November 2010 Articles
Story ideas? Opinions? Questions, Compliments, or Complaints? Send us an email at facultyadvocate@gmail.com.
Dedicated and Determined! by Nancy Stanko
Get Out of My Classroom—and Learn Something! by Mark Pearson
Endowing the Future with Dick Voss by Karin Evans
Editor's Notes by Karin Evans
Dedicated and Determined! by Nancy Stanko
Dedicated and determined are two words often used to describe our excellent faculty
members. We seek opportunities to go above and beyond. We are committed. We realize we won't always be
perfect, but we are working hard every day to make excellent educational experiences and provide students
with tools necessary to be successful. I continue to give thanks for all faculty at College of DuPage.
Congratulations to our newest leaders of the College of DuPage Faculty Association (CODFA). Each position is a two-year term that begins January 1, 2011 and continues through December 31, 2012. The new faculty leaders include:
- President Ken Gray
- Treasurer Tom Robertson
- Business & Technology Senator DJ Liu
- Counseling Senator Terry Jackson
- Heath, Social, Behavioral Senator Deborah Klein
- Liberal Arts (English) Senator Deborah Adelman
- Natural and Applied Sciences Senator Mary Newberg
- PAC Executive Director Jackie McGrath
- IEA-NEA Regional Council Representative Kent Huffman
CODFA Elections will be held on December 1 for three full-time faculty member positions of IEA RA Delegates. The IEA Representative Assembly will be held in Rosemont, IL March 10-12, 2011. This will be an exciting year to attend since you will be able to vote for IEA's new president, vice president, secretary-treasurer, and NEA Directors. Tom Tipton will also attend as Vice President of Region 32, and Nancy Stanko will attend as an Elections Committee member. Please consider running as a candidate for one of the three positions. As a past participant for many years, I can say that it is awesome to see IEA in action!
Online registration is now open for the NEA Higher Education Conference to be held March 25-27, 2011 in Boston, MA. Visit the Higher Ed section of the NEA Web site for more information.
Get Out of My Classroom—and Learn Something! by Mark Pearson
This month, I will be speaking at the Greenbuild Conference in Chicago—the world's largest green
building conference and expo—about the Architecture 2840 Sustainable Design Initiatives course that
Jane Ostergaard and I co-teach here at COD. This course won an Excellence in Green Building Education honor
award in 2009 from the U.S. Green Building Council, and I have been asked to present this course as a model.
I am very proud that of the three courses selected, ours is the only community college course, the others
being from large universities. As I begin to organize for the presentation, I would like to share some
thoughts with you about project-based learning as a model for student learning and engagement.
Project-Based Learning
In our Sustainable Design Initiatives course, we have partnered with DuPage Habitat for Humanity to help them make the homes they build more environmentally sustainable, while still cost-effective. The course began when one of our students approached the DuPage Habitat for Humanity looking for volunteer opportunities. Instead, they asked us, "can you help us make our houses more sustainable?", and thus our course was born. We have now offered this course twice, in the spring of 2009 and the spring of 2010.
Our primary goal for this course was to provide a meaningful way to teach students about green building practices. What better way than to do this than through working on a real project for a real client? In this course, our students assumed the role of the green building professional, researching sustainable building strategies that could apply to the Habitat Homes. The challenge was to identify ways that Habitat could improve their environmental footprint on a limited budget, in homes built mostly with volunteer labor and donated products. Our students attended client meetings, worked with professional architects, engineers, green building experts, homebuilders, and energy experts from local utility companies including COM-ED. The students did research and presented their work directly to the DuPage Habitat for Humanity. The fact that these presentations were to be graded seemed to be secondary to the idea that the student's research could lead to real environmental improvements in the next generation of Habitat Homes.
The content of this course was technical, often slightly beyond the comfort level for first and second year Architecture and Construction Management students. For many of our students, this was their very first exposure to green building concepts. I suspect that if this course had been taught in a traditional classroom, the students would have had trouble staying motivated. But working on a real project for a client really seemed to help them. In spite of the fact that this was a one-credit elective, the students worked extremely hard, cherishing the idea that their work could create meaningful change and impact a real project.
Educating Generation Green
The Greenbuild conference theme for this year is "generation green," referring not to an age group or particular demographic, rather a state of mind. We see our students playing a vital role in redefining our future as the next generation of green building professionals. If we want our students to thrive in that arena, we need to train them to do so. This class allowed us to give our students the types of experiences that they will need for future success, whether it be as an architect, construction manager, or simply a steward of our environment. By having our students address the question of how to be more sustainable, we allow them to struggle with a critical issue of our time, as well as give them a very real architectural experience.
Community Catalyst
Beyond the learning objectives for a course, project based learning can be used to impact the communities that we serve, and become a catalyst for change. Our class generated a lot of positive publicity. Not only is this good for the college, but it also serves as a means to educate the public. As people see us demonstrate that green building strategies can be incorporated into low-budget Habitat homes, it raises public awareness. The course also allows us to give back to our community. The DuPage Habitat, with their staff of three, could not have done much of this work without the hours of research provided by our students. In the traditional sense of service learning, our students were able to learn through the act of providing a necessary service to a community group. Furthermore, real people will live in these homes, and our students have helped to provide a healthier environment for the families that will live in a Habitat home.
Creating Positive Change
The DuPage Habitat for Humanity is currently building a community of eleven homes in West Chicago. The first six are now either completed or nearly complete. These homes incorporated many of the suggestions made by our students, including water savings, improved insulation, alternative framing methods, energy-star appliances, low VOC paints and much more. The homes have also been designed to be energy-star certified based on the recommendations from our students. One of the completed homes recently received a HERS score of 67, which means that this home is 33% more energy efficient that a typical house. This is real and measurable. These homes will not only be a better environment for the homeowner to live in, they will also save the homeowner in utility costs.
We have helped to encourage DuPage Habitat so much that recently I learned that they have committed to build the remaining five homes LEED certified, yet another step forward in the process of improving the environmental impact of a Habitat home.
You can also view a video of students reflecting on their experiences in the course!
Endowing the Future with Dick Voss by Karin Evans
Dick Voss founded the Endowment for Future Generations the same year his daughter was born (his wife
says this is not a coincidence). He was inspired by a story he heard on National Public Radio
about how Benjamin Franklin had set up a fund to be invested for the public good with $5000. Part of the
fund would be spent after 100 years, and the rest another 100 years later. By the time Dick heard the
story, the second hundred years had just passed, and Franklin's fund was worth millions of dollars.
With this story in mind, Dick set up a nonprofit organization, the Endowment for Future Generations, to develop and invest such a fund. He did not have a chunk of cash of his own to endow it, so he set out to gather small gifts from many donors. He set up a board of directors to manage its investments, drawing on the expertise of one of his former students for financial and organizational advice! The endowment invests in socially and ecologically responsible mutual funds. The fund is structured so that each "generation" will have an opportunity to use some of the money. Today, the fund is worth about $25,000.
One of the most significant challenges Dick faced was to define enduring goals—needs that would be compelling for every generation of directors who would have to decide how to spend the endowment's funds. He settled on three: protect the environment, reduce community violence, and promote physical and mental health.
Dick also helped to charter a COD student organization called Endowment for Future Generations, which does fundraising for the endowment. Students meet and decide on service projects and fundraisers with the help of Dick and his fellow faculty advisor, Naheed Hasan. Half the money the club members raise goes to the endowment, and the other half goes to help meet present-day needs in the community. Visit the club on Facebook!
Editor's Notes by Karin Evans
As we are wrapping up this issue, the midterm elections are just a few days away. As if you needed any
more political news or information… just let me point you to the IEA web site. This site is
ever-changing, constantly updated, and packed with information.
Here is a PDF file (easy to open and print!) of recommended candidates from I-PACE, the committee of IEA that interviews candidates and reviews their qualifications.
Please vote.
December is an Accolades month in the Faculty Advocate schedule. Accolades editors Mary Konkel and Dilyss Gallyot are out scouring the hallways and beating the bushes for news items about our CODFA members. Please drop them a note about your conference presentation, successful new course or program proposal, personal best marathon running time, or any other accomplishment that we can celebrate together! Thanks!!
As always, I am eager to hear your stories and publish them in longer pieces in the Faculty Advocate. Sometimes I do interviews, as with Dick Voss in this issue—no writing required! Just a friendly conversation. But I think the writers who contribute articles find it fairly painless—and since I'm a developmental writing teacher, I may be in fact the world's most patient and forgiving editor. :-)
Email me at my COD address or at our Faculty Advocate address. I'm looking forward to hearing from you.
