The Graffito - News - November 2008
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Conference Attendance

Iowa World Language Association Conference

Des Moines, IA
October 3 - 4, 2008

Anastasia Vasilyeva, MA French, presented on “La Révolution Française de 1789: Raisons, Évènements, Conséquences.”

Salif Ouedrago, MA French, Gerilynn Toresdahl, MA TESOL/French, and Naomi Terbetski, MA TESOL/French, also attended the conference.

Anne Lair, Assistant Professor of French, won the Educator of the Year Award.

IWLA Attendees
UNI graduate students (from left to right) Naomi Terbetski, Anastasia Vasilyeva, Salif Ouedrago, Gerilynn Toresdahl at IWLA

Mid-America Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages Conference

Storm Lake, IA
October 17 - 18, 2008

Dr. Joyce Milambiling, English, and four graduate students in the TESOL MA Program, Alejandro Galvis, Hee Kyoung Kort, Gerilynn Toresdahl, and Qiong Xia, presented a paper entitled "Becoming a Language Teacher: Knowledge, Beliefs, and Attitudes." The paper was a result of the four students' research in a Spring 2008 graduate seminar.

TESOL MA students Katherine Brown, Carrie Hartinger, and Naomi Terbetski also attended the conference.

Presenters (left to right) Hee Kyoung Kort, Alejandro Galvis, Gerilynn Toresdahl, Dr. Joyce Milambiling, Qiong Xia

Iowa Student Personnel Association Conference

Des Moines, IA
October 14 - 15, 2008

Four graduate students from the Postsecondary Education: Student Affairs program participated in the Case Study Competition. Jennifer Suchan and Ashley Nunn, along with Carmen Meeks and Mindy Chrisman, competed in this professional development opportunity.

UNI's Postsecondary Education: Student Affairs program was represented at the annual conference by thirty current graduate students and alumni of the program, who are current professionals in the field.

UNI's Postsecondary Education: Student Affairs students and alumni at ISPA

MBA Capstone Experience

The Capstone Experience is a comprehensive, end-of-program project that functions as a thesis for MBA candidates. Students are required to apply their conceptual knowledge to a problem posed by a client, typically a Cedar Valley business or non-profit organization. Students must complete all MBA coursework before enrolling in Capstone.

During the spring semester, students develop an understanding of their client's industry and business model and decide on an appropriate way to address the client's concerns. This does create some real challenges in that students must work effectively within a research team and perform within a very tight time frame. Once spring courses are completed, the consulting activities become a fulltime occupation, and students who are earning the MBA degree on a part time basis often take vacation from their jobs to complete the project. No matter how carefully a student has studied the MBA program's course material, the reality of a live client will pose some new issues. This year, one team was faced with a project that required a comprehensive understanding of employer health care benefits and the esoteric details of group medical insurance. That was a challenge, even for a team that included a health care professional. At the end of June, the teams deliver final recommendations to their clients, making a presentation of the results to the faculty at the annual Capstone Conference.

The MBA program is one of UNI’s larger graduate programs, with 83 students currently enrolled. Around twenty students graduate from the UNI campus each year. Over the past six years, MBA Capstone teams have provided service to 39 different businesses, 8 non-profit organizations, and 12 public agencies.

MBA Capstone Presentation
Sean Hart and Yue Lin present their findings at the 2008 Capstone Conference

Graduate Students' Teaching and Publication

Annette Duncan and Amy Schmidt are enrolled in the Ed. D. in Curriculum and Instruction program. They are both Second Grade teachers at the Dr. Walter Cunningham School for Excellence in Waterloo and have been with the school since it opened in 2002. They recently co-authored an article with two UNI faculty members published in the September/October 2008 Social Studies and the Young Learner v.21, no.1, a quarterly journal for K-6 teachers. The article is “Citizenship Education: Engaging Children in Building Community” by Lynn E. Nielsen, Judith M. Finkelstein, Amy Schmidt, and Annette Duncan. It describes how Schmidt and Duncan implemented the Democratic Classroom Interaction Model in their classrooms during an ecology unit. The model came from Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Finkelstein’s work as teachers at UNI’s Malcolm Price Laboratory School in 1988, published in the first issue of Social Studies and the Young Learner. Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Finkelstein followed up that work twenty years later with Schmidt and Duncan in the work that became this article.

Schmidt and Duncan were approached about the opportunity to co-author the article after a presentation on what approaches have been successful at their diverse school. Duncan says, Dr. Nielsen and Dr. Finkelstein “felt that our teaching strategies really fit their Democratic Model.” “We have truly created an environment that encourages risk-taking and student centered learning,” Schmidt says, “I have become more of a facilitator while my students have played a more active role in their learning.” The model engages students in community building and gives them ownership in their learning through decision-making. This filters into students’ social endeavors as well because of the bonds formed through interaction and participation in learning and the completion of tasks.

Duncan has a BA in Elementary Education from UNI and a MA in Education from Viterbo University. She has been teaching since 1989. She is pursuing her Ed. D. in the hopes that her doctoral dissertation will contribute to research on culturally relevant instructional strategies to close the achievement gap that exists for African American males. Schmidt has BAs in Early Childhood and Elementary Education with a Reading Endorsement from UNI and a MA in Education from Viterbo. She has been teaching for ten years. She taught courses as an adjunct instructor at Wartburg College a few years ago and was encouraged to seek out her Ed. D. Both Duncan and Schmidt spend their free-time with their husbands and children. Duncan has two daughters, one a freshman at UNI, the other a Junior in high school. Schmidt has two sons, ages six and one. Although balancing teaching, studying, and publishing can be a challenge, as Duncan says, “I see the concrete results of my UNI studies in my students' achievements so I know it's been time well spent.”

Grad Students Help the Northeast Iowa Food Bank

On Saturday, November 15, seventeen graduate students gave their Saturday afternoon to help out at the Northeast Iowa Food Bank in Waterloo. This was a service event coordinated by the Graduate Student Social Network (GSSN) and open to all UNI graduate students. Minority Graduate Student Association (MGSA) members attended together as well as many students from the Postsecondary Education: Student Affairs program. The History, Educational Leadership, and TESOL programs were also represented. Under the direction of Northeast Iowa Food Bank employee Gary Krueger, graduate students sorted through new donations of food, checking for expiration dates and that the packaging was intact. The food was then stocked onto the appropriate shelves or into boxes when a shelf was full. It “was not only an opportunity for us to give back to the community, but we had fun and lots of laughs while doing it!” said Tiesha Walker, MGSA President. Ashley Nunn, MGSA member, adds that “we were able to meet some great people.”

The service event was planned with Patrick Bird, Northeast Iowa Food Bank Volunteer Coordinator. Visit the Northeast Iowa Food Bank website for information.

Contact Ken Nesbett, GSSN coordinator, at knesbett@uni.edu with suggestions or to receive notice of future service events.