I have seen Dr. Michael Wesch‘s TEDx talk “What Baby George Taught Me About Learning” before, many times, actually. The first was in the Fall of 2017 when I was taking Contemporary Pedagogy–and then over the next academic year (2018-19) when I was first a TA for this course. I really like (love?) this bit…
Genius Loci
Genius Loci: Tillerman Coffee Company Tillerman Coffee Company is located at the Virginia Tech Corporate Research Park (1341 Research Center Drive) and is one of my favorite places to get away and write. I like it because it’s a neutral space for me to go and work with good lighting, open floor plan, and delicious treats regardless…
Where Do We Go from Here? A Global Perspectives Essay on Trends in Design Higher Education
This post is the essay I wrote to close out my Global Perspectives Program experience. My research topics were trends in teaching & learning in the U.S. and Europe and Emerging Trends in Design Education, which I explored while developing the following paper. To learn more about our experience & the 2017 cohort, please visit the GPP website….
First Impressions of Switzerland
Arrival The six of us who traveled together made it into town on Saturday morning, at about 10:15 AM local time. We are 6 hours ahead of our normal timezone (Eastern) so the fact that we flew overnight helped a little bit because we at least had the opportunity to get in a catnap. (I…
Pre-Trip Jitters
Tomorrow at 5:30 AM my journey begins. I’m all packed. My family is all packed. The car is mostly packed. The baby is asleep in her crib and my husband is asleep on the couch. In a little while I will wake him and send him to bed, where I am not long to follow….
Women & Minority, Artists & Scholar Lecture: Saving Muslim Women
When I parked my CR-V on the side of Wall St. this afternoon at 4:55, I had no idea that by 6:55, I’d be sitting in Torgerson 3100 awaiting a lecture from Dr. Juliane Hammer, a specialist in Islamic studies and religion in the Americas from UNC Chapel Hill. At the present moment, I sat,…
Proud for Progress; Pressing on for Inclusion & Change
It’s HokiePRIDE week here at Virginia Tech and I am looking forward to participating when I can during this jam-packed week of activities and engagement at the university. This week, and in recent weeks, I’ve been thinking very hard about inclusion and acceptance. (Radical acceptance, really.) I am writing this post this week because I…
“The Blog” as a living, breathing, evolving body of work
The featured image is of saucer magnolias blossoming in front of Burruss Hall. Like these blossoms that are finally coming into their season, we graduate students are future faculty and we are beginning to come into our own as well. I’ve been thinking a lot about what the role of a blog is to academia….
Planning for a Culture Shock
Early Observations While our actual departure to Switzerland seems like a long ways off (at 93 days away), I know that if I blink, it will be here in an instant. And so I have begun to plan my trip now in earnest. Part of the planning involves keeping a journal about the process, so…
Citizen Scholar: Hike it Baby!
In my first semester at Virginia Tech, I was enrolled in GRAD 5204 Citizen Scholar Seminar with Dr. Rosemary Blieszner. Each of the students in the course were required to develop a community engagement service project to be deployed either concurrently with the course or soon after course completion. The prompt was open-ended so each…
