Faculty Innovation

There is evidence of innovation all around us. Look to Twitter, Google, and Facebook as examples. This innovative trend does not only apply to industry, but to higher education as well. To illustrate how we are traveling on the right path, there is a growing chorus of faculty who have taken initiative and can make the claim that innovation is alive and well at CCRI.

Professor, Karen Kortz

Professor Karen Kortz is working on a CCRI-URI NSF funded joint initiative: GEOPATHS: IMPACTS, Strengthening Rhode Island’s Geology Education Through Partnership. The project's goals include improving the rate of transfer from CCRI to URI in geoscience, increasing the number and diversity of geoscience graduates from URI, training students at CCRI & URI students to be more employable in geoscience and STEM-related fields, and contributing to the evidence base of successful practices in enhanced geoscience education.

Professor, Jeanne Mullaney

Professor Jeanne Mullaney presented at the 17th annual League for Innovation in Community Colleges conference (March 2015).  She led a round table discussion focused on Leveraging an Assessment Project to Transform Institutional Culture, a model for gathering direct evidence of student learning focusing on peer-to-peer faculty development. Learning community members from 10 disciplines recruit and collaborate with colleagues to enhance assignments, resulting in improved pedagogy and faculty growth.

 Associate Professor, Maggie Burke

Associate Professor Maggie Burke presented at the 17th annual League for Innovation in Community Colleges conference (March 2015).  She led a round table discussion focused on Online Student Retention: The OnGOALS Module where she discussed OnGOALS online student support and community module, design and content choices, and presented the preliminary results of a one-semester pilot with approximately two hundred online students. In addition, she presented a forum: Rapid Prototyping Approach to Teaching Online Pedagogy where she discussed rapid prototyping, peer review, and feedback approach that allows faculty to experiment and evaluate course designs in a learning community with resulting course designs meeting a nine-dimension online course quality rubric.

 Assistant Professor, Brendan Britton

Assistant Professor Brendan Britton has been teaching two popular Astronomy courses at CCRI since 2009 noted for their emphasis on mathematical rigor. They more than just an Astronomy class: they introduce students to the science of large numbers, the subtlety of measurement, and the need for quantitative reasoning in their everyday life. [Read more about Brendan Britton]

Assistant Professor, Emily Burns

For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. Rhode Island is no exception; most of its citizens, including CCRI students, live in urban or suburban neighborhoods. [Read more about Emily Burns]

Associate Professor, Jim Salisbury

With a limited number of public computers available for student use in the library, I saw a laptop lending program as an excellent way to provide an additional service to our students while promoting the library as a place to be. [Read more about Jim Salisbury]

Associate Professor, Theodore Clement

CCRI Performing Arts Faculty Appointed To Leadership Position In Kennedy Center/American College Theatre Festival, Region 1. [Read more about Theodore Clement]