2024 Fall Faculty Institute: Experiential Learning Into the Classroom: Connecting Students to Opportunities
About the 2024 Fall Faculty Institute
Experiential Learning is a high-impact practice identified on campus as a main priority for our students. Learning through action, reflection, and collaboration can foster important skills and connect students with potential employers after college. Because the classroom is an equitable space on campus—all students enroll in courses—incorporating experiential learning skills and opportunities can ensure access for all students.
The Fall Faculty Institute will provide a space to examine how different aspects of experiential learning can be integrated into the classroom and connect with opportunities beyond the classroom. This can include any of the following questions:
- How do you prepare students and scaffold needed skills in the classroom for co-curricular opportunities?
- How do you embed experiential learning into a course or departmental curriculum?
- How can students connect with campus offices that offer experiential learning opportunities or support for locating them?
- How do we get student voices involved? How did they get interested in specific opportunities?
- How do you convince students that experiential learning opportunities are worthwhile and effective?
Keynote Speaker: Jacquelyne Thoni (Tony) Howard
Jacquelyne Thoni (Tony) Howard a Professor of Practice of Data and the Associate Director of Student Engagement at the Connolly Alexander Institute for Data Science at Tulane University. She earned a Ph.D. in U.S. History from Fordham University. As a historian, her teaching, research, and mentorship focuses on data literacy, critical data studies, the history of data and technology, and the digital humanities. She is a founding co-editor of the nationally recognized and award-winning digital guide, Feminist Pedagogy for Teaching Online and has a co-edited volume, with the same title, forthcoming from Athabasca University Press (2025).
Schedule & Session Descriptions
Thursday, October 24
- 11:00am – 12:00pm – Experiential Learning in the Classroom: Learning science by doing science through Course-based Undergraduate Research Experiences (CUREs), Miranda Kearney
- 12:00pm – Lunch
- 12:30pm – Opening Session, Faculty Center staff & administrators
- 1:00pm – Keynote Presentation, Jacquelyne Howard
- 2:15pm – Concurrent Sessions #1
- Session A: Engaging With Experiential Learning at SUNY Oneonta; Purposeful Endeavors Working Team
- Session B: Finding Funding: Support for Student Research, Internships, & Travel; Daphne Monie, Barb Hein, Audrey Porsche
- 2:45pm – Concurrent Sessions #2
- Session A: Experiential Learning through the Model United Nations; Matt Murphy
- Session B: Scaffolding Experiential Learning Opportunities Across Courses; Katie Griffes & Jessica Smith
- 3:30pm – Lightning Round Presentations
- Matching Alum with Student Experiences Big and Small; Sarah Portway and Laura Lincoln
- Connecting Theory to Practice with Experiential Learning in Early Childhood and Childhood Education; Jacque Myers
- Future Ready Fellows – Helping Students Make Life-Long Connections to Coursework; Chilton Reynolds
- Bringing Mindfulness to Oneonta; Brian Lowe
- Oneonta OpenLab – Eportfolios for Students; Ed Beck
- 4:30pm – Happy Hour
Engaging With Experiential Learning at SUNY Oneonta
Purposeful Endeavors Working Team
Come learn about the initiative to increase and support both curricular and co-curricular experiential learning opportunities (EL) for students at SUNY Oneonta and the current work on Purposeful Endeavors. Participants will learn about different types of experiential learning, best practices for student success in EL, and the NACE competencies. We will share several examples of experiential learning on campus across departments and will then ask that you explore opportunities for your own department in a guided workshop session.
Finding Funding: Support for Student Research, Internships, & Travel
Daphne Monie, Barb Hein, Audrey Porsche
We will present about the University Grants Team and the support we provide faculty & staff in finding funding for special programs, research, internships, travel, and other activities that provide students with opportunities for experiential learning.
Experiential Learning through the Model United Nations
Matt Murphy
I have taught POLS 3800, the Model UN class, for the past 4 years. This class prepares students to participate in the week-long Model UN conference in Manhattan, every April. The conference is a role-playing simulation involving several thousand students, where each college acts as diplomats from a chosen country, collaborating on different topic areas of global importance. The “Model UN” class is a longstanding model of experiential learning that SUNY Oneonta has been doing for nearly 20 years. I will explain how the class works in comparison with many other variations used by other schools. I will also discuss some of the class successes (as far as engaging students in experiential learning and high-impact practices) as well as its challenges, particularly after Covid.
Scaffolding Experiential Learning Opportunities Across Courses
Katie Griffes & Jessica Smith
Experiential learning opportunities in the classroom can allow students to develop hands on skills, connecting theories and conceptual ideas to real world application. We are approaching this concept through a scaffolded lens, bridging these hands-on learning projects across multiple classes, and showing students how content from each class can be used and expanded on from lower division to upper division courses. In this presentation, speakers will share the process of developing scaffolded courses with complementary assignments in order to create this multi-layered approach to experiential learning.
Friday, October 25
- 12:00pm – Lunch
- 12:30pm – Concurrent Sessions #3
- 12:30pm – 60 min Session: Doing Oral History and Historic Preservation with Communities; Will Walker and Cindy Falk
- 12:30pm – Session A: Introducing the Experiential Learning Center Project Portal; Audrey Porsche
- 1:00pm – Session B: COIL as Experiential Learning in the Classroom; Racheal Fest
- 1:30pm – Concurrent Sessions #4
- Session A: Workshop with Jacquelyne Howard
- Session B: Student Experiences with Experiential Learning Projects in and out of the Classroom; Kim Fierke & Katie Griffes
- 2:30pm – Lightning Round Presentations
- Experiential Learning in the Planetarium, Valerie Rapson
- Learning Contracts with Student Teachers, Shawna Taylor
- Walk this Way: Embodied Learning in the Arts and Humanities, Alissa Walls
- Researchers Incubators for Field Experience Abroad, Maria Cristina Montoya
- 3:00pm – President’s Mingle
- 4:00pm – Happy Hour
Doing Oral History and Historic Preservation with Communities
Will Walker and Cindy Falk
Co-presenters Walker and Falk will share processes and lessons learned from more than fifteen years of doing community-based oral history and historic preservation projects with students at the Cooperstown Graduate Program. They will share resources and highlight specific fieldwork projects that have been done collaboratively with students, faculty, and local community members. The presentation will include audio and video recordings, as well as images of historic structures and other visuals. The focus will be on sustaining long-term, community-based experiential learning opportunities for students.
Introducing the Experiential Learning Center Project Portal
Audrey Porsche
The ELC is a dynamic educational facility designed to provide hands-on, immersive learning experiences across various fields and disciplines. Rather than relying solely on traditional classroom instruction, we emphasize active engagement, real-world application, and practical skill development. Attendees will have access to the new ELC Project Portal and learn how to submit an opportunity for students to engage in experiential learning through any of the five offices in the ELC.
COIL as Experiential Learning in the Classroom
Racheal Fest
Collaborative Online International Learning (COIL) offers a model for embedding experiential learning into the classroom. COIL projects connect students at SUNY Oneonta with international students enrolled at another global institution. Many COIL collaborations are project-based, supporting students to work together to identify and target a specific problem or set of questions together. As students collaborate across the disciplines and across the globe, they gain experience in communication, digital literacy, intercultural competency, and more. This session will share COIL pedagogy approaches and invite audience members to connect their own experiential learning goals to COIL.
Student Experiences with Experiential Learning Projects in and out of the Classroom
Kim Fierke & Katie Griffes
This panel of students who have participated in experiential learning opportunities, either as formal internships required for their major, research projects, or classroom requirements, will speak about their experiences in these educational settings. Questions from the moderator will guide the conversation, giving students a chance to voice their thoughts on their learning experiences, successes, challenges, and how these opportunities impacted their engagement and enthusiasm for the field. By providing an opportunity for students to voice their experiences, faculty will be presented with ideas to create more student-centered experiential learning projects.
