Last year, five faculty members were named Glennan Fellows for the 2011-12 academic year. In an upcoming program, they’ll each present how they used their Glennan Fellowships to facilitate their growth as teachers and scholars. Their talks will be held May 2 at noon in the Herrick Room of the Allen Memorial Library Building.
Geneviève Sauvé, assistant professor in the chemistry department, will discuss how she used the fellowship to expand the science and engineering curriculum by creating an upper-level course on solar energy conversion. They developed hands-on laboratories to teach principles of solar energy conversion and state-of-the-art research in the field.
In addition, Cassandra Burke Robertson, associate professor of law, will talk about her proposal, titled “Developing Open-Source Casefile-Based Teaching Modules,” which redesigned the professional responsibility curriculum for law students. The new style uses a “casefile” method to integrate theory and practice to create a broader learning experience. These materials will be published on an open-source platform, making them available to students for free, allowing customization of course content, and allowing other professors to collaborate in future development and refinement.
Through his proposal, “From Professional Theatre to Academia: Dramaturgy in the Classroom,” Jeff Ullom, assistant professor of theater, created and implemented a capstone class in dramaturgy. The course gives students the opportunity to not only learn the skills needed to perform as a professional dramaturg but also to work on new plays and on main stage productions as part of their coursework.
Rob Ewing, assistant professor in the Center for Proteomics and Bioinformatics and the Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences, used his fellowship to create a virtual learning environment for the analysis of proteomics experiments. The department has been developing the Computational Proteomics Learning Environment, a self-contained learning solution that will bring guided tutorials, examples from the scientific literature and computational tools together in one place. The CPLE is being built as a “virtual machine” that can be used by students both in-class and independently, and covers theoretical and practical aspects of computational proteomics.
Finally, Yanming Wang, associate professor of radiology, chemistry and biomedical engineering and director of the radiopharmaceutical division at Case Center for Imaging Research, will discuss his project, titled “Molecular Imaging–Seeing is Believing.” Abasic or apurinic/apyrimidinic (AP) site formation has been identified as an important biomarker in DNA-targeted chemotherapies, and detection and qualification of AP sites can be achieved by a molecular imaging technique. Wang’s team has developed positron-emitting radiotracers for PET imaging of AP sites in vivo, and he will discuss recent progress in imaging of DNA damage and repair and its impact on clinical applications.
The Glennan Fellows program was established in honor of T. Keith Glennan, president of Case Institute of Technology from 1947 to 1965, who understood the challenges faced by faculty members early in their academic careers, especially with regard to development of teaching skills. His concern led him to establish the endowment, which awards five new faculty members a $6,500 stipend to be spent during the following year. The funds may be used to support a wide range of activities related to teaching and education.