Virtual Faculty Meeting Update

The dates for the Virtual National Faculty Meeting are finalized! The conference will take place from October 7—10 via Adobe Connect. Below are a few key updates for conference.

• Conference Theme:

The theme for the conference is “A University without Walls.” Union Institute and University has a tradition of breaking down breaking down barriers—social, cultural, educational and economic. We want to continue that journey into the twenty-first century as we move into a more virtual environment. What does it mean to be a “University without Walls” in today's online world?

• Guest Speaker:

Our guest speaker this year is Dr. Bernard Bull who serves at Concordia University Wisconsin as Assistant Vice President of Academics, Associate Professor of Education, and Director/Chair of the M.S. in Educational Design & Technology. He is deeply involved in online pedagogical strategies and innovative approaches to education in the digital world. You can find out more about Dr. Bernard Bull at his website.

• Schedule:

Dr. Elden Golden and the Faculty Council are working closely with the Center for Teaching and Learning to develop a more detailed, forth-coming schedule. Below is the general structure for this virtual event.

Monday 2:00-5:00 PM EST
–Union Institute and University Institutional Vision and Practice
–Dr. Nelson Soto, VPAA
–Guest Speaker, Dr. Bernard Bull                      

Tuesday 7:00-9:00 PM EST

–Professional Development

Wednesday 7:00-9:00 PM EST
–Professional Development

Thursday 2:00-5:00 PM EST
–UI&U Institutional Vision and Practice
–President Sublett, Closing Remarks

 

• Regional Center Events:

The faculty meeting is virtual this year, but that does not mean that individual centers should not invite their local faculty members and graduate students to come together and participate in the conference as a group.

I strongly urge you to take the opportunity to use the faculty meeting as a community-building event for your centers. Please talk with your center deans to arrange an afternoon or a couple of evenings where any of the local faculty and graduate students could come together for food and fellowship as we all log in and connect in this important event. 

• Center for Teaching and Learning:

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CT&L) will play a major role in this year’s Virtual Faculty Meeting. In addition to video-recording professional development presentations by some of our faculty, the CT&L is establishing a new, online video training library. This online library will house the recorded training sessions from the faculty meeting for future reference. The CT&L will then continue to provide updates to this library, with short videos featuring faculty members with teaching tips and professional development workshops on a monthly basis, through the year.

Click here for a CT&L teaching tip on the course organizer page in CampusWeb.

Faculty Highlights: Dr. Rosanne Kennedy

Every month I want to highlight faculty members who live out the core values of Union Institute & University on a day to day basis. I am especially impressed with how these individuals integrate the principle of social responsibility into their lives and work.

Dr. Rosanne Kennedy is one such exemplary, Union leader whom I want to showcase this month. 

Dr. Kennedy is a member of the core faculty in the Ph.D. in Interdisciplinary Studies program, in the Public Policy and Social Change concentration, at Union Institute & University. She has been teaching at Union since 2010, leading seminars in ethics and social justice, and on topics ranging from modern political theory, democratic theory, and feminist theory to human rights. Dr. Kennedy received her Ph.D. and MA in Politics from the New School for Social Research and her BA in History from the University of California, Berkeley. Her dissertation, Rousseau and the Perversion of Gender (2010), was awarded the Hannah Arendt Prize for the best dissertation in Politics from the New School and the American Political Science Award for the best dissertation in women and politics.

Dr. Kennedy is active in presenting and publishing her research, both in the United States and abroad. A revised version of her dissertation appeared as her first book, Rousseau in Drag: Deconstructing Gender and was published with Palgrave in 2012. You can learn more about Dr. Kennedy’s book by clicking: Rousseau in Drag: Deconstructing Gender. 

Dr. Kennedy said that her understanding of social responsibility “inheres in the term itself—especially in the word responsibility—meaning respons[e] and responsiveness to others. My research is a response to historical and contemporary inclusions and exclusion. I read texts (in the broadest sense) with a critical eye towards the ways in which certain groups have been constituted as central and others as marginal and other. My response or intervention is not simply to make these groups more “visible” but to interrogate the mechanisms of marginalization: What or whom has been included and what or whom has been excluded? What forms of life have been authorized and what forms de-authorized? […] My interest thus in both the history of ideas and contemporary political movements is to find ways to intervene, challenge, and respond to those exclusionary practices that continue to define our society (and by extension others) despite our ostensible commitments to egalitarianism and freedom. 

My understanding of social responsibility in teaching is along another axis. I understand responsiveness to students not as a critical interlocutor (or at least not solely) but as someone who responds and encourages students to develop their interests and positions and to reach their own intellectual and critical potential. However, one of the most amazing and expanding experiences of teaching at Union, and one of its singular joys, is that I am more often the one who has been changed, challenged, or incited to think differently. Our students are so diverse. In addition to the important but obvious markers of difference, such as sexuality, gender, race, ethnicity, immigration or citizenship status, able-bodiedness, class position, religion, geographical location which our students represent, they also bring an incredibly rich diversity of perspectives. And I think that another form of responsiveness or responsibility that we have is to be open to being changed in our encounter with others, no matter where they come from intellectually, subjectively, or geographically and to incorporate these encounters into our own practices.”

 

Faculty Highlights: Dr. Anu Mitra

Every month I want to highlight faculty members who live out the core values of Union Institute & University on a day-to-day basis. I am especially impressed with how these individuals integrate the principle of social responsibility into their lives and work. Dr. Anu Mitra is one of the individuals that I want to showcase this month.

Dr. Anu Mitra has achieved a prominent position as an academic, a local Cincinnati community leader and educator, and as a global visionary in non-profit and social network development. Union Institute & University has been her academic home since 1988, but her influence has reached to more than 50 countries, on at least three continents. In addition to being a full-time faculty member in UI&U’s EdD program, she is a donor to Union Institute & University, contributing to student scholarships.

Yale University, Antioch College, Empire State College, and Sichuan University in China have all benefited from Dr. Mitra’s expertise as she has led courses in social justice theory, literature, media, visual culture, and cognitive approaches to design.    

She continues to be active on a number of community organization boards, including the Cincinnati Art  Museum, the Contemporary Arts Center in Cincinnati, the YWCA, and the National Docent Symposium . She is also on the communications committee of Leadership Cincinnati's alumni publication, The Leading Edge. It is published six times per year and distributed to the leadership cadre of Cincinnati.  

She has published widely in journals and newspapers all over the world and is an active, international conference and seminar presenter.  

When asked about how she has integrated the value of social responsibility in her life, Dr. Mitra said:  

“Social justice and social responsibility is all about us awakening—someone awakens us. Either it’s a good teacher, a good educator, or something that we read or something that we hear, and if we can do that process more intentionally, then the work of bringing about justice will become much more systematic, much more intentional. Even though my work varies from day to day in different organizations, it’s all about bringing us to awareness of who we are, of what we believe in, of how some of these big problems can be solved. One of the things that I’ve really come to understand is that the big problems can be broken up into smaller component parts and that they can be addressed. And the big problem does not need to be addressed all at once and does not need to overwhelm us and to make us go away in desperation because we can’t handle a big situation. It can be broken down, and it can be handled one component at a time.   

I want to stress the fact that I’m very much a practitioner as well as a thinker. I just don’t see the value of the thinking parts and putting them into a book, which is very important—it’s an important process—but that alone should not be the descriptor of a person’s work and a person’s life work. Taking this work out into the community and bringing about change is also my desired way of having some impact, of contributing something, to waking people up.” 

Art, interdisciplinarity, and leadership development are central to Dr. Mitra’s research. Watch a sample below of Dr. Mitra’s philosophy of social responsibility in action at the Cincinnati Art Museum!

 

Faculty Highlights: Dr. Jennifer Scott

 

Every month I want to highlight faculty members who live out the core values of Union Institute & University on a day-to-day basis. I am especially impressed with how these individuals integrate the principle of social responsibility into their lives and work.

This month I am proud to present Dr. Jennifer Scott from the PsyD faculty, as one of the exemplary leaders of the Union team!

Dr. Jennifer Scott joined the Psy.D. Program in Clinical Psychology as core faculty in July 2009 and is responsible for teaching, managing the collection and distribution of test materials, advising students and collaborating on the formal assessment of learning and program outcomes at Union Institute & University.

Dr. Scott possesses expertise in clinical psychology, particularly in the area of psychological assessment and outcomes measurement, and has more than 15 years of experience providing psychological services in forensic settings. 

Dr. Scott plays an active role in the Union community and within the field of psychological research through publications and academic presentations. She is a member of several respected psychological organizations—among them, the American Psychological Association (APA), the Ohio Psychological Association (OPA), and the American Association on Intellectual and Developmental Disabilities. 

She is also invested in the larger, rural communities in southwestern Ohio, maintaining her private practice, providing psychological assessment and consultation services.

In talking about the importance of social responsibility and her work at Union Institute & University, Dr. Scott said:

“Based on my personal and professional experiences, I can support a conceptualization of social responsibility that emphasizes the obligation of each person and organization to either avoid engaging in socially harmful acts or engage in activities that directly advance social goals. Here at Union, this value is evident in the way we conduct our daily interactions and activities as teachers, administrators, and counselors and is reinforced at the national level by its inclusion as one of our university outcomes. Social responsibility is part and parcel to achieving a socially just society that embraces equality and solidarity and recognizes the dignity of every human being. I believe strongly in my responsibility as an educator to inspire students to clear and purposeful action on behalf of individuals, groups and communities in the context of their professional roles and to respectfully lead by example.”

Read more about Dr. Scott’s activity and work here at Union Institute & University by clicking here!

Master of Science in Organizational Leadership

I’m proud to announce the newly created Master of Science in Organizational Leadership program (MSOL) at Union Institute and University! 

The MSOL allows students to engage in a three-semester, interdisciplinary program, take courses from different fields, and focus on leadership topics that are tailored to their unique interests and passions. 

Contact our Union admissions department for more information!

 

 

 

UI&U, Vice President of Academic Affairs News Blog

Welcome to the official blog site for Dr. Nelson Soto, Vice President of Academic Affairs at Union Institute and University!

Check back for regular news updates on the initiatives and events in the VPAA office.

In my inaugural e-newsletter of The Union Strasse to the faculty and staff last month,  I mentioned that I wanted to share several guiding questions that are shaping my vision for Union Institute & University. These questions remain important to me as  I serve the community at Union, as I communicate with colleagues and external stakeholders, and even as I blog.

I wanted to reiterate those guiding questions here as well:

• How is the thread of social responsibility permeated through our curriculum and interdisciplinary scholarship?
• How can I provide an innovative space for faculty to explore new ideas to enhance curriculum and course offerings that parallel to current technological trends?
• How can I foster an environment for thoughtful educators—individuals who inspire and teach learners to pursue their career aspirations and contribute to our global society?
• How do I share the success of a Union education to our internal and external stakeholders?
• How do I identify niche programs that support the Union mission?
• How do I improve retention and graduation rates in all of our programs?

As Union Institute & University approaches its 50th anniversary next year, I hope you will join me not only in reflecting on what has made Union an innovative and exciting body of higher education in the past, but that you will also help me to keep asking those questions about how we continue the legacy of Union for another 50 years into the future!