Addressing need for quality math and science teachers

The University of Dayton, Wright State University and the Montgomery County Educational Service Center (ESC) have formed a new consortium that will address the continuing need for more qualified science and mathematics teachers in the Dayton region.

The group has received a $500,000 Ohio Core Program grant to implement strategies to reverse the low number of qualified science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) teachers by systematically recruiting, preparing and assisting with professional development for math and science teachers in the 7-12 grade classrooms of the region’s urban, suburban and rural school districts.

“This consortium has been created to fast track mid-career professionals into the job market for math and science positions,” said Thomas Lasley, dean of UD’s School of Education and Allied Professions. “This effort is unique in that it brings together all the significant community players and represents one of the few consortia of its type in the state.”

The grant will allow the consortium to recruit up to 50 mid-career professionals with a bachelor’s degree in math, chemistry or physics and prepare them for second careers as math and science teachers in Dayton-area high schools. The program will begin in November, with the courses offered either on weekends or online by the University of Dayton and Wright State University. There is no fee for students admitted to the program.

An acute need exists for high-quality math and science teachers nationally and regionally, which will be even more pronounced if the Ohio Core Program becomes a reality.
Governor Bob Taft's Ohio Core initiative, proposed during his 2006 State of the State Address, calls for a more rigorous core curriculum to help Ohio's students become more competitive academically and economically.

That’s one reason why Ralph Tolle became a teacher after an impressive 25-year military career. After working at the Johnson Space Center, attaining his master’s and Ph.D degrees in aeronautical engineering at the Air Force Institute of Technology at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, and then overseeing the base flight dynamic lab at WPAFB, Tolle became a physical science and physics teacher at Stebbins High School and now chairs its science department.

“Being a teacher after years of professional, military and worldly experience brings a vast amount of knowledge into a classroom and goes far beyond book teaching,” Tolle said. “We need to teach Ohio’s students to be problem solvers and critical thinkers and to think outside the box. If you’ve actually spent years working on engineering design or analysis, you can teach by real-world example.”

UD, WSU and Montgomery County ESC join with the Engineering and Science Foundation, a fund of the Dayton Foundation, and the current partners of the West Ohio EXCEL Center of Excellence in Science and Mathematics Education (WeEXCEL) to work together to train more people like Tolle rather than competing for Core teacher candidates.

“This program is an excellent opportunity for the universities and the public schools to work together to solve a teacher quality problem that has persisted for several years in the areas of math and science,” said Don Thompson, superintendent of the Montgomery County ESC.

The teachers are expected to be provisionally licensed and ready to enter classrooms in fall 2007.
Ohio Core will require all students, beginning with the high school class of 2011, to complete a rigorous curriculum before graduation from high school and admission into Ohio’s four-year state-assisted universities and colleges. All students will be required to take a second year of algebra and more lab-based science classes, as well as two years of a foreign language. Ohio currently spends more than $7 million annually to support professional development of math and science teachers, according to the governor’s office.

Gregory Bernhardt, dean of WSU’s College of Education and Human Services said a collective response to this issue offers a bigger benefit to the region and the state.

“This initiative will focus on areas of strength for UD and WSU and will marry our efforts with the outstanding abilities of the Montgomery County ESC to identify the teaching needs of area high schools,” Bernhardt said.

For more information, contact Thomas Lasley at 937-229-3327, Don Thompson at 937-225-4598, and Gregory Bernhardt at 937-775-2822.

August 31, 2006 | Permalink

August 25, 2006

LSAT workshop at law school

Law school applicants can receive test-taking and admission tips at a two-session workshop.

Law School Admission Test (LSAT) takers and law school applicants can receive test-taking and admission tips at a two-session workshop hosted by the University of Dayton.

The first session is Sept. 8-9 at Keller Hall and the second session is Sept. 15-16 in the Jesse Philips Humanities Center, both on the UD campus. The workshop, sponsored by the UD prelaw program, is $95 and limited to 100 participants. The registration deadline is Sept. 2.

The workshop begins with a two-hour session at 7 p.m. Sept. 8. Alan Kimbrough, director of UD’s prelaw program, and Janet Hein, UD School of Law director of admissions, will offer law school application tips. A panel of law school students will join Kimbrough and Hein to reflect on their experiences.

The workshop continues at 8 a.m. the next day with participants taking a practice LSAT test, which will be graded and returned immediately after the test for analysis.

Instructors will address participants’ test-taking concerns during the following weekend’s session, held from 6:30-9 p.m. Sept. 16 and 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sept. 17. It will be taught by UD law, philosophy and English faculty, feature test-taking and analytical reasoning strategies, analysis of individual writing samples, timed drills and a test preparation book.

To register, contact Annie Milliron at (937) 229-4229 or annie.milliron@notes.udayton.edu.

For more information on the University of Dayton’s LSAT prep workshop, contact Annie Milliron at (937) 229-4229 or annie.milliron@notes.udayton.edu.

August 25, 2006 | Permalink

August 24, 2006

Dunbar, in black and white

Contemporary photographic interpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar's poetry are on display at the University of Dayton's Roesch Library gallery.

''Black and White: Contemporary Photographic Interpretations of Paul Laurence Dunbar's Poetry,'' will be on display in the first-floor gallery of the University of Dayton's Roesch Library through Oct. 5.

The exhibition focuses on books published during Dunbar's lifetime that were illustrated with photographs portraying the African-American characters described in the poems. These photos were taken by students and faculty of the Hampton Institute, a Virginia school founded shortly after Emancipation to help prepare former slaves to find employment.

A reception and lecture in the gallery will take place at 4 p.m. on Friday, Sept. 29, featuring Ray Sapirstein, an authority on Dunbar's collaboration with the Hampton Institute in the production of these illustrated books.

The six illustrated books on display (many of them first editions published between 1899 and 1906) and reproductions of their decorative covers are mounted on the gallery walls. Also in the gallery are enlargements of selected poems and the photographs that accompany them.

The exhibition is free and open to the public and can be viewed during regular library hours. For more information, call 937-229-4270 or click here.

Contact Teri Rizvi at 937-229-3241 or an electronic photo.

August 24, 2006 in Arts events | Permalink

August 22, 2006

UD named one of the best colleges

The University of Dayton was named one of the best colleges in the country by The Princeton Review and, for the first time in years, didn't make any of The Review's party lists.

The University of Dayton made The Princeton Review’s 2007 edition of its annual book “The Best 361 Colleges.” Only about 15 percent of the four-year colleges in America are in the book.

According to The Princeton Review, schools are chosen “primarily for their outstanding academics.” The various ranking lists in the 2007 edition of “The Best 361 Colleges” are based on the Princeton Review’s survey of 115,000 students, or about 300 per campus, attending the colleges profiled in the book.

Unlike past years, the University of Dayton did not make any of the ranking lists referring to alcohol or parties. The Alcohol Coalition and Office of Alcohol and Drug Abuse Prevention at UD have made significant strides in their effort to reduce alcohol abuse on campus.

“The Princeton Review reinforces our own internal studies, which show a decrease in certain drinking levels,” said Scott Markland, assistant dean of students. “For two years in a row, we’ve seen a decrease in the number of students consuming alcohol on Thursday nights and fewer students report taking part in binge drinking.”

UD’s profile in The Princeton Review book features extensive candid comments from UD students who were surveyed. According to the students, top programs include “a great pre-med program,” “a wonderful engineering department,” “an amazing teacher education program” and an “awesome business school.”

Students also reported that the Catholic school is “all about community: community when we study, community when we party, community when we are doing service, community when we pray.”

For more information, contact Linda Robertson at 937-229-3257

August 22, 2006 in Miscellaneous | Permalink

August 11, 2006

UD professor heads to Supreme Court

Terence J. Lau, assistant professor of business law in the School of Business Administration at the University of Dayton, has been selected as the 2006-2007 Supreme Court Fellow assigned to the Supreme Court of the United States. His fellowship begins in the fall.

As the fellow at the Supreme Court, Lau will research and provide background information for speeches and reports, brief visiting dignitaries, prepare analytical reports, and oversee the Judicial Internship Program.

Each year fellows work with top officials in the judicial branch of government. Fellows are involved in various projects examining the federal judicial process and seeking, proposing and implementing solutions to problems in the administration of justice.

Lau has been a professor at UD since 2002. Before that, he served as the director of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) Governmental Affairs for Ford Asia Pacific Operations in Bangkok, Thailand, for two years. He represented Ford’s government affairs with company affiliates, industry organizations, and the governments of 10 countries affiliated with ASEAN. Prior to his time in Bangkok, he worked for two years as an attorney for the Ford Motor Company in the International Practice Group in Michigan. Lau has published several articles and is a reviewer for the American Business Law Journal.

Lau is a member of the American Bar Association, the National Asia Pacific American Bar Association and the Academy of Legal Studies in Business. He earned a B.A. in political science from Wright State University in 1995 and a J.D. from Syracuse University College of Law in 1998.

The Supreme Court Fellows Program was created in 1973 by the late Chief Justice Warren E. Burger to provide promising individuals with a first-hand understanding of the federal government, in particular the judicial branch. The fellows are selected by a nine-member commission, which is appointed by the Chief Justice of the United States.

For more information, contact Linda Robertson at (937) 229-3257.

August 11, 2006 in Miscellaneous | Permalink

August 09, 2006

'Undecided' becoming more popular major

UD administrators say the number increases each year nationwide. This and other UD changes highlight the beginning of the 2006-07 school year.

Of the nearly 1,800 first-year students entering the University of Dayton later this month, nearly 700 - 39 percent - have labeled their majors “undecided.”

University administrators say the number increases each year and it appears that way nationwide. At some schools - the University of Florida and Valparaiso University - “undeclared” is called “exploratory.”

“In the past, college was about preparing for a job,” said Christine Schramm, UD assistant dean of students. “For millennial students, they have gone to high school, done a million activities and they then decide what to do once they arrive on campus. Millennials have been told, 'You'll figure it out in college.'
It is not that undecided students are not focused. They have been very focused in sports, leadership or service at the high school level.”

UD has special advisers and a section of the First-Year Experience program specifically for undecided students. UD's sophomore orientation program in the College of Arts and Sciences helps keep students engaged in their professional and personal growth. Some administrators nationally call sophomores the “lost class” because of being between the first and third years, when most students start heading toward graduation.

UD's undecided majors might get an idea of what they want by being placed in one of the 18 learning-living communities that cluster students with like academic interests, according to Schramm.

“'Undecided' students can benefit from learning-living communities. It allows them to 'try on' a potential major by living with students who are taking particular classes or have like interests,” Schramm said. “Our hope is they will focus on a interest to identify a major and develop an academic purpose for being in college. We've found that community living helps challenge thoughts.”

This is the first year all first-year students will reside in learning-living communities. Participants in last year's pilot communities said they liked the experience. They noted they easily formed study groups to discuss course material and formed friendships quickly.

The University of Miami and University of Central Arkansas are among the schools that have a sophomore orientation. Stanford has a residence hall to address second-year concerns such as choosing careers, declaring majors and giving academics greater attention.

The University of Texas student newspaper reports the school might create a new advising center to serve undecided students. Ohio University created the Majors Fair that attracts nearly 1,000 students and more than 50 representatives from throughout campus.

For those UD students who know what they want to do, business finance and civil engineering are the majors that have seen notable increases - 42 and 68 percent, respectively - among UD's first-year students. Communication, pre-med, mechanical engineering, early childhood education and chemical engineering remain popular as well.

Engineering majors will have tablet computers, rather than the traditional notebook computers. Tablets allow students to write formulas on the screen and sketch diagrams. Also for the first time, they have the option of entering the MBA-Ready Program, which will allow them to take 25 more credit hours of courses to receive a minor in business. They will be prepared to complete their MBA with one additional year of full-time coursework.

The incoming first-year students, all of whom are required to read the book Enough, about staying human in an engineered age, are on average virtually as smart as last year's record class that averaged a 25.5 on the ACT and 1167 on the SAT.

There will be seven times the number of international students and a little more than one-third more Asian and Pacific Islanders on campus, some of whom will be living in UD's undergraduate international learning and living communities.

For more experienced students, there is a new graduate degree option in the School of Education and Allied Professions. School of Education Dean Thomas J. Lasley II said the doctoral program in physical therapy has exceeded its projected enrollment goal by 15 percent.

For more information on the start of the 2006-07 school year, contact Shawn Robinson at 937-229-3391 or the UD Office of Public Relations at 937-229-3241. First-year University of Dayton students move in their residence halls on Thursday, Aug. 17. Classes begin Monday, Aug. 21.

August 9, 2006 | Permalink

Distinguished Speakers Series set

A female author who has received death threats for openly challenging a woman's place in Islam, an author who thinks immigration hurts Americans and a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist highlight the series.

A female author who has received death threats for openly challenging a woman's place in Islam, an author who thinks immigration hurts Americans and a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist highlight the 2006-07 University of Dayton Distinguished Speakers Series.

The series begins at 9:30 a.m. Saturday, Aug. 19 in the Frericks Convocation Center with Bill McKibben, the author of Enough. Enough, required reading for incoming first-year students, talks about staying human in an engineered age.

All Distinguished Speaker Series events, except for Aug. 19, are at 8 p.m. in the Kennedy Union ballroom on UD's campus and are free and open to the public.

Other speakers include:

Oct. 18, Frosty Wooldridge: Wooldridge biked more than 100,000 miles on six continents. He is working on three books - Incursion into America: How Immigration Adversely Affects American Citizens; Zero Visibility: a Blind Man's Quest for the Summit of Everest, a nonfiction account by Pasquale Scaturro, the man who organized and led blind climber Eric Weihenmayer to the top of Mt. Everest; and "When Your Father Left Too Soon," a nonfiction account of young men who have lost their fathers to an early death.

Nov. 15, Marci Hamilton: Hamilton advises Congress and state legislatures on the constitutionality of pending legislation and consults on cases before the U.S. Supreme Court. Hamilton worked for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor and just finished writing God vs. the Gavel: Religion and the Rule of Law.

Feb. 7, Leonard Pitts Jr.: Pitts won a 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary and is a Miami Herald columnist who writes about American race issues and popular culture

March 6, Asra Nomani: Nomani wrote Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle for the Soul of Islam and the Islamic bills of rights for women in the mosque.

For more information on the Distinguished Speakers Series or to request an interview with one of the speakers, please contact Shawn Robinson at 937-229-3391.

August 9, 2006 in Speakers | Permalink

August 04, 2006

Talking about Lolita

The author of Reading Lolita in Tehran will kick off the 2006-2007 Diversity Lecture Series at the University of Dayton. This year's slate includes heroic hotel manager featured in Hotel Rwanda.

Azar Nafisi, author of the international bestseller Reading Lolita in Tehran: A Memoir in Books, will kick off the University of Dayton's 2006-2007 Diversity Lecture Series with a free talk at 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 14 in the Kennedy Union Ballroom.

Other speakers include:

* National Public Radio correspondent Joseph Shapiro, 8 p.m., Nov. 8, Kennedy Union Ballroom. Free and open to the public.

* Educator and humanitarian Johnnetta Betsch Cole, 6:30 p.m., Monday, Jan. 15, venue to be announced. Cole will keynote the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Annual Holiday Celebration and Presidential Banquet, co-sponsored by UD and the Dayton Chapter of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Cole also will headline UD's annual Martin Luther King Jr. Prayer Breakfast at 7:30 a.m. on Tuesday, Jan. 16, in the Kennedy Union Ballroom.

* Rwandan hotel manager Paul Rusesabagina, 7:30 p.m., Feb. 20, Kennedy Union Ballroom. Free and open to the public.

In addition, two Pulitzer Prize winners who write about race, the past president of the American Educational Research Association (AERA) and an Indian-American Muslim journalist will visit campus.

Gloria Ladson-Billings, past president of the AERA who holds the Kellner Family Chair in Urban Education at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, will address ''What if we Leave All the Children Behind?" at 4:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 2, in the Sears Recital Hall as the annual Ellis Joseph Lecture. Edward P. Jones, author of The Known World, a novel about slavery that won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction, will speak at 8 p.m. on Oct. 23, a lecture sponsored by the Lawrence A. Ruff Honors Author Program. Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts, who won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for commentary, will speak at 8 p.m. on Feb. 7 as part of the Distinguished Speaker Series. That series will conclude with a talk by former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Nomani, author of Standing Alone in Mecca: An American Woman's Struggle, at 8 p.m. on March 6. All three talks, scheduled in the Kennedy Union Ballroom, are free and open to the public.

Nafisi, visiting professor at Johns Hopkins University and director of The Dialogue Project: Culture and Democracy in the Muslim World and the West, will address ''The Republic of the Imagination." Nafisi was expelled from the University of Tehran in 1981 for refusing to wear the mandatory Islamic veil and did not resume teaching until 1987. Reading Lolita ''explores the transformative powers of fiction in a world of tyranny'' with its account of how Nafisi gathered young women in her home every Thursday morning to read and discuss forbidden works of Western literature.

''I have often asked myself: How is it that under the worst political and social conditions, during war and revolution, in jails and in concentration camps, most victims turn toward works of imagination?" Nafisi wrote in a piece published in the Washington Post ''Book World'' in 2004.

Joseph Shapiro, who wrote the 1993 book, NO PITY: People with Disabilities Forging a New Civil Rights Movement, covers health, aging, disability and children and family issues for NPR. For 19 years, he wrote for U.S. News & World Report, where he covered social policy issues and served at various times as the magazine's Rome bureau chief, White House correspondent and congressional reporter.

Johnnetta B. Cole is the president of Bennett College for Women in Greensboro, N.C. She made history in 1987 by becoming the first African-American woman to serve as president of Spelman College. She was the first person of color to chair the board of United Way of America, a position she held from 2004-2006. She co-authored the 2003 book, Gender Talk: The Struggle for Women's Equality in African American Communities.

Paul Rusesabagina turned the hotel he managed into a sanctuary and saved more than 1,000 people during the Rwandan genocide in 1994. He received the National Civil Rights Museum's 2005 Freedom Award, and his heroism inspired the movie, Hotel Rwanda.

Previous Diversity Lecture Series speakers included Andrew Young, Coretta Scott King, Clarence Page and Nikki Giovanni. The Diversity Lecture Series - part of a larger strategic plan to foster inclusion and diversity on campus and prepare students, faculty, staff and the Dayton community for success in a global society - is co-sponsored by the offices of the president and provost with support from corporate partners, including the Dayton Daily News, WDAO-1210 AM, The National Conference for Community and Justice (NCCJ) and Markey's Audio Visual.

Contact Lynnette Heard, executive director of the office of the president, at 937-229-4122. For ticket prices and more information about the SCLC dinner featuring Johnnetta Cole, call 937-268-0051.

August 4, 2006 in Speakers | Permalink

August 03, 2006

Spacing out

Dayton Early College Academy students will participate in NASA testing Aug. 3-12 at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

What would be a routine trip to the emergency room on Earth could result in death or damage to expensive equipment in space.

To help prevent that from happening, the Boonshoft Museum of Discovery and the Dayton Early College Academy worked on an Ace bandage-looking wound containment device that DECA students will help test now through Aug. 12 at Houston's Johnson Space Center.

Boonshoft was one of only four U.S. museums NASA chose to participate in a program that runs parallel to university-sponsored research. NASA dictates that program participants partner with underserved students to introduce them to the sciences. DECA was looking for student volunteer opportunities at the same time.

Plenty of medical research is conducted in space, but NASA never has adopted procedures for severe trauma, according to Mitch Roth, Boonshoft's physical sciences coordinator.

“The goal is to provide something that's easily packed, doesn't take up much space, is cost-efficient and easy to apply by one person without the benefit of gravity holding down the bandage,” Roth said. “The benefit to the rest of us is that it will reduce NASA's training time, costs and taxpayer liability.”

The DECA students will run the show on the ground in Houston while their advisors - Roth, two DECA teachers and another Boonshoft staff member - will test the bandage in a weightless environment created by the C-9 “Weightless Wonder.” NASA will fly the team to an altitude of 80,000 feet before plummeting into a 25-second free-fall, creating virtual weightlessness. This will happen 60 times in two different sessions.

“I look up and think, one day, my work could be on the shuttle keeping somebody safe,” said DECA third-year student Amber Cospy, who hopes to be an anesthesiologist. “It's cool and amazing. I can't believe I was chosen out of all of these (DECA students). It's really going to help me and look good on a college resume.”

Roth said NASA will decide whether the group's experiment actually makes it into space, but NASA will have the “information on file when they need it.”

“It beats paying NASA researchers to develop it,” he added.

Cospy and fellow third-year student Jasmine Cammack said they've learned more than just science, such as how to work as a team, the importance of not letting down the team, not procrastinating and keeping your word.

For more information, contact Shawn Robinson at 937-229-3391. The students and project supervisors will be available for interviews after Aug. 13.

August 3, 2006 | Permalink