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News  |  COVID Recovery  |  Advising  |  Grants and Fellowships  |  Conferences and Workshops 

Monday, March 13, 2023

News

Reminders for End of Term/Beginning of Spring Term

Academic Technologists will be available for consultations throughout the grading period and Spring Break. Drop-in Hours resume March 26 (Sunday), 2-4pm, the first week of classes noon-4pm, and after that M-F 2-4pm through the term.

Tools to remember: In our Moodle Microskills course, you will find reminders and tips on how to use the variety of Moodle tools. Other tools to consider for your course are Ally (for increased accessibility to course content), Gradescope (for feedback/grading of non-word based assignments), Hypothes.is (for social annotation), Zoom, Panopto (for lecturecapture), and other instructional technologies.

Please also take advantage of scheduling a tech tour with us to practice with classroom technology as needed. Our Classroom Technology Support site provides a lot of information about the rooms you are teaching in.

If you are leaving Carleton at the end of Winter term, please take a moment to back up your Moodle courses. Check out these instructions for how to back up your Moodle course. You may also want to consider reviewing what you have stored in your Google Drive and determine if any of these materials need to be moved to a departmental Shared Drive so that your colleagues do not lose access.

Preparations for Ramadan and Eid

The holy month of Ramadan commemorates the first revelation of the Qur’an to the Prophet Muhammad and is observed by Muslims worldwide as a month of fasting and spiritual renewal. From dawn to sunset, Muslims refrain from eating and drinking. Cycling on the lunar calendar, Ramadan moves back in the solar calendar ten days every year, this year likely beginning at sundown on March 22 and ending at sundown on April 21.

We want to call your attention to this time as individuals who are fasting may appear more tired, and they may also reach out about adjustments regarding papers, times for exams or work shifts. If Muslim students haven’t already, please contact our Muslim Student Association or Chaplain Carolyn Fure-Slocum for information regarding meal plans, prayers and gatherings during Ramadan.

We also want to call attention to the day(s) of celebration following Ramadan, Eid al-Fitr, which will likely fall on Saturday, April 22. Students, faculty and staff may request to miss class, events or work to attend prayers and other celebrations. 

Students should talk with their professors and supervisors early in the term regarding any adjustments they may be seeking. 

Employees may request adjustments, including changes to work schedules or time off, following their departmental or office guidelines.

Grassroots Leadership Applications & Skills (GLASS) Events

All faculty are invited to join a series of informal facilitated discussions around topics related to leadership.  Each facilitator chooses either written or video materials for participants to engage with and hosts a discussion on a topic related to those materials. The goal of these discussions is to consider how we might apply what we learn to improve the efficacy of our work at Carleton and beyond. Folks are welcome to attend one or all of these events (no RSVP required to attend):

  • Conflict Management, Wednesday April 5th 4:30-6pm, LTC Lounge, Facilitated by Mija Van Der Wege
  • Negotiation for Change, Tuesday April 25th 4:30-6pm, Alumni Guest House (AGH) Lounge, Facilitated by Stephen Mohring
  • Creating Space for Others to Contribute, May 4th noon-1pm, Olin 104, Facilitated by Marty Baylor

The topics are based on the top topic requests from faculty and staff who have participated in past leadership events. More information on GLASS Events (i.e., reading materials, whether food is provided, etc.) can be found here. If you would like to receive direct emails about these types of events, you have ideas for topics, you are interested in facilitating an event, and/or have questions about the above events, please contact Marty Baylor (mbaylor@carleton.edu). These professional development activities are sponsored by the Provost’s Office.

2023 Spring Waitlist Permissions

Now that registration priority times have cycled through, the Registrar’s Office asks that you check your course and waitlist rosters. Please keep in mind that waitlists do not automatically clear in the system and that your action is required for waitlisted students to be able to register in your courses. Students will not be able to register for a course that has open seats if a waitlist has already formed.

If you have space in any of your non-sophomore priority classes, or in the first year/sophomore waitlists of your sophomore priority classes, and wish to admit students from the waitlist, please email waitlist@carleton.edu with the names of the students and the course and section numbers. Once our office grants permission, the students will receive a notification that they’ve been given permission to register online.

Students will have the remainder of the day we grant the permission plus 24 hours to act on their waitlist permissions. If a student doesn’t act before their permission expires and you still want them to be offered a seat, please re-email waitlist@carleton.edu and we can re-grant the permission.

We will not be granting permission for junior/senior waitlist sections of sophomore priority classes until the start of the drop/add period on Monday, March 27. You should only offer seniors and juniors the opportunity to register for sophomore priority courses after the sophomores and first-year students on the course waitlist have been given the opportunity to register.

We will grant waitlist permissions through noon on Friday, March 31st.

Advising

Louis Newman Panel Discussion

Louis Newman, John M. and Elizabeth W. Musser Professor of Religious Studies, Emeritus, will return to Carleton for a panel discussion of his new book, Thinking Critically in College, on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 4:30pm in Leighton 304.  The panel is open to everyone.  

As a follow-up to Newman’s visit, we will hold an advising focused discussion. If you would like to read and discuss the book, the LTC is hosting follow up discussions with a focus on advising and the A&I seminars.  Please register to join the book group

Advising Quick Links

Grants and Fellowships

Workshops

Proposals for Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges (AALAC) Workshops

AALAC workshops draw together faculty from 24 of our peer institutions to explore curricular or other common interests. These workshops can be very valuable opportunities to share ideas with colleagues and to advance liberal arts education across all our campuses. Please note that proposals for workshops to be held in 2024 need to be sent to Provost Mattson by May 6. We will then send them on to AALAC for their consideration. Please see below for more information.

Membership of AALAC

Amherst College, Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Carleton College, Colorado College, Davidson College, Denison University, Furman University, Grinnell College, Haverford College, Hobart And William Smith Colleges, Macalester College, Middlebury College, Mount Holyoke College, Oberlin College, Pomona College, Reed College, Rhodes College, Scripps College, Smith College, Swarthmore College, Vassar College, Wesleyan University, Wellesley College, and Williams College.

AALAC Mission Statement

The liberal arts colleges that comprise AALAC vary in size, region and resources but share common educational goals and institutional challenges. AALAC strives to advance liberal arts education through collective efforts to support faculty research and teaching so as to enhance the overall experience of students and to develop faculty leadership. By working together, AALAC members seek to develop a broader view of their institutions in the landscape of higher education and thereby to address more effectively the pressing challenges facing American liberal arts colleges. Through assessment of AALAC activities and dissemination of our findings, the organization seeks to share best practices with other liberal arts colleges and to make the case to the larger public for the value of liberal education in the twenty-first century.

Workshop Proposals to be Funded in the Spring Semester, Summer or Fall Semester of 2024

AALAC provides funds to support workshops that enable faculty members from AALAC institutions to gather and work together on a subject of mutual interest. Designed and organized by the faculty, the workshops may focus on topics relating to research, curricula, or pedagogy and, where relevant, may be either disciplinary or interdisciplinary. The workshops may take place during the academic year or summer and may be held on member institution campuses or may extend a stay at professional meetings by a day or two. For the upcoming round, it is anticipated that about ten workshops will be funded. These workshops may take place in the spring, summer, or fall semester of 2024.

Workshop Selection Criteria

Priority will be given to proposals that are planned jointly by several faculty members from three or more (ideally, at least five) of the AALAC institutions. It is hoped that the workshops will foster collaboration among these institutions and might lead to sustained interactions in scholarship or pedagogy among faculty. When selecting workshop proposals for funding, the Workshop Selection Committee will prioritize workshops that achieve the following:

  • Breadth of impact within a discipline or across disciplines and familiarity with the current state of the field
  • Integration of pedagogy and scholarship
  • Well-developed plans for follow-up activities and significant outcomes.

Assessment of the workshop is required within one year of completion.

Workshop Proposal Guidelines

Workshop proposals should contain the following items:

  • A description (not to exceed five hundred words) of the proposed workshop, its rationale and intended audience, its schedule and format, and its goals and intended impact. Proposals should also include a discussion of any anticipated follow-up activities that workshop groups might envision. 2. A list of the faculty members who will be the workshop leaders and of other faculty members who will assist in the detailed planning of the workshop
  • The name, email address, and institutional affiliation of one designated workshop liaison. This individual must be one of the workshop organizers at the institution that would host the workshop. He or she will be responsible for submitting the proposal to the dean/provost at the proposed host institution and for conveying information to the other members of the workshop group. The dean/provost at the proposed host institution will decide whether the proposal should be forwarded to the Workshop Selection Committee.
  • Condensed CVs (not to exceed two pages) of the above individuals.
  • A preliminary budget, which may support the following:
    • A modest stipend to be shared among the primary workshop organizer(s) ($500 for smaller workshops, up to $1,000 for larger ones)
    • Travel and accommodation expenses for faculty participants from the AALAC
    • Travel and accommodation expenses and a modest stipend for speakers from outside the AALAC. Please note that $1,000 is the maximum honorarium fee for each speaker.
    • Modest staff support for organizing the logistics (hotel space, etc.) for the workshop
    • Administrative expenses

The faculty member preparing the proposal should submit it to their dean/provost by May 5, 2023. Deans/provosts will forward all approved proposals to Janet Tobin at Amherst College, who will forward the materials to the Workshop Selection Committee, which will make the final decisions about proposals to be funded. Workshop awards will be announced by mid-July.

Encouraging Participation in Funded Workshops

Workshop organizers should endeavor to accommodate faculty from as many AALAC institutions as possible. The AALAC deans/provosts may provide supplemental support through their own institutional funds to enable additional colleagues to participate in a given workshop, if space permits. Workshops may vary in cost and number of participants. Funding levels will depend on the nature and scope of the workshop.

The maximum funding for an individual workshop is $20,000.

Upcoming Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges (AALAC) Workshops

We are pleased to invite faculty to attend one of the many exciting workshops for the upcoming academic year that have been funded by the Alliance to Advance Liberal Arts Colleges.  One of the workshops that has been funded, titled “Pedagogies of Relation:  Using Writing to Promote Learning and Belonging in a Post Pandemic World“, is co-organized by Director of Writing Across the Curriculum George Cusack.  In most cases, the AALAC and Carleton can provide funding to cover the costs of participating in the workshops.

Upcoming Workshops

  • Bioinformatics and Computational Biology within the Liberal Arts (Reed College)
  • Building a Renewable Future within the Liberal Arts (Wellesley College)
  • Carceral States:  Prison Writing & Liberal Arts Education (Bryn Mawr College)
  • Economic History of States and Societies (Middlebury College)
  • Establishing a Network for Asian American Psychology Faculty at Liberal Arts Colleges (Haverford College)
  • For an Amazigh-Inclusive Curriculum on North Africa (Williams College)
  • Pedagogies of Relation:  Using Writing to Promote Learning and Belonging in a Post Pandemic World (Middlebury College)
  • Rethinking Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies in Light of Russia’s War in Ukraine (Amherst College)
  • The Future of Research and Teaching on Contemporary China at Liberal Arts Colleges (Swarthmore College)

PDFs of the workshop proposals are linked from the Funded Workshops page;  the proposals include descriptions of the workshops’ aims, lists of organizers, and the organizers’ contact information.  The AALAC website does not include date or registration information, so if you are interested in a particular workshop then you should contact the organizers directly to find out more.  You will need to act fast, though:  some workshops will have deadlines that are coming up soon.  For example, the official deadline for George’s workshop is Wednesday, March 15, though late applications will be accepted and evaluated on a rolling basis;  the application form is available here.  Funding is available through each workshop for attendees’ travel expenses, and the Provost’s Office will be happy to provide additional funds, if needed.  Please contact Eric Egge to make arrangements.

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