Welcome
Welcome to my SUNY Cortland faculty homepage/portfolio. Please use this page to find out more about my research, service, teaching, and professional development. Please read my portfolio reflective statement below.
Find my CV here: CV
About Me:
I am a graduate of Georgia Southern University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. My teaching areas/research interests include race, education, and the educative and political uses of media. My thought is based in Marxist critical theory, critical race theory, semiotics, and American pragmatism. A recent turn in my research involves the implications and uses of generative AI in education.
Reflective Portfolio Statement
Teaching
When I began here at Cortland in the Fall of 2021, I had a reduced course load of two sections of the same course, EDU 375: Teaching Elementary Social Studies, each semester for two years. This allowed me to focus on improving my teaching and course design, which I do think that I needed to work on. Each semester I have tried to make my course more relevant and enjoyable for my students, removing those aspects which do not work well and adding new experiences which I students in previous semesters have recommended. My main goal for EDU 375 has been to prepare pre-service teachers to have the professional skills to succeed in the field and also to ensure that the students are very familiar with important aspects of education relating to race, gender, socio-economic status, and other factors. To help me achieve my goal I make heavy use of technology. I use online quizzes to give frequent and regular assessments to students to ensure that both they and I can gauge their understanding of the concepts. At this stage I believe that I am comfortable with the course material and the students, but I must admit that my first semester at SUNY Cortland was very tough. One of my classes was very difficult and I think that the experience was a net negative for all involved. In order to ensure that I never have that experience again I consulted with my colleagues for new ideas, and I observed their classes. I believe that I have made the necessary changes to my courses and my CTE responses reflect that. I am looking forward to teaching more students here at Cortland and possibly teaching different courses.
In my last review, the department Personnel Committee recommended that I “include additional information about teaching innovations and student written feedback and how that feedback is considered for course improvement. I believe that I have done this, by including samples of student work. One sample is of a student presentation that demonstrates how I try to include considerations of social justice, diversity, equity, and inclusion into the course. Another example is of an in-class lesson planning activity that demonstrates my attempt to focus more on the pedagogical methods aspects of the social studies discipline.
In light of feedback from CTE’s submitted since my last review, I believe that I must continue to make changes to the delivery of the EDU 375 course. While most students seem to be happy with me as a person and teacher, there are some who expressed dissatisfaction at the actual concrete social studies skills being taught in the course. I believe that this is a valid criticism and this is something that I hope to address this semester. I have noticed that the newer generation of students are more distracted by electronic devices and constant communication. I have also noticed that the heavy workload of the school of education’s internship block seriously affects student morale, particularly in the second half of the semester. I believe that reducing the amount of time spent lecturing, and replacing that time with targeted, small-scale, in-class research assignments and activities might counteract the negative trend in student attention/energy levels in the latter half of the course, while still delivering the discipline specific content knowledge that the students want. The aforementioned lesson planning activity is an attempt at this. I think I need more professional development in this regard, and I plan to contact my colleagues here and at other institutions to get their opinions on ways to improve. I will also make use of the networks of the professional organizations I am a part of. I have already contacted some members and it seems that they may have some ideas as well.
Going forward, I am happy to note that this semester I am teaching a graduate level course, EDU 514, which is the graduate version of our undergraduate EDU 375 course. Prior to the start of my position at Cortland, I worked for several years as an e-learning specialist on a large team that designed, built, and ran online courses for faculty at the University of Illinois. I look forward to the opportunity to revisit online education, and while I think it will be challenging, I think that the enhanced focus of graduate students will make this a good experience.
Finally, a recent development is an opportunity to teach PHI 429: Philosophy of Education for the philosophy department here at Cortland. The course will be offered online during the Summer semester, and so will not affect my commitments to my home department. My background is in philosophy and philosophy of education, so I believe that I have something to contribute to this course. Documentation of correspondence with Dr. Mecke Nagel of the Philosophy Department, who has previously taught this course, is available in my portfolio. In addition to this, I have offered to teach EDU 315: Critical Media Literacy should the need arise in the future. This past year due to unforeseen personnel changes various faculty have had to takeover sections of this course, and while I did not have the opportunity to teach the course this semester, I have talked to my department head about teaching it in the future, should the need arise.
Research
In my last review, the Personnel Committee stated that they would like to “see evidence of a minimum of 5-6 scholarly endeavors and evidence of scholarly progression to include a minimum of 2-3 scholarly contributions”. I believe that the documentation included in my portfolio demonstrates that I have satisfied that recommendation. My scholarly endeavors include:
- Evidence of intent to seek external funding (Virtual Influencers NSF Grant Budget)
- Evidence of submissions and acceptance of scholarly work to journals and conferences
- Participation in scholarly dialogue and research activity with peers at other institutions
- Evidence of contribution of articles for inclusion in edited volumes or reference literature
- Evidence of collaboration with colleagues at external institutions to edit and publish scholarly work
(Drafts available through the “Publications” page)
In previous reviews, some projects which are just now coming into fruition could not be documented as concretely since initial agreements were only oral or informal, and receipt of contracts and other such materials happened after the review. I have now included as much evidence of such endeavors as possible, although some documentation—such as evidence of the progress or timetable for publication of an edited volume or special issue journal—cannot readily be obtained, since my work is only one piece of a larger product, and submissions from others may not have been received by the editor(s). I can only document that the relevant parties have received my contribution as this time.
Also, at least one contribution, my article about John Dewey and race, “Selves in Need of Advancement”, has not yet been sent back to reviewers with revisions. The revisions for this project have taken longer than they should, however, I could not devote more time to the project since several acquaintances from other institutions requested from me contributions for their own publications. My work on generative AI and education began this way. Since AI in education (AIED) is such an important topic at the moment, I decided to devote time to generating publications about this issue. Now that I have submitted all work that was requested of me from others, I can now devote my attentions to the Dewey article, which I hope to update with some observations gained from my research into AI, ideology, bias, and education.
Service and Continuing Growth
In the last review, the committee recommended that I “provide evidence of participation in campus and professional organization conferences and other professional development opportunities”. Since that time, I have joined three campus wide committees: The Clark Center Committee, The Center for Ethics, Peace, and Social Justice (CEPS) board, and the SUNY Cortland faculty senate. My inclusion into the ranks of these organizations began only last semester, but I already have participated in one event hosted by CEPS (the Ethics of Mandated Reporting workshop), and have scheduled participation in an event hosted by the Clark Center, which will occur later this year (in February). Unfortunately, I have not yet been able to participate in any committees of the faculty senate and have only just attended my first meeting during the last week of January 2024. The reason for this being that my teaching schedule last semester conflicted with the meeting times of the senate and did not permit me to participate more fully. I plan to join at least one vacant committee this semester. In my own department, I have joined another committee, the Graduate Curriculum Committee, of which I am now also the committee chair. I have included documentation of this position in the form of a letter which was written for me by my colleague, Jacob Hall, who was the previous chair of this committee. I look forward to working more with this committee as it combines two areas that I think are very important for our program, namely, online education and graduate education.