Po'okela HPU Magazine

No. 51 September - October 2010

Contents 1 Collaboration in Our HPU Community– Deborah Nakashima

“Po‘okela serves HPU faculty and an outside mailing list of readers interested in our work, with the intention to prompt community building and reflection on professional practice, and to encourage innovation in teaching.”

Hawai‘i Pacific University • Teaching and Learning Center • http://tlc.hpu.edu

Collaboration in our HPU Community

by Deborah Nakashima

3 Oxford Journal– Teresa McCreary, Ph.D. 5 The Beloit College Mindset List– Tom McBride and Ron Nief 7 British Exam Howlers– Rebecca Attwood

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The Po‘okela newsletter is a bimonthly publication featuring articles of interest to faculty regarding pedagogy, scholarship, and service at Hawai‘i Pacific University.

Opinions in this newsletter are those of the authors. Articles are chosen for their power to encourage reflection and discussion and do not reflect endorsement by the Teaching and Learning Center or Hawai‘i Pacific University.

This keynote address was delivered by Deborah Nakashima, executive director, Student Academic Services, at the annual community-building orientation event on Saturday, August 28. This year’s event drew more than 80 current and new faculty (both part-time and full-time) and was held at the Hawaii Loa campus.

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The word “collaborate” is defined by Webster’s Dictionary as “to work jointly with others or together especially in an intellectual endeavor.” Collaborate has its root in the latin word laborare (labo rare) – meaning “to labor.” Yes, collaboration is laborious - we all probably know that.

But there are two other meanings to the word collaborate – • to cooperate with or willingly assist an enemy of one’s country and especially an occupying force or • to cooperate with an agency or instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected .

Isn’t it better to collaborate intellectually together as a community rather than with an “occupying force or enemy?” And isn’t it better to collaborate with others to whom we ARE immediately connected to? I have had the good fortune to be able to collaborate with a number of you in my role as an adjunct faculty, and in my role as a student affairs specialist.

Today I would like to share three words that I feel are important to collaboration and community at HPU – SUPPORT, THRIVE, and SUCCESS. SUPPORT. All my life I have been a “supporter” – didn’t play sports, wasn’t a cheerleader or in student government – but I did play in the band – and what did we do? We supported all the events. So I guess this was my calling, this was a natural progression – becoming a part of the university that is here to support academics. Then I started thinking –as a

support unit of the university - why is collaboration important?

Student Academic Services (SAS), is typically the main “support” area of a university. We are here to provide students, faculty and staff the support they need outside of the classroom environment. We support students by providing academic and personal counseling, having social activities so they can be engaged outside the classroom, securing basic needs that will support their learning, such as housing and meals. We rely a lot on others to help us with this – the collaboration that we have from faculty when a student needs help –through tutoring, counseling, or advising. We want to provide students with a supportive campus environment. We need to collaborate so that students can anticipate what it will be like to be citizens of a global society and when they graduate, to be able to articulate, cooperate and communicate with their peers both in their professional and personal lives.

And how do we connect it with community?

Research has shown that students perform better and are more satisfied at colleges that are committed to cultivating positive working and social relationships among different groups on campus. That’s why it is so important to support a community on our campus – we need to have a positive campus environment. But we need to define what it means to have a “community.” And once we define it we need to be able to pass it on from one generation to the next. We need to have support not only from the administration, but from each other, and from continued on page 2

Collaboration in Our HPU Community continued students. Supporting a community means addressing needs and concerns, defining goals, and engaging one another.

THRIVE. Think of the Kaiser Permanente commercial – have you ever seen such positive people in your life? In students we can call it ‘engagement.’ Students participated in the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) this spring. Among other things that NSSE will tell us is how our students view the amount of active and collaborative learning they experience at HPU. A lot of schools call it student engagement. Engaging a student means that we have to collaborate to build and sustain what we need to do to make sure that a student commits to us to graduate and thrive in our global society – we have a “living” mission statement.

Collaboration means that we have to make a commitment to our students and ourselves to help them thrive academically, thrive in their personal relationships, and to thrive during the time they are with us until graduation. Academic thriving is determined in the classroom and in engaged learning. Thriving is interdisciplinary; it involves outside of the classroom learning. It can involve service learning and social connectiveness. For our area, it means clubs, honor socities, and residence hall activities. Where can we collarborate more on this – we’d like to invite faculty to meet students outside the classroom – “Dinner in the DC”, connecting through Movie on the Mall – serving Thanksgiving dinner in the Sea Warrior Center, watching a softball game. Does this build community? I think so!

SUCCESS. Federal reporting makes us track a six year graduation rate, acknowledging the fact that there are lots of factors going on in a student’s life besides sitting in a classroom or in front of a computer. But graduation means a lot of other things– for students, it means finally getting a piece of paper that may open the door to a new job, or “a” job. It may mean the opportunity to go on for further education. For faculty, it means “job well done.” that we have been able to impart knowledge onto another person to carry forward. For staff, it means that we have now a bigger alumni pool, more people in the world who can call themselves “a Sea Warrior” forever. For those of us who work and attend graduation, it means six more months before we have to do it all over again! But this is the core of “community” – we are all a part of a ceremony that brings us together. But how do we get to that point? Graduation also means retention – we have retained a student who found satisfaction in the classroom, who developed along the way, and learned something while they were with us, who succeeded in learning. There is no single factor that can be attributed to a student’s success, just as we cannot attribute a single factor to our success as faculty or staff. But by working together and having a strong campus community, we work to enhance our student’s learning in and out of the classroom.

So what should we do to be successful at collaboration and building community?

1) We need to look at practices and programs already in place.

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2) We need to look at programs that are sleepers, that have not been validated, but need to be looked at more broadly (coffee talk).

3) We need fresh ideas – those initiatives that will take us ahead of the curve.

4) It needs to be university-wide.

How can we help to build a collaborative community? We have a shared responsibility for the successes of our students. We need to work together to ensure that our students are our living mission statement and that they are engaged. We need to help build a supportive campus for all of us. In SAS we build bridges: welcoming new students to our campus each fall, making sure that they have the opportunity to make new friends, explore new things, and new things about themselves. We also have to make sure that we have safety nets in place; that we have the ability to recognize when a student needs help – academically, personally, or professionally. It means having the learning resources a student may need outside the classroom, in tutoring, testing, and advising.

We need to have residential places where students feel comfortable and provide them with their basic living needs. And above all we need to make sure that we are responsive and supportive of students. So how do we all start to share in the responsibility to collaborate and be supportive of our students? Together. The most effective partnerships are built amongst those of us who have the most contact with students – faculty and student affairs professionals. Together we can fuel the community-building spirit. We can build the collaboration for the rest of the university. And we need to do it every day by our words and actions. It starts with creating a caring community for all of us.

A group of 20 schools participated in a project called Documenting Effective Educational Practice (DEEP). These schools had higher than predicted graduation rates and better than predicted engagement scores on the NSSE. There was no single blueprint for success, but six features were shared: • A “living mission” and “lived” educational philosophy.

• An unshakeable focus on student learning.

• Environments adapted for educational enrichment.

• Clearly marked pathways for student success.

• An improvement-oriented ethos.

• Shared responsibility for educational quality and student success.

This is what it means to collaborate and build community. They created campuses that mattered. So can we.

Oxford Journal Teresa McCreary, Ph.D. The following journal entries are from Teresa McCreary, Ph.D., director of performing arts and department chair, arts and humanities at HPU. Dr. McCreary received a research fellowship to spend a week at Oxford University in England this past summer. Faculty from universities and colleges all over the globe convened at the Harris Manchester College for the Summer Research Institute.

(Top left) At Harris Manchester College - every college has its own library, chapel, dining commons, and dorms (Top right and bottom) Teresa at Stonehenge.

5:30 a.m. Sat., June 26, Honolulu: Got to airport in plenty of time. Ominously pleasant flight from Honolulu to San Fran; the movie was Johnny Depp’s “Alice in Wonderland.” Little did I know that I was about to arrive in the same town where Lewis Carroll’s “Alice” was inspired—apparently she was the daughter of the dean at Christ Church College, Oxford University! Perfect.

the teen wonders) is asleep in the dark. I’ve tried earplugs, earbuds, earphones, and I can still hear their little adolescent voices running a mile a minute. Must be some kind of karma. I’m sorry Jordan (my own 15-year-old son), I’m sorry!

7:30 p.m., San Francisco: Ok, you win some, you lose some.

It’s a 10 hour flight from San Fran to London and my reading light doesn’t work. Neither does the video. I’m going to sit in the dark for 10 hours? OMG!

Sunday, 1:30 p.m., London time: Whew! Landed safely.

Heading for customs and the bus to Oxford.

Somewhere over the Arctic Ocean: Worst flight experience in a long time. I have one teenager behind me who keeps kicking and pushing my seat back. I’ve already told him to stop and he still can’t seem to get it together. Another two teenagers, one in front and one to my right who can’t shut up. They are the only ones talking on the whole airplane. Everyone else (except me and

Ok, finally everything is quiet. Sleep will overtake me whether I want it to or not…zzzzzz……………………………………………

5 p.m. Finally arrived with barely enough time to shower and show up for dinner.

9 p.m. Delightful people! So far I’ve met: • A classicist from Virginia who is looking at the presence of Greek Mythology found in the films of Alfred Hitchcock, especially with regard to Goddess references. Apparently Hitchcock is fraught with these references (I kid you not).

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Oxford Journal continued • A biologist from Puerto Rico who is studying adverse effects of treatment for a certain mesothelioma (cancer). The treatment actually causes the disease to get worse, instead of better. It’s a major breakthrough and we’re all probably going to be reading about her someday. She made her initial discovery as an undergraduate. It was, get this… a class project. Now it’s an international research study on the brink of being seen in all the medical journals.

(Right) The Schola Musicae in the Bodleian Library Old Schools Quadrangle

• An International Studies department chair from Chile, born and raised in Uruguay. An outspoken, gregarious Latino with plenty of good energy. The World Cup match between Ghana and Uruguay was fun to watch with her in the pub. We actually took photos of her, she was so entertaining - cursing at the television in Spanish. She turns out to be a good friend.

• A psychologist from California. He also turns out to be a good friend.

• President of a School of Design in Tennessee. A good looking chap with a thick Southern accent. He listed his specialty as “Sacred Spaces and Places.” We end up on a day trip together with some others to Stonehenge.

• My suite-mate turns out to be Sri-Lankan, but teaches at Wake Forest University. Anthropologist. A kind and gentle soul.

Always observing, forever inquiring. Quite funny and easy to be with. Also turns out to be a good friend.

• Another Sri-Lankan, this time political scientist. Gregarious, beautiful, and silver-tongued, this guy must have an IQ the size of Texas. And an ego to match.

• Historian from Puerto Rico by way of Louisiana. I can’t tell you how entertaining it is to listen to someone go from an American Southern drawl to impeccable Spanish. Anyway, we had several spirited discussions on the pros and cons of online courses, along with the Psych professor from Minnesota who seems to know everything about everything.

Monday, 5 a.m. Wow. It didn’t get dark until 10 p.m. and now it’s light again. Trippy. I’m awake and not happy about it.

5 p.m. Long day of orientation and getting my feet wet at the big library. And this is not just any library. Probably the highlight was sitting in some kind of parliamentary house (think Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) while our admissions officer told of the wonders to come. And how poor King Charles had asked if he could check out a book from the Bodleian. Soon after, he was be-headed. (Bodleian is strictly a reference library). We were told that if we wanted to see a librarian go into spasms, we should ask to check out a book. I think I’m gonna try that tomorrow.

Lost track of my journaling during the week because it got so very engaging. The rest of this will be reflections after-the-fact.

The Bodleian is a wonderland. The Humphrey Library is most impressive, with its three-story-high ceilings and shelves that go at least two. Another Harry Potter (from now on to be referred as “HP”) site. Everything is a deep, deep shade of some kind of African blackwood. In between the stacks are ornate, tiny win

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The Divinity School dows alongside study desks, each with its own lamp. There are the story-book ladders that roll back and forth across shelves, little individual study desks and chairs on the top tier, gigantic books all titled in Latin, and various nooks, crannies, narrow staircases everywhere. The only disconnect is the occasional bank of computer monitors and keyboards across long tables.

The Divinity School, the original Oxford, is where the HP scene was filmed when Harry broke his arm during Quiddich. The infirmary. It was also where the ballroom dance classes were filmed.

And then there’s Christ Church. One of 39 (yes 39) distinct colleges within Oxford. This is where much of the HP movie footage was filmed. The cloisters, grand staircase, and dining commons are unbelievable in real life, much less in a film. For some reason the staircase gave me the most chicken skin. Something about the lamp posts along the corners of the railing. It’s right out of your wildest imagination. continued on page 5

Oxford Journal continued Attended a service in the cathedral at Christ Church. Heard the famous boy choir. AMAZING. Another highlight was the pub where CS Lewis, JRR Tolkein, and Lewis Carroll frequented. Apparently they had regular meetings at the Eagle and Child, in which they shared their latest writings with each other.

Suddenly I felt like a celebrity myself. Getting all this attention from a good-looking, very smart guy, standing outside the same pub that famous authors frequented, in Oxford, with Lyle Lovett.

Did I say I was in Oxford? The real one. You know, the one in England?

Milind (the Sri-Lankan political scientist) has this gorgeous, gentle Indian accent with sprinkles of British to make it ever-so engaging. He monopolizes the conversation. I don’t care. I just want to listen to him talk. Conveniently, he loves the sound of his own voice as well so it works out.

As we’re standing outside the pub smoking (I’m not a regular smoker, but, when in Rome…), this dude walks quickly past us.

I catch the side of his face and his gait. It’s unmistakably Lyle Lovett. We recognized each other for a split second---we were at UT Austin together, playing in coffee houses and bars (long before he became famous). But it was all so fast. Milind says, “Do you know that guy? Because he looked at you like he recognized you.”

I said, “I’m pretty sure that was Lyle Lovett.” And we left it at that.

Plaque at the Eagle and Child Pub.

The Beloit College Mindset List Tom McBride and Ron Nief Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation. The Mindset List website at www.beloit. edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000 hits annually.

The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred cable channels, of which they will watch a handful, have always been the norm. Since “digital” has always been in the cultural DNA, they’ve never written in cursive and with cell phones to tell them the time, there is no need for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is to them a great Hollywood director. The America they have inherited is one of soaring American trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably never aimed nukes at the United States and China has always posed an economic threat.

Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The males among them are likely to be a minority. They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries, on which making a phone call will be only one of many, many functions they will perform. They will now be

awash with a computerized technology that will not distinguish information and knowledge. So it will be up to their professors to help them. A generation accustomed to instant access will need to acquire the patience of scholarship. They will discover how to research information in books and journals and not just on-line.

Their professors, who might be tempted to think that they are hip enough and therefore ready and relevant to teach the new generation, might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the classic oldies station. The college class of 2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which are, like the rest of us, getting older and older.

Here is a sampling of the original 75 items on this year’s list: Most students entering college for the first time this fall — the Class of 2014 — were born in 1992.

For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

2. E-mail is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.

3. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

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The Beloit College Mindset List continued 4. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handi-

27. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.

capped parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder

28. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice

to accommodate people with disabilities.

5. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren’t afraid of immigration...unless it involves “real” aliens from another planet.

presidential edict.

29. Russians and Americans have always been living together in space.

30. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed while they were still in their cribs.

6. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.

31. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.

7. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as

32. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.

Dirty Harry.

8. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.

9. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support for a cause.

10. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.

11. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.

12. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

13. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always existed.

14. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in cars.

15. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing networks.

16. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

17. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

18. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

19. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV shows.

20. The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are now in a museum.

21. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

22. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has always offered an alternative to the hospital.

23. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always resembled going to the mall.

24. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin tones.

25. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”

26. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get your pizza there in under 30 minutes.

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33. Someone has always gotten married in space.

34. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a female Poet Laureate of the United States.

35. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.

36. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.

37. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

38. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney Fife.

39. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog.

40. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.

41. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up as movies.

42. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.

43. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.

44. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic Church.

45. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been rapping.

British Exam Howlers

by Rebecca Attwood for Times Higher Education One student has inadvertently invented a new name for the phenomenon: “Confusionism.”

In fact, the third-year student had intended to refer to the system of philosophical and ethical teachings founded by the Chinese philosopher Confucius.

Proving that they are just as fallible as all those to have gone before them, students’ comical cock-ups have been revealed in entries to Times Higher Education’s “exam howlers” competition 2010.

Thank you to Michael Gold, senior lecturer in employment relations at Royal Holloway, University of London, for sending in the Confucianism error.

Many of this year’s entries have a medical theme. John Lee, head of undergraduate studies in nursing and midwifery at the University of Dundee, was told that “Vagina Henderson” was one of the first modern nurses of the 20th century (her name, of course, was Virginia).

Along the same lines, Anthony Pinching, interim dean of medicine and associate dean of the Cornwall Peninsula College of Medicine and Dentistry Knowledge Spa, was informed by a student that HIV was discovered by Galileo (rather than Robert Gallo). And Mary Williams, senior lecturer in journalism at the University of Portsmouth, enjoyed a feature by a journalism student on “complimentary” medicine. “I quite liked the idea of picking up a pill and it saying nice things to you to make you feel better,” Williams said. She also appreciated a fashion article that described the subject’s sense of style as very “sheikh.”

Also on a medical theme, a student who was asked to define otitis media - a medical condition known as “glue ear” -- informed Liz Morrish, principal lecturer in linguistics at Nottingham Trent University, that it was “a text specially designed for people who are otistic.”

Morrish was equally amused to read that Polari (which Morrish described as “a coded version of English spoken by gay men, prior to the decriminalization of gay male sex” in Britain) was an ancient language of the Inuit.

“

Elsewhere, an academic at the University of Warwick was given a description of Sara Baartman, the so-called “Hottentot Venus,” as a “Hot ‘n’ Tot,” and of the Hindu practice of sati as “when a woman throws herself on her husband’s funeral parlor.”

In a drama examination, one student explained Adolphe Appia’s revolutionary contribution to scenography thus: “He moved projectors on to surfaces and shuddered at moments of climax.”

“Great to see he derived such joy from his work,” said Philip Crispin, a lecturer at the University of Hull, who submitted the entry.

Today’s students have little faith in the next generation, it seems.

“The U.K. birth rate is currently increasing. We have more than 700,000 new suspects every year,” Padmini Ray Murray, lecturer in publishing studies at the University of Stirling, was warned.

But earlier generations were impressively tough. In seeking to explain the origins of the term “nuclear family,” the author of a paper marked by Keith Kintrea, deputy head of the department of urban studies at the University of Glasgow, claimed the social unit “could enjure [sic] anything up to and including a nuclear war.”

Throughout one essay, a student from the University of Portsmouth wrote about “anus” crimes. The academic marking the paper eventually realized that he meant “heinous” crimes.

Finally, a student sent a winning apology for missing an exam to Lisa Burton, operation and examinations manager at Warwick Business School. The e-mail culminates with the line: “I am sorry if this caused you any incontinence.”

This article appeared in Inside Higher Ed on August 12, 2010.

Reprinted with permission.

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Do unto others 20 percent better than you would expect them to do unto you, to correct for subjective error. ~ Linus Carl Pauling (February 28, 1901 – August 19, 1994), American chemist, peace activist, author, educator and Nobel Prize recipient

We would like to hear from you! If you have original quotes or anecdotes that you would like to share with other faculty about your teaching experiences here at HPU, please send them to the Teaching and Learning Center along with your name, your title, and your permission to publish them in the Po‘okela.

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