The University Writing Program Faculty Discussion Series
About once a month during the school year, the entire faculty of the FYC program meets to discuss teaching, to learn from their peers, and to be introduced to new ideas in writing pedagogy. During the 2008-2009 school year, these meetings were enlivened by a number of guest speakers from other departments in the university, respected professors who brought their pedagogical insights to bear on the task of teaching FYC. This page provides information on those speakers, as well as short descriptions of their thought-provoking lectures.
February 5, 2009
Dr. Anita Kelly
“Liking Matters: Improving your Teaching Evaluations”
Dr. Anita Kelly is a professor of psychology at the University of Notre Dame, where she has been since 1994. She is the author of The Psychology of Secrets, and has published many journal articles on her main research interest: self-presentation. Her work has been featured in a variety of national news sources, including the Chicago Tribune and the New York Times. In 2002 she won a teaching award from the Kaneb Center.
Dr. Anita Kelly met with the FYC faculty to discuss her research into teaching evaluations. She began by asking whether student evaluations are accurate measures of teaching ability—mentioning that student evaluations have been proven to correlate with more student learning and better colleague and administrator ratings. They have also, however, been proven to correlate closely to a student’s expected grade in a course; easier graders get higher ratings. She discussed the relationship of a professor’s perceived physical attractiveness to student ratings, noting that professors who students perceived as attractive scored slightly higher on a 5-point scale of effectiveness. Dr. Kelly described a study in which judges watched 10-second video clips of graduate student teachers and evaluated them in terms of a number of qualities. The teachers who these judges described as “dominant,” “confident,” and “optimistic” were most likely to receive high ratings from students. The study also concluded that excellent teachers avoid certain nonverbal behaviors such as fidgeting or frowning. Dr. Kelly concluded by noting the high correlation between perceived extraversion and excellence in teaching—those teachers who were able to convince their classes that they were extraverted, whether they were or not, scored the highest on TCE’s.
February 20, 2009
Dr. Alasdair MacIntyre
“Writing in Philosophy”
Alasdair MacIntyre has written widely in philosophy since his first book, Marxism: An Interpretation , appeared in 1953. He has taught at Oxford University, Princeton University, Brandeis University, Boston University, Wellesley College, Vanderbilt University, Duke University, and the University of Notre Dame. Professor MacIntyre is the author of over thirty books, including the influential triumvirate of recent works: After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory, Whose Justice? Which Rationality?, and Three Rival Versions of Moral Enquiry: Encyclopaedia, Genealogy, and Tradition. He has made prominent contributions to the history of philosophy, moral philosophy, political theory, philosophy of the social sciences, and philosophy of religion.
For more, visit: http://www.nd.edu/~ndethics/about/macintyre.shtml
Dr. Alasdair MacIntyre met with the Writing Center Tutors to discuss how they could best help students writing philosophy papers. FYC faculty were also invited to attend the meeting. Professor MacIntyre encouraged the tutors and faculty to consider the process of writing a philosophy paper as a process of discovery, a chance for students to find out what they think about a complicated question or issue. He suggested that tutors advise students to set their personal beliefs aside while writing a philosophy paper, while helping them to work towards precise language that avoids flowery prose.
A fuller summary of MacIntyre’s talk is available here: htp://writingcenter.nd.edu/AlasdairMacIntyreonWritinginPhilosophy.htm
March 26, 2009
Dr. Susan Blum
“My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture”
Dr. Susan Blum has been with the University of Notre Dame since 2000. Dr. Blum specializes in cultural, linguistic, and psychological anthropology. Throughout her career Dr. Blum has researched deception and truth, multilingualism, person and self, ethnicity, nationalism and identity, childhood and higher education, food, and anthropological theory. Blum recently published the book entitled My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture. She is the author or editor of four other books, and has made professional contributions to a number of scholarly books and publications. The Department of Anthropology commends Dr. Blum for her hard work and dedication to her research and students. For more, visit: http://anthropology.nd.edu/faculty-staff/spotlight/index.shtml.
Dr. Susan Blum met with the FYC faculty to discuss her recent book, My Word! Plagiarism and College Culture. In the book, she discusses the results of a case study conducted at Notre Dame to determine the attitudes of undergraduate students towards plagiarism and other forms of academic dishonesty. Dr. Blum argued that the culture of today’s college students has a different understanding of who owns language or ideas than previous generations. Rather than embracing the Romantic idea of the author as a genius whose words are his or her unique property, most of today’s college students think of quotes from movies, music, and other sources as a kind of public property. They often quote in their conversations, e-mails, or Facebook pages without citing a source, assuming that the source is common knowledge. Dr. Blum suggested that professors attempting to communicate the importance of correct academic citation to students would do well to understand these cultural changes. Such students are more likely to be moved by the argument that proper citation is part of participating in the academic community, allowing their friends and classmates to have access to the sources they used, than by the traditional linking of plagiarism with theft.