ALL ABOUT MENTORINGA PUBLICATION OF SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE Issue 41 • Summer 2012 ALL ABOUT MENTORING ABOUT ALL Issue 41 • Summer 2012 1 Union Ave. Saratoga Springs, NY 12866-4391 518-587-2100 www.esc.edu Printed by SUNY Empire State College Print Shop ALL ABOUT MENTORING ISSUE 41 SUMMER 2012 Alan Mandell College Professor of Adult Learning and Mentoring Editor Karen LaBarge Faculty Development Projects Coordinator Associate Editor Gael Fischer Designer Debra Park Phyllis M. Cunningham: 1927 - 2012 Copy Editor P H O T O G R A P H Y “Education is not simply about attaining knowledge, Photos courtesy of Stock Studios, education is about the politics of knowledge. and faculty and staff of SUNY Empire State College, Education is not about the preservation of status unless otherwise noted. and elitism; education is about democratization of Cover photo by Suzanne Orrell, “Palindrome” (detail). power relationships.” P R O D U C T I O N Kirk Starczewski Phyllis M. Cunningham, Director of Publications “Let’s Get Real: A Critical Look at the Ron Kosiba Print Shop Supervisor Practice of Adult Education,” Janet Jones Journal of Adult Education, 22(1), Keyboard Specialist College Print Shop fall 1993, pp. 3 - 15 Send comments, articles or news to: All About Mentoring c/o Alan Mandell SUNY Empire State College 325 Hudson St., 5th Floor New York, NY 10013-1005 646-230-1255 [email protected] 1 Table of Contents Editorial – Against Teaching . 2 The Obama Administration as History: First Waves of Interpretation Alan Mandell A Sabbatical Report . 77 Wayne Willis, Genesee Valley Center Rewards and Challenges of Community Engagement Through Service Learning . 4 New Mentor Reflections, Part II . 81 Reed Coughlan, Central New York Center Jennifer A. Blue, Rebecca Bonanno, Sue Epstein, Michele Forte, Thalia MacMillan, Audeliz Matias and Sarah Hertz, Center for New Mentor Reflections, Part I . 10 Distance Learning Shantih E. Clemans, Metropolitan Center; Kjrsten Keane, Center for Distance Learning and Angela Titi Amayah, Transformative Research in China: Genesee Valley Center; Amanda Sisselman, Metropolitan Center Insights Into a Recent Research Journey . 85 Kathleen P. King, University of South Florida The Professor Goes to Yoga Boot Camp . 14 Judith Beth Cohen, Lesley University My Mentoring Creed . 90 Eric Zencey, Center for International Programs The Trip to Grandfather . 18 Robert Congemi, Northeast Center On Narrative Contract Evaluations . 92 Mentors from Across the College Confessions of a Fulbright Scholar . 24 From Thessaloniki, Greece to Brooklyn, New York and A Mission to the Dominican Republic: What is a Batey? . 98 Empire State College: September - November 2011 Julia Penn Shaw, Center for Distance Learning Betty Kaklamanidou, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki Found Things . 107 The New York City Laboratory: Manageability and Viability of Mentor Role (1976) Science Discovery in an Urban Environment . 27 With Freire … In Brooklyn . 109 Kevin L. Woo, Metropolitan Center A Review of: Three Poems . 32 Adult Literacy in a New Era: Reflections from the Open Book Susan Jefts, Center for Distance Learning By Dianne Ramdeholl Robert Carey, Metropolitan Center Changing with Change: Some Words with Dianne Ramdeholl (Alan Mandell) . 111 A Conversation with Fernand Brunschwig . 33 Alan Mandell, Metropolitan Center Faculty-Librarian Collaborations . 113 A Review of: Sophisticates, Stereotypes and the Wilderness of Mirrors: Teaching Information Literacy Online International Teaching and Learning . 37 Edited by Thomas Mackey and Trudi Jacobson David Starr-Glass, Center for International Programs Dana Longley, Office of Educational Technologies Reports from the NEH Summer Institutes . 44 Race … RACE … RACE . 116 MaryNell Morgan and Wayne Ouderkirk, Northeast Center A Review of: Using Feminist Pedagogy in The Handbook of Race and Adult Education Mentoring Independent Studies in History . 48 Edited by Vanessa Sheared, Juanita Johnson-Bailey, Scipio A . J . Christiane Warren, Central New York Center Colin III, Elizabeth Peterson, Stephen D . Brookfield and Associates Nancy Kymn Rutigliano, School for Graduate Studies Don’t Bet Like a Girl, and Other Lessons I Learned on the Way to Being a Contestant on Jeopardy! . 52 Managing and Mentoring in Lean Times . 119 Cindy Conaway, Center for Distance Learning A Review of: The Fall of the Faculty: The Rise of the All-Administrative Approaches and Disclosures II: University and Why It Matters Three Photographers Revisit Themselves . 59 By Benjamin Ginsberg Alan Stankiewicz, Suzanne Orrell and Good Strategy, Bad Strategy: The Difference and Why It Matters Lee Herman, Central New York Center By Richard P . Rumelt Policy Work(s): An Interview with Joyce Elliott, Part I . 63 Christopher A. Whann, Metropolitan Center Ed Warzala, School for Graduate Studies Remembering Moses Musoke . 123 Half of No . 73 Colleagues from Empire State College Karyn Pilgrim, Metropolitan Center Core Values of Empire State College . 128 SUNY EMPIRE STATE COLLEGE • ALL ABOUT MENTORING • ISSUE 41 • SUMMER 2012 2 E D I T O R I A L The second success is what might be In their own particular ways, PLA, the understood as the democratization of independent study, and distance learning the independent study. Of course, many share a basic premise: the radical claim universities offered students the opportunity that “learning” can be disconnected from to enroll for a “299,” many an academic “teaching.” PLA celebrates those myriad department’s place-holder for the special activities in which many people have student to propose a special course with a sometimes spent thousands of hours diving faculty member who, usually without any into an area of particular interest to them extra compensation, would agree to sign or being trained quite apart from any Against off on a project not identified in the official university. PLA is not at all about teaching; catalog. But in the academic world we now rather, institutions are recognizing what Teaching take for granted, the independent study is someone has already learned. (Indeed, defined not as the province of the elite but in some countries, our PLA is RLP, the as rather customary. Why shouldn’t every recognition of prior learning.) “It’s like you got yesterday, today student engage in studies freed from the The independent study, too, rests on a claim and tomorrow, all in the same room. constraints of being anywhere at any time that students can be out there on their There’s no tellin’ what can happen.” and the tyranny of the college catalog? No own – researching, galloping about, and special permission need be granted; anyone – Todd Haynes, I’m Not There, 2007 swallowing up what they need to know, can take it on. often without much teacherly help at all. And then there is a third indication of And the triumph of distance learning (today, ithout doubt, over the last 40 success: the explosion of distance learning most evident in the preoccupation with and years, there have been enormous opportunities, the establishment of mega- exhilaration over the freedom of access to W changes in higher education, institutions entirely devoted to online open educational resources) only rarely including, of course, the stark reality that learning – the webinization of higher ed. attends to learners who need careful and the so-called “nontraditional” learner (still, The so-called “correspondence course” was methodical help, who cannot do it on their today, a slightly pejorative term) is now the a mid-19th century creation, so it is not new. own, and for whom even the most stunning norm, not the oddball exception. But there’s What is new is the ubiquity of the virtual “resource” can be impenetrable without an underside to all of our successes and it’s university and the growing consensus that a teacher. deeply worrisome. asynchronous study is a significant freeing Of course, PLA programs are always asking from artificial institutional constraints. Try First, three indications of our success: about the role of the “teacher” in helping as we might to establish rules of engagement a student shape an essay on that student’s The first is PLA, prior learning assessment. (for example, to reproduce a classroom, experiential learning (not inconsequentially, In championing PLA, we have made a online), in a world of distance education the debate about this often concerns faculty very basic assumption: that a person could and open learning resources, who is where, offering too much support). So, too, many have learned, could have gained skills and when, for how long, and glued to what are regularly asking about the tensions insights, and could be knowledgeable in an materials, is far from transparent. area after having spent not one millisecond between “independent study” and “guided” in one seat on one college campus. Prior Together, these three changes (manifesting independent study (we genuinely worry learning assessment overturned a most themselves in different ways, to different about our lack of contact with our students sacred notion of the university as holder of degrees, in different institutional contexts) and are truly dismayed when we recognize all the knowledge worth having. Whether will continue to transform higher education. how little mentor contact a student has in business, the arts, human services, the This is exciting; it’s important. It’s about the actually received). And some distance technologies – just name the area – with experience of freedom within the academy learning educators (see, for example,