Danielle Carlock Cowan, Scottsdale Community College
Danielle Cowan is a library faculty member at Scottsdale Community College with primary responsibility for collection development. She has over 15 years of experience in librarianship, with an emphasis on information literacy instruction in the health and life sciences. She teaches information studies courses and partners with instruction faculty to embed contextualized information literacy into their curriculum. Recently Danielle founded the Maricopa Native Seed Library which provides free seeds of Sonoran desert plants to the community as well as education on how to establish native plant gardens that support pollinators.
She is currently working on a research study to understand how today’s community college students are using print library collections. Through surveys and analysis of library usage data, she is seeking to better understand the context in which students turn to library print collections. Is usage primarily driven by assignments, or are students using the collection to take deeper dives into their subject area or for personal interest? Do students prefer print or electronic books and what factors might influence such preferences? What percentage of students are considered non-library users, why are they not using the library and how can we encourage the use of library resources? What patterns can be found by analyzing library usage data and how can these patterns better inform our selections of print material?
Roxanna Dewey, Glendale Community College
Roxanna S. Dewey has served as Residential English Faculty at Glendale Community College since 2012. She received a B.A. in English Literature and a B.A. in Spanish from Miami University of Ohio in 1999. Both her M.Ed. with an emphasis in English (2001) and a portion of her doctoral coursework in Higher Educational Leadership were completed at Northern Arizona University. Prior to GCC, she taught high school English, and in her 23rd year as an educator of diverse student populations, she teaches college level composition and research, and literature courses in varying modalities and lengths. Currently, she serves on the Curriculum Committee, as the English Faculty Representative for Guided Pathways Applied Technology Field of Interest, as a volunteer in the Writing Center, and as a Scholarship Reviewer for the Maricopa Community Colleges Foundation. As a member of TYCA and NCTE, she is currently serving on a National Taskforce to Study the Impact of 2020 on Two Year College English. Her passion for teaching and student success drives her career. A determined advocate for her students and their success, Roxanna's interests include the connections between literature and students' lives, formative assessment, executive function, understanding learning differences in adult populations, and the relationship between the affective domain and the writing process in the community college classroom. She integrates a multitude of student-centered, active learning strategies and multimodal instruction to optimize student retention and persistence. Outside of the classroom, Roxanna enjoys spending time with her family, hiking, practicing yoga, mastering cooking, and anything to do with music.
The purpose of her project is to begin to understand how students with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) are best supported in higher education. The goal of Roxanna's fellowship project is to determine perceptions community college ENG faculty hold of students with ASDs and to gain understanding of students with ASDs’ experience as community college students and what accommodations are preferred in composition classes. In addition to researching existing best instructional practices and strategies to successfully support students with an ASD in the community college composition classroom, ENG faculty will be surveyed to understand current faculty understanding and perceptions of ASDs and students with ASDs, and students with ASDs will be surveyed to better understand their experience as community college students and preferred accommodations in composition classes. An implication of this study is to better inform challenges and solutions within the faculty experience and provide a foundation to build from for more effective, proactive professional development as faculty continue to work with increasing neurodiverse student populations.
Christine Raack, South Mountain Community College
Christine Raack is residential faculty at South Mountain Community College (SMCC) where she teaches English and English as a Second Language (ESL). In addition, she currently serves as the SMCC Honors Program Coordinator and Curriculum Development Facilitator. Born and raised in Germany, Christine moved to Phoenix, Arizona in pursuit of higher education at Arizona State University (ASU) where she received a Bachelor of Arts (Anthropology), a Master of Arts (Linguistics), and is currently in the process of finishing a PhD in Linguistics and Applied Linguistics. Her research interests include multilingual learners, intercultural competence, as well as linguistic justice for language minorities in higher education. In her free time, she enjoys travelling, camping, bike rides and hiking.
This study will focus on constructed out-of-class learning-spaces and their impact on English Language Learners (ELLs) within the community college setting. Research supports that constructed learning-spaces such as through service-learning can provide effective environments for students to build stronger connections with their peers and faculty, can significantly enhance learning and student engagement, and therefore potentially increase student success, retention and completion rates. This project will examine possible and measurable outcomes regarding the educational impact on ELL students who are participating in a service-learning experience. Research questions include: How does this experience impact the second language (L2) learning process? How does it support educational principles of language learning and teaching? How does it impact affective factors of L2 acquisition, retention and transition into degree programs?