either

NUCLEUS: A FACULTY COMMONS QUARTERLY

or both. Sometimes I only need a quick check about a few details, works cited, or cuts I feel are key.

Students are often amazed at the many steps of the process from their first draft to publication.

Ultimately they’re pleasantly surprised by how much attention their work merits, and how seriously it is being taken.

Doesn’t the task of revision trigger anxiety and procrastination?

Definitely, and we all know that as writers ourselves. For one thing, revision can actually make a piece of writing worse rather than better. Even the most inexperienced student writer senses that. As sentences are rewritten, suddenly the magic can disappear.

So what’s to be done?

A few principles remain uppermost in my mind. First, something about a chosen piece breaks new ground; I keep my eye on that. I limit revision suggestions, and keep them positive and concise. And I don’t try to fix every thing. Rough edges often make for great writing.

Can revision be a happy process?

I often find meeting in person carries us over the creek. We get acquainted. Writing is a process of discovery; we find out what we’re thinking when we write, and revision takes the discovery one step further. Yes, it’s daunting, but it’s immensely satisfying; and each spring we celebrate every step that has gotten us there when we meet at the publication party the President hosts to honor the student writers and their professors.

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Steel, Ice & Stone A Multi-media Installation

“Revise upon revise, fine-tuning interdependent details like crafting a wrist watch, testing and revising some more, discovering contexts of work similar to mine: the journey continues.”

Anita Giraldo

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n the process of applying for funding for one of my projects, a door opened for me: Research doesn’t support a project, it drives the project. Research is the journey a project travels to its culmination; and, approached in that way, qualifies—transforms—information from data into knowledge.

Using this rationale put into perspective other, more subtle elements of research: looking straight ahead, considering peripheral vision, accepting arrival, and continuous reflection. These observations contribute to exploring the many building blocks of

my work-in-progress, a multi-media installation, Steel, Ice & Stone.

With this discovery, the configuration of the panels assumed part of the interactivity; walking through it acquired precise awareness. I immediately set to work on a physical prototype to observe viewers’ interaction with representations of what the final work would be. I built and set up the nine panels of the installation in our Grace Gallery on the 11th Floor. And, while City Tech was closed on its opening day due to Hurricane Sandy, I can only look forward to its reschedule.

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Revise upon revise, fine-tuning interdependent details like crafting a wrist watch, testing and revising some more, discovering contexts of work similar to mine: the journey continues. Fearing mistakes is not in the equation; it’s an opportunity for more exploration. Getting better at something is only possible when it’s done at least once. The work will be finished when it exists in a seamless, unassuming state, as if it had always been.

My work is documented in this blog: www.steeliceandstone.blogspot.com Please visit and feel free to comment.

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FACULTY COMMONS CALENDAR HIGHLIGHTS 10/3

PDAC: Publishing Your Educational Research 2:30pm – 4:00pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

10/4

Grants: Applying for a PSC-CUNY Research Award 9:30am – 10:30am RSVP: sponsoredprograms@citytech.cuny.edu

10/10

Pedagogy on the OpenLab 6:00pm – 7:30pm RSVP: openlab@citytech.cuny.edu

10/12

NSF I3: Interdisciplinary Case Studies 12:00pm – 2:00pm College Community Welcome

10/16

WAC: Promoting Academic Integrity 1:00pm – 2:15pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

10/23

Understanding Your Rights as an Author 5:30pm – 7:00pm Library: Open Access Week RSVP: msmale@citytech.cuny.edu

10/24

PDAC: Developing Your Research Designs 2:30pm – 4:00pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

10/31

PDAC: Strategizing Your Literature Review 2:30pm – 4:00pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

11/5

PDAC: Identifying Publication Venues 2:30pm – 4:00pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

11/6

Working with Courses on the OpenLab 12:45pm – 2:15pm RSVP: openlab@citytech.cuny.edu

11/7

Library: Advanced Photoshop-Beyond the Basics 1:00pm – 2:00pm RSVP: msmale@citytech.cuny.edu

11/13

WAC: Learning Course Content through Writing 1:00pm – 2:15pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

11/14

Grants: Research Foundation-Hiring/Managing Staff 9:30am – 11:00am RSVP: sponsoredprograms@citytech.cuny.edu

11/15

10th Annual CityTech Poster Presentation 1:00pm – 3:00pm All Welcome; Questions: rkezerashvili@citytech.cuny.edu

11/29

iTEC: Blackboard Walk-in Clinic 1:00pm – 2:00pm All Faculty Welcome

11/30

NSF: Communicating in a Male Dominated Field 9:30am – 2:00pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

12/4

WAC: Developing Your Writing-Intensive Course 1:00pm – 2:15pm RSVP: facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu

12/5-6

Honors & Emerging Scholars and Learning Communities Poster Presentation 11:00am – 3:00pm College Community Welcome

Contact us at extension 5225 • facultycommons@citytech.cuny.edu • http://facultycommons.citytech.cuny.edu/

December 7, 2012 City Tech deadline to submit your proposal

Traditional A Awards:

PSC-CUNY RESEARCH AWARD

Traditional B Awards:

There are three levels of awards.

Questions: ebergonzo@citytech.cuny.edu or 718-260-5173

up to $3,500 up to $6,000 Enhanced Awards:

up to $12,000