Dear Colleagues,

Welcome to the first week of the academic year 2023-2024. It was so energizing to see and talk with many of you at the start-up meetings, the Convocation, the faculty and staff university address and picnic, and many other events organized over the last two weeks building up to the start of the year. I look forward to engaging with you in the coming weeks and months.

One of GVSU’s signature beginning of the year events is the Pew FTLC Annual Fall Conference on Teaching and Learning. It was held this year August 22-23 with many sessions led by faculty and staff. The keynote speaker was James M. Lang on the topic Teaching Distracted Minds: Old Challenges, New Contexts. If you missed his presentation, the slides are posted on the conference page and the recording will be available shortly. I appreciate Dr. Christine Rener’s work in always bringing topics that are stimulating, timely, and that translate in concrete actions that faculty can take in the classroom, experiment with, and form communities around. I genuinely appreciate the responsiveness of our faculty and staff in engaging with these events and modeling a mindset of lifelong curiosity and learning. Seeing the number of attendees and their engagement with the topic is always a source of inspiration and pride.

A key take-away from Dr. Lang’s presentation is that, with the right techniques, faculty can design classrooms that are sanctuaries from attention distractors. These sanctuaries provide students with the space to hold their attention on the topic of the class for a much deeper and much richer engagement. These sanctuaries provide the students with opportunities to tackle hard problems that cannot be googled away, to tackle hard problems during extended stretches of time without distractions and interruptions. Developing the capacity for focused sustained attention, cognitive endurance, is an essential component of students’ intellectual and emotional growth. It is an essential component of a liberal education. Parker Palmer  wrote at length about the value of sitting with a problem, a question, a contradiction, and devoting sustained attention to it, “A good education teaches us to hold contradictions reflectively rather than reactively, a habit of the heart that lies behind all social, cultural, and scientific breakthroughs. The civilizing impact of science… comes from insisting that we embrace contradictory observations and explanations, using the experimental method to let their tensions advance our knowledge.”

Recent research by Christina Brown and collaborators finds that one of the socio-economic inequities between students (nationally and internationally) is the access to these extended uninterrupted stretches of time for thinking about important and hard questions. Students from lower-resourced backgrounds come to us having had fewer opportunities to experience these vital stretches of time. As a result, they typically exhibit lower cognitive endurance. During long tests, they make more mistakes in later questions than in earlier ones, and they make more of these mistakes than their peers who are more practiced in uninterrupted thinking.

I found the concept of extended time to think about hard problems very enlightening. It gives us a conceptual framework for further understanding and appreciating the monumental gift that each of you brings to Lakers through your classrooms, your office hours, and your many interactions. It provides us with a framework for appreciating the challenges that many of our students face and the transformational impact that a GVSU education brings them.

Have a great week and great semester everyone with peaceful and intellectually vibrant sanctuaries,

Fatma 

Brown "FixIt" Magnets
As faculty return to the classroom this week, look for the brown "FixIt" magnets on the classroom whiteboards which describe multiple ways to report three kinds of classroom issues. Faculty and staff can quickly inform the appropriate office about maintenance issues, technology concerns, or classroom improvement suggestions. Included on the magnet is this URL: www.gvsu.edu/fixit.

Classrooms Web Site
This is a reminder that last year, GVSU launched www.gvsu.edu/classrooms.  For each classroom on campus, there is a page that includes room capacity, photos, attributes (e.g. tables on wheels), floorplans, and other information.  This month, the Academic Space Committee updated the information on the site as part of the annual classroom inspection walkthrough.

Attention, Affiliate Faculty
You may be interested in a short screencast that is sent to all new affiliate faculty.  It has an overview of the affiliate role at GVSU, personnel process, and connections to faculty governance.

Credit/No Credit Deadline
The deadline for students to request a change from a letter grade to a credit/no credit grading format now coincides with the 75% tuition refund deadline for a course. For full-term fall courses, this deadline is Friday, September 22 at 5 p.m. For courses that meet for only a portion of the term, deadlines can be determined by reviewing the searchable course schedule.

Webpage for Student Complaint and Concern Processes
A new webpage to help students if they have complaints or concerns at the university has been developed. The page provides starting points to file reports for a number of reasons, including academic grievances (e.g., grade appeals), Title IX/institutional equity concerns, and hazing, as well as other situations. Included on the page are updated procedures for non-academic concerns (outside the classroom), such as allegations of inappropriate behavior that is not under the purview of the Title IX Office. Please bookmark this page for future reference.

 
Library Research Support for Students
Are your students working on research papers this semester? Annotated bibliographies? Literature reviews? Send them to the Library Research Center! We offer one-to-one and small group consultations to help students develop their information literacy skills. Fun fact: in 2021-22, despite identical median GPAs, students who met with a research consultant were retained at a 3.5% higher rate than students who did not. Among first-year students, the difference was 18.8%. See the Library Research Center webpage for additional information.

Systems Available for Student Support
Navigate and CARE Report systems ensure students get the timely support they need. All are encouraged to become familiar with the systems.

Student Ombuds Office
The Student Ombuds office is a safe and private space where students can go to discuss and process difficult situations. The office is neutral, fair and can help students understand processes and procedures at the university. The Student Ombuds helps to promote a positive campus environment by assisting students with conflict resolution and problem-solving related to their university learning, living, and working experiences. It is a resource for students and any faculty who have questions.

Congratulations to Kirkhof College of Nursing faculty members Christina Quick, Assistant Professor, and Della Hughes Carter, Associate Professor, for their $195,600 award from the Michigan Health Endowment Fund. This project will bring together a community coalition to assess the need and feasibility of integrated health models for children and families at risk for/currently in foster care or who have been adopted. This is the first step to guide collaborative strategies to address healthcare needs of this vulnerable population.

Tutoring and Reading Center New Location - Open House
The Tutoring and Reading Center has relocated to Henry Hall 112 on the Allendale Campus and will open for tutoring and academic support on Tuesday, September 5. Faculty and staff are invited to an open house to see the Center on Wednesday, September 6, from 9-11:00 a.m. Please come and enjoy coffee and breakfast pastries in our new location.

Community Health Advisory Team (CHAT) Town Hall
A series of town halls are being offered in a limited forum environment open to current faculty, staff, and students with a panel of various CHAT members from across campus. Sessions host a variety of targeted topics around public health, policies, and updates. You are invited to register for this free event. The next town hall event is Wednesday, September 6 at 1:00 p.m. and will be available in Zoom. Please RSVP on the GVSU Health Hub website.