Annual Faculty Scholarship Week - Monday
1st Annual Salt Lake Community College Faculty Research Conference
Monday, March 31, 2025, 2:30-4:30 PM, TB 225D-A/B
| Time | Learning for Impact: Research, Response, and Reflection | Teaching for Impact: classrooms, colleges, and communities | ||
| 2:30 | Welcome + Remarks | |||
| Room A: Business & Marketing | Room B: English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies | |||
| 2:45 | Carrie Rogers-Whitehead | Teaching with no tech: Experiences teaching at the Utah State Prison | Joanne Baird Giordano | Designing Student-Centered Research Projects to Improve Teaching and Learning |
| Adjunct Faculty | Teaching increasingly involves the use of technology now. We share links online, we meet online, students and instructors use digital communication regularly and technology can be used as a studying and instruction tool. But how do you teach with no technology? No internet, no devices, it's pen, paper and you in front of a white board. This is what it can be like teaching a secure facility. This presentation will share stories, tips and strategies for teaching in this environment--that can be used in a tech-filled classroom too. | Associate Professor | This how-to presentation will introduce attendees to strategies for developing research projects that investigate student learning problems or issues within a community college course or program. Drawing from a series of related research studies on students’ transitions to college reading and writing, the presenter will explain how to design a project that generates useful data for improving teaching and learning in a researcher’s own courses while also leading to opportunities for disseminating the results through published scholarship. Participants will learn how to develop research questions based on student learning gaps or equity issues in a course, select research methods for collecting evidence of student learning, use results for curricular redesign work, incorporate research into program and course assessment activities, and organize results for publication. The presenter will illustrate each step of the process with clear examples from her own co-authored studies on students’ development as community college learners and provide attendees with reflective questions for starting their own student-centered research projects. | |
| Room A: Biology | Room B: Sociology | |||
| 3:00 | Kaden Robert Wall | Let's ChAT localization: choline acetyltransferase is a synaptic protein | Deidre Tyler | Enhance student engagement using the AI annotation tool |
| Adjunct Faculty | Chemical neurotransmission is an essential biological process that mediates the function of complex neural systems. At the synapse, neurotransmitters are synthesized and packaged into membrane-bound organelles called synaptic vesicles. Once filled with neurotransmitters, synaptic vesicles can fuse with the presynaptic plasma membrane and release their contents into the synaptic cleft, where they bind to receptors on the postsynaptic cell. The amount of neurotransmitter in each synaptic vesicle is the same, as demonstrated by the fixed size of postsynaptic miniature currents (also called ‘minis’). However, the mechanisms that ensure that only fully loaded vesicles are released are unknown. There are two models that could account for the reliable loading of vesicles: either loading is more rapid than vesicle fusion, or there is a checkpoint ensuring that only fully loaded vesicles fuse. During my MS thesis, I characterized the subcellular localization of the biosynthetic enzyme choline acetyltransferase (ChAT) and examined its relationship with synaptic vesicles in an effort to elucidate the mechanisms employed by the presynaptic cell to ensure that only fully loaded vesicles fuse. I found that ChAT localizes to cell bodies and synapses within the C. elegans nervous system. At synapses, ChAT colocalizes with the vesicular acetylcholine transporter (VAChT), potentially as a mechanism to confer reliable loading of vesicles. | Adjunct Faculty | This presentation will focus on the following:
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| Room A: Biology | Room B: Business Management | |||
| 3:15 | Corey Riding | Urban Ecology of Birds | Daysi Hernandez | Investigating the Disproportional Impact of Instructional Shift |
| Assistant Professor | Urbanization, the human alteration of landscapes, is increasing. This expanding human footprint often has adverse effects on native species and ecosystems. Urban ecology, the study of how organisms interact in and with these human-modified areas, is increasingly important in helping us understand how well species are adapting (or not) to urbanization. Although avian biodiversity typically exhibits a negative correlation with urbanization, responses vary across bird species and with the structural characteristics of the urban landscape. I will summarize the current results of three on-going projects that allow students to participate in basic science regarding the urban ecology of birds. Briefly, these efforts include monitoring bird-window collisions at the SLCC Redwood campus, surveying for raptors around Utah Lake in winter, and estimating demographics of common breeding birds in Salt Lake County. | Associate Professor | I completed an ESCALA course (HSI specific course). I had to analyze data for 1 course then make a shift for Fall 24 semester to address the areas I was lacking based on 3 assessment/strategies/articles which were Digital Course Trust Assessment, "Journey to the Center of the Cortex" that took us on a deep dive into cognitive science, and "Context of Cultures: High and Low" from Dr. Bruce LaBrack. | |
| Room A: Biology | Room B: Chemistry | |||
| 3:30 | William D. Speer | Phylogenetic and structural variation of the trnL intron of the genus Pteridium | Mary Alvarez | Making Program Learning Assessment Easy (Yes, Really!) |
| Adjunct Faculty, Lab Coordinator | The utility of chloroplast trnL intron sequences was examined for phylogenetic utility in the genus Pteridium and other members of the fern family Dennstaedtiaceae. Sequences utilized were a combination of those generated by the author and those downloaded from GenBank. The trnL intron is a group I type intron. These data clearly separated the species P. aquilinum and P. esculentum, as well as other species within the family. However, these sequences were of limited utility for segregating subspecific taxa. Within P. aquilinum, only the Eurasian subsp. aquilinum was distinguishable from all other subspecies. The secondary structure of the intron was determined for Pteridium. The highly variable P8 region was the primarily distinguishing secondary structural feature. Three P8 structural variants for Pteridium were obtained, which corresponded to the phylogenetic sequence variation. The P8 structure for P. esculentum distinguished it from P. aquilinum. Two nearly identical P8 structural variants were obtained for P. aquilinum, which segregated subsp. aquilinum from all other subspecies. It is concluded that trnL intron is useful at the species level but of limited use at infraspecific levels. | Professor | To help the college meet NWCCA accreditation recommendations regarding implementing an effective system of learning assessment, our department has implemented a whole-program assessment plan that evaluates student performance on every applicable program learning outcome for every student enrolled in every major-level course. Each course includes designated assignments, quizzes, or evaluations mapped to specific program learning outcomes, tagged accordingly in the assignment name. These assessments are assigned total point values along with “meets expectations” and “exceeds expectations” benchmarks. At the end of the semester, student performance data is extracted from Canvas and average scores for each course and outcome are reported. The resulting summary table provides a clear overview of strengths and areas for improvement, allowing for data-driven enhancements to our curriculum. | |
| Room A: Criminal Justice | Room B: English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies | |||
| 3:45 | Anthony Nocella | Book Talk: Resisting Neoliberal Schooling: Dismantling the Rubricization and Corporatization of Higher Education | Sim Kaur | Using Data Analytics to Identify At-Risk Students and Enhance Advising in CSIS Programs |
| Associate Professor | This presentation is a book talk on "Resisting Neoliberal Schooling: Dismantling the Rubricization and Corporatization of Higher Education." "Resisting Neoliberal Schooling: Dismantling the Rubricization and Corporatization of Higher Education," edited by award-winning author and professor Anthony J. Nocella II, is the first book that critiques the use of rubrics in assessment and evaluation within education and the effects of the rubric as a tool for social and intellectual control. This powerful theoretical intervention goes beyond the most dangerous academic repressive theory, standardization, and critically interrogates the next step in academic control, rubricization. Nocella, a public intellectual on the school-to-prison pipeline and academic repression, gathers together brilliant scholars from around the world to write on the mass normalization, assimilation, homogenization, and commodification of knowledge learning, creation, and analysis. The most important theme of this book is the challenging, resisting, and explaining of neoliberalism in education. This thought-provoking and engaging anthology has writings by Clifton Sanders, Roderic Land, Ashley Cox, Lauralea Edwards, Anthony J. Nocella II, David Robles, Emily Thompson, Elisa Stone, Lea Lani Kinikini, Elizabeth Vasileva, Will Boisseau, Adalberto Aguirre, Jr., Rubén Martinez, Richard Van Heertum, Victor M. Mendoza, Laura Schleifer, Riley Clare Valentine, Steve Gennaro, Doug Kellner, Frank A. Fear, Caroline K. Kaltefleiter, David Bokovoy, Anthony J. Nocella, and Paul R. Carr. | Adjunct Faculty, Academic Advisor | This study explores how integrating data analytics and student tracking enhance academic advising in the Computer Science and Information Systems (CSIS) pathway student caseload. It highlights the potential of using predictive analytics and real-time tracking to identify at-risk students, predict academic outcomes, and provide personalized support. The study also addresses the ethical considerations and challenges associated with using data for advising and offers recommendations for leveraging data analytics to improve student success and retention in CSIS programs. | |
| Room A | Room B: English, Linguistics, and Writing Studies | |||
| 4:00 |
Q&A |
Daniel D. Baird | Strengthening the Communities We Serve Through the Community Writing Center | |
| Associate Professor, Associate Director of the Community Writing Center | Daniel D. Baird will present on the SLCC’s Community Writing Center (CWC) discussing community collaboration and partnerships, and highlighting the youth programming. Since its founding in 2001 the Community Writing Center has won numerous awards, served thousands of community members and partnered with many community organizations. The Community Writing Center was founded with a simple philosophy: everyone can write. As a community writing center we seek to build our community by supporting, motivating, and educating people of all abilities and educational backgrounds who want to use writing for practical needs, civic engagement, and personal expression. | |||
| 4:15 |
Reception |
Q&A |
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| 4:30 |
Reception |
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