January 2024

Vol.VI, Issue I

School of Multidisciplinary and Professional Studies

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Greetings MaPS Community,

Happy New Year!

As we step into this vibrant new year, it's a time of fresh beginnings and renewed energy in the School of Multidisciplinary and Professional Studies. This period of rejuvenation and enthusiasm sets the perfect stage for the array of activities and initiatives we have in store. A highlight of our year is our inaugural awards program, a celebration of the exceptional talents and contributions within our community. The nomination period is quickly drawing to a close. Don't miss out on the chance to recognize and honor the outstanding individuals among us!

Additionally, I'd like to remind everyone that the deadline for submissions for GEC is quickly approaching. This conference is a cornerstone event, showcasing the breadth of our academic and professional expertise. Your contributions and participation are essential in making it a success. In this newsletter, you will find more information about these events, along with other exciting programs and celebrations. As we step into this new year, let's commit to engaging actively in our school's life, supporting each other, and continuing to strive for excellence in all we do. Each of you is an integral part of the School of Multidisciplinary & Professional Studies, and I am enthusiastic about what we will achieve together.

Wishing you all a splendid start to the year filled with achievements, happiness, and abundant learning opportunities.

Happy reading, and once again, Happy New Year!

Mya Fields, Assistant DeanSchool of of Multidisciplinary and Professional Studies

🅷🅴🆁🅴 🆈🅴! 🅷🅴🆁🅴 🆈🅴!

🅻🅾🅾🅺 🆆🅷🅰🆃'🆂 🅷🅰🅿🅿🅴🅽🅸🅽🅶!

Final Week for General Education Conference Proposals

This is the FINAL WEEK to submit a proposal for the 2024 Virtual General Education Conference. Click here for more details and to officially submit a proposal. All proposals must be submitted by Thursday, February 1, 2024. Email: gvirtualconference@purdueglobal.edu with questions.

All Purdue Global faculty, administration, and support staff are invited to collaborate with colleagues to demonstrate innovations that help us grow, share ways that you motivate students to propel them toward graduation, or showcase how your research supports academic reputation!

Don't Forget

Nominate colleagues for our annual MaPS Awards. The deadline is Friday February 2nd

Eligibility for Nominations:

Any MaPS school community member who fulfills the eligibility criteria outlined in the award descriptions can be nominated.
Nominees can be self-nominated or nominated by any university employee.
In order to be eligible to receive an award, the recipient must be a
- Member of MaPS who is not in their first year of employment
- Must have received an evaluative rating of “Meets Expectations” as of the most recently completed evaluation.

We encourage you to participate in this process and help us acknowledge the remarkable talents and achievements within our School of Multidisciplinary and Professional Studies.

National Pi Day

National Pi Day is around the corner (Thursday, March 14th, 2024). We are trying out a new competition this year - a Pilish (PIE-LISH) contest! Pilish is a constrained form of writing where you use the digits of Pi to determine how many letters are in each consecutive word. You can use a few digits of Pi to create a profound sentence or poem, use more digits and write the lyrics for a song, or use many digits of Pi to write a short story. The opportunities are endless!

Here is a Pilish poem written by Joseph Shipley in his book, Playing with Words, using the first 31 digits of Pi:

But a time I spent wandering in bloomy night;

Yon tower, tinkling chimewise, loftily opportune.

Out, up, and together came sudden to Sunday rite,

The one solemnly off to correct plenilune.

Shipley, J. T. (1966). Playing with words. Cornerstone Library.

Please submit your Pilish piece here by Friday, March 1st. Anonymous judges will select the top three submissions. If you are one of our three winners, your submission will be featured in the Summer issue of The Gauge Literary Journal AND you’ll receive a $10 Amazon gift card. Have fun, be creative, and encourage your colleagues and family members to get involved!

Fun fact: “The longest text written in Standard Pilish is Not A Wake (published in 2010) by Michael Keith (USA), a collection of short stories, poems, haikus, and even a movie script, following the first 10,000 digits of the mathematical constant.”

https://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/world-records/98287-longest-literary-work-in-pilish

2024 Student Experience Speaker Series

Please join us for the MaPS student experience speaker series. This event promises to be an insightful exploration of the services provided by various PG departments and how we, as faculty and administrators, can support and enhance these vital resources for our students.

January 30th, 1 ET

Speakers: Student Life & Student Success

February 6th, 1 ET

Speakers: The Center for Career Advancement & Federal Work- Study

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Josef Vice, EdDEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

MaPS Representation at SAMLA

Josef Vice moderated a roundtable discussion on AI in the writing classroom at the 2023 SAMLA conference. He also presented a paper on the presentation of LGBT+ belonging in HBO's Looking and BBC's It’s a Sin.

Josef recently completed two articles on LGBT+ representation in popular culture, to be published in 2024 in two books he co-edited for MacFarland publishing and is currently working with a PG research group to publish findings of their study of faculty attitudes toward teaching LGBTQIA2S+ students.

Erin Von Steuben, MAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development

Erin Von Steuben presented at the National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development, sharing her research on the neuroscience related to increasing cognition in online students to better understand best practices for cognition and retention of information. She shared best practices for cognition and retention that included activities that increase the use of handwritten annotation and notes.

Modern Language Association Conference

David Healey recently presented “A Matter of Trust: Empowering Learners to Find Credible Sources for Workplace Writing” as part of the Association for Business Communication "Information Literacy" session at the Modern Language Association conference in January

David Healey, MFAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

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Kat Vanderburg, PhDScience Faculty

I have added a "Resources for Success" tab in the content area where I can put supplemental information. This also includes the semester calendar and other welcome information that I generally post in my welcome email that ends up buried as the semester progresses. Students so far, love this. They say it is very helpful to have one place to go to get to their livebinder link, supplemental help videos, AI resources and more!

Do you have a best practice or tip you'd like to share? Feel free to email your department chair or fill out the MaPS Digest Spotlight Form found on the homepage.

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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

On Monday, January 15, we recognized the life of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., a revolutionary civil rights leader. Dr. King had a vision to peacefully reinforce his belief – all people are created equal and should have the freedom to pursue their dreams. His determination for racial equity and justice still serves as a pivotal anchor in current and future efforts toward achieving equality for all.

History and Resources

Attached is a video highlighting Dr. King's powerful moments in history. This video shares a snapshot of his fight for freedom from 1955 to 1968. In 1981, Stevie Wonder released a Happy Birthday Song campaigning for the establishment of the national holiday in memory of Dr. King. This song can be heard today during Dr. King's holiday and at other times by some people who opt to sing this fun and inspiring version instead of the traditional birthday song.

The holiday was not officially observed until 1986-three years after it was added to the list of federal holidays. That year, Martin Luther King Jr's youngest son, Dexter Scott King, executive produced a song in celebration of the first year the holiday was observed. This song, King Holiday, featured artists of that era, such as Menudo, Whitney Houston, New Edition, and others. All proceeds from the single were donated to the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change.

In 1994, Congress passed the King Holiday and Service Act, which transformed Martin Luther King Jr. Day into a day dedicated to volunteer service in honor of Dr. King’s legacy.

The Office of Organizational Culture and Inclusive Excellence (OCIE) encourages you to participate in honoring Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s legacy by signing up to volunteer for a local, regional, or national organization, bringing people together to create and register your own project or even donating to a cause of your choice.

We also encourage you to spend some time reflecting on the meaning of this day, the impact of this work, and the inspiration it can provide in your personal and professional life.

Happy MLK Day!

Organizational Culture and Inclusive Excellence Team

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Faculty Publications

James McAdams, PhD English & Rhetoric Faculty

English & Rhetoric faculty member James McAdams has some exciting publication news:

James McAdams’s current novel in the works, The Florida Shuffle, is getting some pre-publication attention:

· Alternating Currents Press Novel Longlist

· CRAFT First Chapter Contest Honorable Mention

· Excerpt Magazine: February publication date

Congratulations, James!

Jonathan Cardew, MAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

Jonathan Cardew will be taking part in Woodland Pattern Book Center's Annual Poetry Marathon event on January 27th - 28th. During this fundraising, live streamed event, He’ll read his creative work alongside 300 local and international poets, musicians, and artists. For more information about Woodland Pattern's Annual event (along with an option to donate): https://woodlandpattern.org/poetry-marathon

Congrats, Jonathan!

Jani Pearson, MAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

Jani Pearson has three poems that will be published this year. Two in Calyx: A Journal of Art and Literature and one in Notre Dame Review.

Great Job, Jani!

Eric Holmes, MSEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

Eric Holmes published a chapter entitled "Anthony Bourdain's Extremely Objectionable Stories" in the book Anthony Bourdain and Philosophy (Released in November 2023)

Congratulations, Eric!

Celebrations!

Taryn Bromser-Kloeden, MSScience Faculty

Taryn Bromser-Kloeden won the Mark Ledbetter/Susan Cumings Award for her paper titled "Navigating environmental academia in a disabled body: An embodied autoethnography of ableism, advocacy, and adjustment." The award will be presented at the Southern Humanities Conference on February 3rd 2024

Amy Smith, MSScience Faculty

Amy Smith was Invited to serve as a member of the Accreditation Committee for the Society of American Foresters. The committee reviews university forestry programs for rigor and compliance with SAF standards and credentialing. She has also been working with SAF on the new Certified Urban Forester Credential and exam.

Ingrid Bradley, SAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

Ingrid Bradley was selected to present a Praxis Poster for the 2024 Global Society for Online Literacy Educators (GSOLE) Conference.

GSOLE Conference Feb. 1 & 2, 2024

Sara Wink, MFAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

Sara Wink proposal has been accepted for the 2024 Hawkes Innovative Educators Summit!

Jani Pearson, MAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

January Pearson will be presenting at The Southern Humanities Conference; she will discuss poems from her collection of poetry Nothing Left to Fix. She'll explore the theme of embodiment by reading from poems, such as “Clouds,” where she explores rare illness and the untreatable pneumonia-like “clouds,” spotted in her father's lungs. In her poems, she explores rare illness through imagery to illustrate how the disease could not be captured in a concrete diagnosis or treatment and yet it inhabited her father's body tangibly.

English & Rhetoric faculty Galia Fussell, Michelle Bianco and Assistant Department Chair Barbara Green, had two proposals accepted to the Society For Information Technology and Teacher Education Conference taking place in Las Vegas, March 25th -29th

Proposal Titles:

"Implementing Regular and Substantive Interactions to Achieve Quality of Online Composition Courses"
"Cultivating Resilience and Persistence to Increase Retention in Writing Courses."

Galia Fussell,PhD English & Rhetoric Faculty

Barbara Green, MA English & Rhetoric Assistant Dept. Chair

Michelle Bianco , MAEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

Michelle Bianco successfully defended her dissertation proposal!

April BurgeEnglish & Rhetoric Faculty

April Burge completed her Master’s certificate in Instructional Design from the University of Illinois, Department of Educational Policy, Organization, and Leadership

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