Service with a smile

Campus organizations give back

by Laura Wainman, November 18, 2009

Residents of a college town are always quick to notice when their slightly louder college neighbors step out of line and engage in behavior viewed as unsatisfactory. But what often goes unnoticed are the many acts of service Elon students engage in around the community.

The motto of Elon Volunteers! is to focus on the reason behind the service and not just the service itself, which is exactly what attracted senior Andrea Medinaceli, the Kernodle Center's outreach intern, to the organization in the first place.

"I think Elon tends to come off as a rich school, and service projects are a way of showing the residents of our community that Elon students truly care," Medinaceli said. "It says we aren't just donating money because we have it, but are interested in making a difference and affecting lives."

Hunger and Homeless Awareness Week
With Thanksgiving right around the corner, hunger is on everyone's mind. Yet little attention is paid to those who are hungry during this feasting season. But at Elon, many organizations are dedicating an entire week to promoting awareness of the hungry and homeless.

Last night the annual Will Read for Food program was held in Yeager Recital Hall, and many Elon students, faculty and staff read selections from their favorite writers. All participants and attendees brought a can of nonperishable food to be donated to the Alamance County Food Bank.

Across town, on Nov. 17 the men of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., and the ladies of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. hosted a community service trip to the Allied Church of Burlington to help build beds for the homeless.

The educational week will culminate with a sleep-out on the west lawn Friday. Participants will sleep outside either in sleeping bags or cardboard boxes to show their support for ending the stigmas against the homeless. Guest speakers will be present and the documentary "Have You Seen Clem" will be shown.

Alpha Phi Omega
It is tradition for the newest brothers of the co-ed service fraternity Alpha Phi Omega, to plan a fundraiser, a fellowship and a service project. After raising funds for National Hunger Awareness Week at Coldstone Creamery and hosting a fellowship at CiCi's Pizza, 13 of the 17 pledges held a party at Blakey Hall, an assisted living community in Elon for the residents last Saturday.

"Activities like our Blakey Hall party are a mutual benefit to students and the community," senior APO president Julia Roberts said. "The residents get an opportunity to engage with college-age students, which truly brightens their days, and the students gain a little perspective and are taught humility — a lesson which is especially valuable for Elon students who tend to be from a higher socio-economic class than the typical Burlington resident."

Roberts said one of the most important aspects of being an active member of a community is practicing gratitude and making it an action rather than just an emotion, which is one of the reasons she joined APO.

"When students get involved it helps perpetuate a positive representation of Elon as a university whose students are not only socially aware, but also socially active," Roberts said. "Plus, Elon students are an integral part of fostering and maintaining community partnerships that have taken years to form."

While a portion of the 46 active members were entertaining the elderly residents at Blakey Hall, more of the brothers were engaging with other members of the community, such as lending assistance at PetSmart's holiday adoption weekend and participating in a Habitat for Humanity build. To cap off the weekend, the brothers of APO and sisters of ESA collaborated at the Conservators' Center for half a day on Sunday. It was an average weekend for an organization that has committed more than 900 hours of community service this semester.

Epsilon  Sigma Alpha
Epsilon Sigma Alpha is Elon's co-ed service sorority whose 30 active members dedicate hundreds of hours of community service every semester to its two philanthropies — St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital and Easter Seals.

One of the biggest events for the sorority is the biannual service trip to St. Jude. Several members of ESA gave up their fall breaks this year to visit the hospital headquarters in Memphis, Tenn. The trip allows students to see first-hand the benefits of their service efforts for St. Jude.

"Our organization sends money to St. Jude's all the time and we never get to see how it is really impacting lives," said junior Brandon Landreth, president of the chapter.  "I think this trip really got our members a lot more excited about what we are doing and inspired to continue the work."

Last Friday ESA hosted its semesterly babysitting night for the children of Elon faculty and staff, designed to give the parents a night off, free of charge. Participants are told they may give a donation to St. Jude's if they wish.

"Not only is coloring with a 4-year-old relaxing, but they have wonderful insights on the world," junior service chair Linda Kurtz said. "It's a great break from college life and a nice way to thank Elon faculty and staff for all of the hard work they do by giving them a few hours to do whatever they like."

While Landreth said raising funds for St. Jude's is ESA's primary focus, it also tries to help out as much as possible in Alamance County,too.

"We want all of our members to be engaged members of their community," Landreth said.

In December the sorority will again be giving back to the community by participating in Christmas Cheer. The members will have the chance to give the gift of Christmas to one family in the Alamance community.

"We will be given the ages of the children of our family, told of their most immediate basic needs, as well as a suggestion for a fun toy they may enjoy," Landreth said. "Our members love participating in Christmas Cheer because they know they got to help make a family's Christmas a little brighter."

Landreth said he feels Elon is already doing a good job attracting engaged students, but needs to continue getting the word out about how students can get involved in the community from the moment they come to Elon.

"If you have a good experience with community service as a freshman, you are likely to continue," Landreth said.

Shedding light where appropriate

I apologize for being so negligent about my blog lately. I will try and post most of my stories that have run since the last post, although a few of them are really only relevant to Elon students, thus, I will leave those out. 

The students at Elon are constantly being recognized for their stellar achievements, and while I certainly do not wish to make light of these achievements, I feel that the work of our outstanding professors is too often overlooked. In this article I attempted to shed light on just a few of the amazing projects Elon professors have undertaken.

Going behind the scenes of faculty research

A look into life outside the classroom 

by Laura Wainman, November 4, 2009 

College is akin to the production of a play. The students spend months learning their lines and rehearsing. As the final performance nears, they begin to frantically cram, spending night after night surviving on caffeine alone.

Finally, the big moment arrives, the curtain is raised and the audience prepares to judge the performance. The limitation of the audience, though, is they miss out on 90 percent of the process, as they only view the finished product.

Just as a student's knowledge cannot accurately be garnered from the final exam grade, the work of a professor cannot be assessed from their time spent in the classroom alone.                                                                                                                                                                       
Students are aware of the "teacher" role their professors play, but what often goes unrecognized is the months of research faculty members conduct. 

Jean Schwind

Most college professors spend very little time thinking about high school, but for
Jean Schwind, associate professor of English, it is a subject that is on her mind daily, especially its representation in American film and fiction.

"Art not only reflects our culture, but shapes it as well," Schwind said. "Portrayals of high school in film and fiction also shape how we view secondary education and teaching, which as a teacher is a subject I am very interested in."

Schwind's research subject is a fairly new topic to be included in fiction, since children served mainly as income contributors before the Depression, and high school was something only wealthy families could afford. This led Schwind to choose to use cultural materialism and new historical criticism to examine this phenomenon.

"I am looking at published documents that discuss things such as how a high school should be designed, both in terms of curriculum and architecture," Schwind said.

Currently, Schwind is still debating what the finished product of her research will be. In the past, she has written a series of articles as she goes along the research process and then compiles them into a book to market once she is completely finished.

"Right now I am working on an article about the role of the foreign exchange student in film and fiction regarding high school," Schwind said.

Most of Schwind's research is individual. But she does teach an upper level GST course on American adolescence every other year, and she said students often undertake research projects that help her with her own.
Safia Swimelar
Safia Swimelar, a political science professor, has long been a believer in the power of images and films as teaching tools, as she said they can help illuminate difficult topics more clearly for students. Now she is putting her theories to the test as she studies how feature films are useful in an International Relations course.

"I am not going into this study assuming that the films will be useful, but rather attempting to determine if they are and how so in order to learn how to better use films in college courses," Swimelar said. "I think that film is used often in the classroom, but perhaps not always to its fullest extent. I think all professors, including myself, could benefit from having a deeper understanding of how films can enrich the classroom experience and engage students more in the learning process."

Swimelar's classroom has become her laboratory as she involves her current international relations students in her research. 

Throughout the course, students will watch five feature films, and produce film responses within 24 hours after seeing the film. Though Swimelar said she is not currently reading the responses for anything other than grading purposes, she will review them after the completion of the course and utilize what students gained from each film for her own research.

Essays written during the semester, as well as classroom discussions, will also be valuable to her research at a later stage.

"I am not doing research just for research sake, but for the purpose of helping professors become better teachers and students to become better learners," Swimelar said. "Research forces you to be more aware of how you teach and how students learn, which is what I am always aiming to improve upon."

Elon offers a variety of programs for professors to set up specific times to work on research, such as the course release program, which allows a couple of professors in every department to drop one course for the semester and spend that time researching.

"Elon promotes research aimed at improving teaching, whereas a lot of schools only want pure academic research," Swimelar said. "I think Elon is unique in the fact that it values both and recognizes that opportunities must be given to ensure professors can produce quality research ."

Hal Walker

Surveys are created by the dozen to evaluate how effectively students were prepared for college. But what often goes unanalyzed is how students feel their college curriculum equipped them for the dreaded "real world."

Hal Walker,  a leisure and sport management professor, plans to change that.

Though Walker is currently writing a textbook, he has also undertaken a second research project with the goal of creating a valid and reliable tool to measure how prepared college seniors feel to venture into the workforce.

The idea stemmed from a simple survey conducted among the leisure and sports management majors to assess what their career paths would be.  Walker decided to expand the project to conclude what courses were most valuable to Elon students and how the curriculum could be adjusted to best suit the needs of future leisure and sport management majors.

"My plan is to write appropriate questions to measure the topic and have them reviewed by five or six experts in the field before it is disseminated to students," Walker said. "I will ask the students to answer the survey twice, waiting about a month in between each set of responses to ensure that their answers remain consistent. The long-term plan is to try and catch back up with the same set of students four or five years down the road and ask them to re-evaluate the effectiveness of their college curriculum from the perspective of the workforce."

Walker reiterated Swimelar's sentiments of not merely doing research for research's sake, but wanting his results to help further develop the direction of the leisure and sport management major and the students. He said he appreciated Elon placing an emphasis on combining teaching, research and service in the classroom.

"I have always been interested in applying research because I am a pragmatic person," Walker said. "Maybe I am just an idealist, but I feel that my job as a professor is to always be thinking about what is best for the program and our students. Understanding the strengths and weaknesses of our curriculum and adjusting accordingly will certainly benefit students down the road."

Why should professors pursue faculty research?

There is a widespread belief professors must either choose to teach or do research, but they simply cannot engage in both simultaneously. For Earl Honeycutt, a marketing professor and the 2008-2009 Distinguished Scholar at Elon, this is completely inaccurate as he said he believes research forms the basis of a university and promulgates the growth and development of both faculty and students alike.

"I truly don't think there can be a university without scholars, and you do not have scholars if research is not being done," Honeycutt said. "Professors need to be maintaining their own knowledge in order to profess knowledge to their students, and the best way to do that is to remain active in academic endeavors."

Honeycutt said he also sees research as the best tool for progress, particularly in fields that are constantly changing.

"If I don't stay abreast of the changes in my field, I will get left behind," Honeycutt said. "The greats are never complacent, they are always working toward improvement, and I think that should be the goal of every professor at Elon. There is no better way to accomplish that than through doing research in your field of study."

According to Honeycutt, the benefits of faculty research extend beyond the personal realm of the professor and spill into students' lives, as well.

"Students whose professors have taken on research questions are getting the most current knowledge from professors who are truly excited about their discipline," Honeycutt said. "These individuals are the ones who go the extra mile to learn as much about a topic as they can and are more likely to have gotten input about their teaching methods from other colleagues. This is nothing but beneficial to the students."

Honeycutt finished his fourth book last fall and is currently working on several articles, including one on attempting to reduce turnover in the sales force.
What resources are available to professors interested in faculty research?

Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning

CATL works with faculty to promote a comprehensive understanding of the learning process and different learning styles, improve teaching skill, implement new learning techniques and above all foster growth of the Elon Teacher-Scholar attitude. A team of consultants are available to work one on one with faculty engaged in research regarding teaching as well as assist in obtaining grants and filling out Institutional Review Board applications. Classroom observation and videotaped analysis by members of the consultant team are also methods of evaluating faculty research.

Elon Teaching and Learning Partnership

ETLP combines the resources of high school teachers from Alamance and Orange counties as well as college faculty to improve the teaching at both levels and bridge the divide that can form between secondary and post-secondary educators. The communities of faculty explore common questions surrounding teaching and student learning methods and many professors choose to partner with ETLP to conduct their own research. Elon's ETLP facilitators include Dr. Peter King, Dr. Katie King, Megan Isaac and Ben McFadyen.

The office of Sponsored Programs

The Sponsored Programs office assists faculty in securing external funding for research projects and encourages the involvement of students in grant projects. Faculty can also seek assistance from this office in the development of projects and proposals.