Academic Affairs

From:     Steve Grineski    

 Re:        Faculty Development Event     

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The first faculty development event of 2008-2009 will be held on August 19, 2008 at 9:30 a.m. in the Science Lab, Room 104. Dr. Mano Singham will make a presentation titled, “Moving Away from the Authoritarian Classroom.”

Abstract: College classrooms today are often surprisingly authoritarian in nature, in which students have very little say in what they learn, how they learn, and how they will be assessed. Such an authoritarian atmosphere is not conducive to true learning. In an informal discussion mode, we will look at the reasons for this phenomenon and discuss techniques that instructors can use to recapture the spirit of collegiality between faculty and students and thus enhance the intrinsic motivation of students and transform the classroom into a true learning adventure.

 Background on speaker:

 Mano Singham is currently Director of Case Western Reserve University’s University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE) and Adjunct Associate Professor of Physics.

 He obtained his B.Sc. from the University of Colombo in Sri Lanka, and M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in theoretical nuclear physics from the University of Pittsburgh.

 He is a Fellow of the American Physical Society.

 In 2001 he won Case Western Reserve University’s Carl F. Wittke award for distinguished undergraduate teaching, and has received numerous other awards for teaching and service to education.

 His recent research interests are in the fields of education, theories of knowledge, and physics and philosophy. His first book, THE QUEST FOR TRUTH: Scientific Progress and Religious Beliefs, was published by Phi Delta Kappan Educational Foundation, in November 2000. His second book The Achievement Gap in U. S. Education: Canaries in the Mine, deals with the educational achievement gap between white and black students and was published in May 2005 by Rowman and Littlefield Education Press.

 He is currently working on a new book that deals with how challenges to the teaching of evolution in schools have themselves evolved as a result of repeated setbacks in the courts.