MAT Commencement Program 2017

Master of Arts in Teaching Commencement

AUERBACH AUDITORIUM OF ST. MARY’S HALL FRIDAY, JUNE 2, 2017 | 6:00 P.M.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland Board of Trustees Sven Holmes, Chair

Ann L. McDaniel, Vice Chair

John Chambers Wobensmith ’93, Treasurer

Rear Adm. Tim Heely, USN Retired, Secretary

Carlos Alcazar Anirban Basu John Bell Arthur “Lex” Birney, Jr. Cindy Broyles ’79 Peter Bruns Donny Bryan ’73

John Bullock Peg Duchesne ’77 Bonnie Glick Elizabeth Graves ’95 Gail Harmon Steny H. Hoyer Capt. Glen Ives, USN Retired

Lawrence “Larry” E. Leak ’76 Katharine Russell Danielle Troyan ’92 Sharon Phillips ’18, Student Trustee Laura Cripps, HSMC

Gary Jobson Clementine Kaufman Molly Mahoney Matthews R. Douglas Mathias ’73 John McAllister James P. Muldoon

Michael P. O’Brien ’68 Terry Meyerhoff Rubenstein Robert S. Waldschmitt H. Thomas Waring Harry J. Weitzel

Trustees Emeriti June W. Auerbach ’49 Benjamin Cardin Esther L. Coopersmith G. Thomas Daugherty ’65 Bonnie Green ’74 Patrick Hervy

The Founding of St. Mary’s St. Mary’s dates back to 1840, when three men of St. Mary’s County (a doctor, a lawyer, and a planter) decided that Maryland should have a monument to Lord Baltimore’s 1634 colony at the busy little river port known as St. Mary’s City. They admired Lord Baltimore’s experiment in freedom of conscience and in the separation of church and state, so they decided that Maryland’s “living monument” should be a girls’ high school (or seminary, as high schools were often called in those days) that would exemplify his beliefs. They also decided that this state-supported school would be named after Maryland’s first capital, St. Mary’s City, and that it would have an independent board of trustees. It would be non-denominational, with both trustees and faculty evenly divided among Methodists, Catholics, and Episcopalians— the three major denominations in St. Mary’s County at the time. In 1874, the first certificate of graduation was granted to Sallie Brome Morsell.

St. Mary’s Female Seminary taught the liberal arts and evolved into a junior college in 1926. By the end of the 1960s it had become St. Mary’s College of Maryland, a coeducational four-year college. It attracted bright students who were looking for the almost impossible—a college that was public, affordable, devoted to the liberal arts, academically rigorous, respectful of all races and creeds, and overseen by an independent board of trustees and a well-credentialed faculty committed to scholarship and teaching. By the early 1990s the College was being praised in all the national college guides, and in 1992, St. Mary’s College was recognized by the governor and the Maryland legislature as an honors college.

Order of Exercises Procession of Students, Faculty, Staff and Honored Guests Greetings

Angela Johnson, professor and chair of the Department of Educational Studies

Student Address

Austin Gore and Margaret McCoy Padukiewicz

Musical Selection ““In My Little Corner of the World” by Lee Pockriss with lyrics by Bob Hilliard Alexandra Kennedy, vocals Maureen Monk, flute Mason Redmond, bass

Commencement Address

Elias Vlanton, retired educator and author

Presentation of Candidates for the Master of Arts in Teaching Degree Leslie Moore, director of student teaching

Charge to the Graduating Class The Department of Educational Studies

Conferral of Master of Arts in Teaching Degree Tuajuanda C. Jordan, president

Recessional Music

Tuajuanda C. Jordan, PhD PRESIDENT OF ST. MARY’S COLLEGE OF MARYLAND

Dr. Tuajuanda Jordan has served as St. Mary’s College of Maryland’s (SMCM) seventh president since July 2014. During her tenure, the Board of Trustees approved A Time for Rebirth, a new three-year strategic plan that builds on the College’s charter as Maryland’s only public honors college and the first of its kind in the nation.

St. Mary’s College of Maryland has been widely recognized for its successes. Ranked among the top 100 Kiplinger’s list of best values in public colleges (2016) and among the top 10 best public liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report (2016), SMCM continues to build upon its solid reputation for academic excellence under Dr. Jordan’s watch. Under her leadership, the College continues to analyze and assess its programming to ensure that students are provided opportunities to be engaged, productive global citizens and leaders.

Since joining the College, President Jordan has been widely recognized for her contributions to higher education and the larger community. Recently, she was named one of the Top 25 Women in Higher Education by the national magazine, Diverse Issues in Higher Education. In addition to serving on numerous national panels and boards, she was recognized as a Black Leader in Education by the AFRO (2017), was named as one of Fisk University’s Talented Tenth (2016), Purdue University’s Distinguished Women Scholars (2015-16), and as an Influential Marylander by the Daily Record (2015). She received the Torchbearer Award (2014) from the National Coalition of Black Women, Baltimore Metropolitan Chapter, and was inducted (2015) into the Zeta Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa, the nation’s oldest academic honor society.

Prior to SMCM, Dr. Jordan served as dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and as a professor of chemistry at Lewis & Clark College in Oregon. While there, she helped recruit an exceptional and diverse faculty, launched a center for entrepreneurship, and developed a campus-wide system to increase student persistence and graduation rates. While an associate dean and tenured faculty member in the College of Arts and Sciences at Xavier University of Louisiana, she helped establish the center for undergraduate research and creativity.

Dr. Jordan gained national prominence in the realm of science education with the creation of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science Education Alliance (SEA) program and the launch of its first initiative, the SEA Phage program, which engaged novice undergraduates in research in genomics and bioinformatics. This program has been implemented at more than 50 diverse institutions across the nation, impacted thousands of students and faculty, and resulted in numerous scientific and pedagogical publications.

Dr. Jordan holds a B.S. in chemistry from Fisk University and a Ph.D. in biochemistry from Purdue University.

Commencement Speaker Elias Vlanton

Retired Educator and Author Elias Vlanton is a researcher and freelance writer and author of the non-fiction book, “Who Killed George Polk? The Press Covers Up a Death in the Family” (Temple Press, 1996). A first generation Greek-American, Vlanton investigated the death of CBS journalist George Polk, murdered in Thessaloníka in 1948, at the height of the Greek civil war (1944-49).

Two years after his book on George Polk was published, Vlanton earned a master of arts in teaching degree from Johns Hopkins University. He taught history at Bladensburg High School in Prince George’s County for many years and came to be connected with St. Mary’s College of Maryland in that role.

As a teacher, Vlanton identified his most promising students and pushed them to think about a college education – especially when their families had never thought of it as even a remote possibility. He made himself the conduit between more than 100 of his high school students and St. Mary’s College, injecting himself into their initial campus visit, application to the College, and then following up on their academic progress. In 2009, St. Mary’s College awarded Vlanton an honorary degree for the impact he had on those students over the years.

Candidates for the Master of Arts in Teaching Degree Jordan Ashley

Colton's Point, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: Keeping in Touch: Fostering Parent-Teacher Communication through Technology

Angela Cirillo

Chesapeake Beach, Md. Secondary Art Master’s Project: “When Am I Ever Going to Use This?” Examining the Influence of Relevant Pedagogy on Students’ Perception of the Value of Mathematics

Denise Crane

Lexington Park, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: Strategies for a Positive Classroom Environment: A Balanced Approach to Behavioral Management

Lizzie D'Agostaro

Bel Air, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: The Effect of Contemplative Practices on Students’ Engagement

Sarah Daniels

Severn, Md. Secondary Biology Master’s Project: Keeping it Compatible: Investigating Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in a Secondary Science Class

Courtney Dunn

Preston, Md. Secondary Math Master’s Project: Getting to Know One's Students: The Development of TSRQ in the Classroom

Amanda Erdman

Lusby, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: Improving Students' Implicit Theories of Intelligence: The Role of Children's Literature

Taylor Foley

Stevensville, Md. Elementary Education Master’s Project: Using Children's Literature About Disabilities to Foster Empathy and Understanding

Ben Goldsmith

Ellicott City, Md. Secondary Social Studies Master’s Project: Problem Based Learning vs. Direct Instruction: Who Gets Left Behind?

Austin Gore

La Plata, Md. Secondary Theater Master’s Project: Keeping High School Drama Onstage: Motivation for Curricular and Extracurricular Theatre

Conor Jordan

Rockville, Md. Secondary Social Studies Master’s Project The Art of Developing: Teacher Student Relationship Quality (TSRQ): What Do Students Want from Their Teachers?

Alexandra Kennedy

Baltimore, Md. Secondary Music Master’s Project: Rehearsing Upside Down: Making Ensemble Rehearsal More Effective through Flipped Classrooms

Amanda Lamoureux

California, Md. Elementary Master’s Project: Influencing Implicit Theories of Intelligence in a Fourth Grade Classroom

Alex Lanham

Annapolis, Md. Secondary Social Studies Master’s Project: Do You See What I See?: Student Salience of Gender Bias in the History Classroom

Melissa Michalek

Lexington Park, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: Improving Students' Writing Skills: The Use of a Blogging Intervention

Maureen Monk

Columbia, Md. Secondary Biology Master’s Project: Improving Self-Efficacy: Intervening in High School Biology

Tong Mu

Qingdao, China Secondary Chinese Master’s Project: How to Sustain Students in Chinese Classrooms: Motivate Both Students and Teachers

Katie Newkirk

Leonardtown, Md. Elementary Master’s Project: Goal Setting for a Growth Mindset

Margaret McCoy Padukiewicz

Scotland, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: Inclusion, Co-teaching, and Relationships between Classroom and Special Education Teachers

Ashley Paul

Lusby, Md. Secondary Math Master’s Project: Promoting Participation in the Mathematics Classroom

Tori Poffenberger

Sharpsburg, Md. Secondary English Master’s Project: The Creative Classroom: Improving Student Motivation and Critical Thinking Skills through Arts Integration

Christina Puglisi

Dunkirk, Md. Elementary Master’s Project: Fun Friday: Small Group Intervention Effects on Cross-Sex Interactions During Lunchtime

Kasey Raines

Chesapeake Beach, Md. Secondary Social Studies Master’s Project: Self-monitoring to Improve Attention in Middle School

Mason Redmond

Frederick, Md. Secondary English Master’s Project: Independent and Hopefully Lifelong Reading through Social Discourse

Tess Roper

California, Md. Secondary Biology Master’s Project: Let's Take This Outside: Combatting Negative Attitudes Towards Science with Outdoor Education

Emily Sinton

Frederick, Md. Elementary Master’s Project: Changing Students' Minds: A Dual Intervention Approach to Implicit Theories of Intelligence

Rachael Sowers

Laurel, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: In Control: The Effect of Contemplative Practices on Student Self-Regulation

Alyson Thompson

Baltimore, Md. Secondary Math Master’s Project: The Fluctuation of Math Anxiety within the Classroom

Megan Treutler

Hollywood, Md. Elementary & Early Childhood Education Master’s Project: Film in the Elementary Literacy Classroom: Promoting Creative Writing Through Film Reading