Wednesday, December 9, 2009
How this Class Has Changed My Perspective
I have learned how much work a journalist does. I never thought that the job of a journalist involves so much foot work and telephone work. I also never knew that journalists had to be so careful about libel. The main thing I had to learn was AP style. I have respect for any journalist who has mastered this writing style. I learned a lot about how to work with people during this course, and I am thankful for that experience.
The Building Project at the Coon Rapids Campus
Hannah Schott
Dec. 5, 2009
Building project
Main Story
Parts of Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus are under construction. “There are several building projects in play right now,” Coon Rapids campus vice-president Michael Seymour said.
The new Visual Arts Center, which the college started building in the fall of 2008, is located beside a parking lot at the northwest end of the campus. The Visual Arts Center will be ready for use in the fall of 2010.
Next to the Visual Arts Center is the 40-year-old Fine Arts building, which is scheduled to undergo renovation in July of 2010.
In August of 2010, the college plans to begin constructing a 30,000-square-foot BioScience and Allied Health addition, which will be located on the south side of the campus.
According to Patrick Johns, the Coon Rapids campus president, funding for the remodeling of the current Fine Arts Building and the construction of the BioScience Building will be considered by the legislature this spring.
“Currently, the Visual Arts Center is the only major construction project at the Coon Rapids campus,” Johns said. Johns added that the Visual Arts Center was funded by grants given to the college by the legislature during the last bonding bill cycle.
“The Visual Arts center was funded with capital bonding,” Seymour explained. “That’s the best kind of funding source because the state pays two-thirds of all the cost,” he added.
College officials started talking 17 years ago about a building that would improve the situation for music and arts, Seymour commented. He said: “It takes a long time to take a building project from conception to completion. In this case, it will be over 17 years.”
“That is why it seems odd to people sometimes that a college sitting with relatively new facilities has started a conversation about new square footage,” Seymour said. The college has to start thinking 10 to 20 years before it wants new buildings, because that is how long it could potentially take to get buildings constructed, Seymour explained.
According to Seymour, it is hard for a project to even make it to the funding process. Seymour said: “The project has to be deemed the top priority of the college, and that means both campuses. So you have two campuses that each have an interest in growing the square footage of their facilities.”
The college has to compare the needs of the Cambridge campus with the needs of the Coon Rapids campus to determine which projects deserve the highest priority, Seymour said.
There are a number of attributes that are used to asses the validity of a project request, Seymour noted. “One is enrollment, another is the workforce development interests of the state, and a third is asset preservation, since the project will fix up an old, antiquated building,” Seymour explained. A fourth qualification is being able to share new spaces with multiple partners, such as if the college partnered with a state university, a school district or the city of Coon Rapids, Seymour noted.
The Fine Arts building hit on two of the four attributes, the bigger one being in terms of asset preservation, since the Fine Arts building is 40 years old, Seymour said. The second strength of the project is that the growth of enrollment in arts and music has been high, Seymour commented.
Seymour said that the college’s only partnership is its connection to the community’s senior population, who are interested in the arts. Seymour said: “We can make reference to the senior population’s interest in coming in and using the facilities available, such as glass blowing and things. It sounds good, but I do not know if the senior population would ever get in here, because I think there are students who use those facilities most of the time.”
“On the Coon Rapids campus, the Visual Arts Center has competed with the BioScience building and the student service spaces,” Seymour noted, “so it took 17 years for the music and art building to become a priority of the college.” Once the Visual Arts Center was identified as a priority of the college, it was put into the external process, which is the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) process, Seymour said.
“So we do kind of a thoughtful planning process, and in the end we write a project narrative and people read it and they basically rate our project and then stack it up against the other requests for funding,” Seymour said.
The director of public relations, Mary Jacobson, said that Anoka-Ramsey has been trying to put more information about the building projects on the college’s Web site. Jacobson said, “The college also has different student groups like the student government and the advisory committee where events like building projects are talked about quite a bit.”
“A couple of times we have had legislators come through on tours,” Jacobson noted. She said: “It seems to me that those tours have been productive. I think the legislators ask a lot of good questions and they become a lot more aware of the college and what we’re doing here.”
The legislators can walk down the halls and see how crowded they are, especially upstairs in the art area, Jacobson commented. “Everything is out in the hallways and messy,” she said.
Lyudmila Spencer, a student at Anoka-Ramsey’s Coon Rapids campus, took Ceramics II in the Fine Arts building this semester. “I’m going to come back to Anoka-Ramsey and take Ceramics III in the new building,” Spencer said.
Spencer said she is eager to see what the Visual Arts Center will be like. She said: “I’m hoping that in the firing room there will be boxes for individual students’ stuff. It’s almost impossible to keep track of your own stuff here. It is crowded here, so I hope the new building will have more rooms.”
“As the college moves all art classes into the Visual Arts Center, the Fine Arts building will be remodeled for music,” Johns commented. Johns said that this will separate the messier classes in art such as glass blowing and ceramics from music classes, which require a clean environment.
Sidebar
Kelsey Schwarzrock is responsible for sending the building project narrative to Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU). Schwarzrock is a management analyst who works in the president’s office at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus.
Schwarzrock said the narrative explains exactly what the college wants to build. The narrative gives a description of the project and lists the college’s needs, such as the dollar amount needed for the building project, Schwarzrock said.
“The narrative is also our strategic plan and our initiative that says how our project meets our objective,” Schwarzrock said. The narrative has to address how the project is going to meet MnSCU strategic initiatives, Schwarzrock explained.
(more)
According to Schwarzrock, the narrative contains information about space utilization, enrollment and specific
areas that will be located within the building. Schwarzrock said: “I was at a meeting at MnSCU a couple weeks ago and the architect was presenting a whole floor plan of the new building. It was so cool to see the floor plan.”
Schwarzrock said that the floor plan showed an area for university programs that Anoka-Ramsey houses, but universities come in and teach here. “There’s space in the new building for those specific programs,” Schwarzrock said. Schwarzrock said that information about the programs is in the narrative.
“The narrative says how the project will create collaborations and partnerships with people externally,” Schwarzrock commented. “In this case, St. Cloud State, Bemidji State and Anoka-Hennepin schools will be involved in some way, shape or form in the project,” she explained.
Schwarzrock worked a lot with public relations director Mary Jacobson and vice-president Michael Seymour to create the narrative in the fall of 2008.
Seymour asked for input from deans who had an interest in the Fine Arts building, as well as to the chief academic officer and chief of student affairs officer, Schwarzrock said. “The deans and officers would send their comments and insights about the building project, and I would take their input and put it into the narrative,” Schwarzrock noted.
According to Schwarzrock, getting all the pieces together was the hardest part of working on the narrative during the week of organizing. “It’s hard to organize so many people and so much involvement in one project, but it’s also really interesting to see the different kinds of writing and the different kinds of ideas about the direction things are going here,” Schwarzrock noted.
“Most of the work I did on the narrative was organizing the writing and editing it,” Schwarzrock said. “It was probably altogether a week of organizing and editing before we submitted the narrative, then there was a response from MnSCU and a redraft of the narrative,” she commented.
“Because the narrative is what MnSCU uses to make their budget request booklet, I think that the narrative is going to be used by them as a reference material throughout the entire process in deciding what projects to fund,” Schwarzrock said.
According to Schwarzrock, the basic details about the project are the most important part of the narrative.
“MnSCU found the details they thought were the most valuable and the most important, took those details out of the narrative and put them in their budget request booklet,” Schwarzrock explained. Schwarzrock said she thinks MnSCU’s involvement was crucial to deciding exactly what information the government needs, since it would have been difficult for her to figure out what a legislator wants to know about the building project.
Legislators probably do not look all the way through the narrative, Schwarzrock said. “I think that what’s important for the legislators to see is just the really important parts, the most influential things,” Schwarzrock noted.
Schwarzrock said that the college broke the building project down into three areas: economic stewardship of the state, resources, and environmental consciousness. “Those three things were highlighted in our presentations,” Schwarzrock said.
Besides organizing the narrative, Schwarzrock facilitates tours for legislators. “Mary Jacobson and I led the tours, and I handled some of the logistics of the tours, such as putting the presentation together and preparing all the materials that we handed out,” Schwarzrock said.
Schwarzrock said that she and Jacobson arranged a preview tour in the summer of 2009 with some local legislators. “We organized a lunch for them and gave them a tour so that they were prepared for when we had the big tour with the Senate and the House legislators,” Schwarzrock commented.
“One of the local legislators who came last summer came to the tour with the Senate and House legislators and thought that we were doing really well,” Schwarzrock commented. Schwarzrock added: “It’s cool to see the whole process of our building project. I get to meet a lot of people.”
People with questions about the narrative can contact Schwarzrock’s office at 763-433-1507. People with questions about the building projects at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus can contact the Coon Rapids campus information desk at 763-433-1240.
Vice-president Michael Seymour
The construction of the Visual Arts building at the
Coon Rapids campus
Dec. 5, 2009
Building project
Main Story
Parts of Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus are under construction. “There are several building projects in play right now,” Coon Rapids campus vice-president Michael Seymour said.
The new Visual Arts Center, which the college started building in the fall of 2008, is located beside a parking lot at the northwest end of the campus. The Visual Arts Center will be ready for use in the fall of 2010.
Next to the Visual Arts Center is the 40-year-old Fine Arts building, which is scheduled to undergo renovation in July of 2010.
In August of 2010, the college plans to begin constructing a 30,000-square-foot BioScience and Allied Health addition, which will be located on the south side of the campus.
According to Patrick Johns, the Coon Rapids campus president, funding for the remodeling of the current Fine Arts Building and the construction of the BioScience Building will be considered by the legislature this spring.
“Currently, the Visual Arts Center is the only major construction project at the Coon Rapids campus,” Johns said. Johns added that the Visual Arts Center was funded by grants given to the college by the legislature during the last bonding bill cycle.
“The Visual Arts center was funded with capital bonding,” Seymour explained. “That’s the best kind of funding source because the state pays two-thirds of all the cost,” he added.
College officials started talking 17 years ago about a building that would improve the situation for music and arts, Seymour commented. He said: “It takes a long time to take a building project from conception to completion. In this case, it will be over 17 years.”
“That is why it seems odd to people sometimes that a college sitting with relatively new facilities has started a conversation about new square footage,” Seymour said. The college has to start thinking 10 to 20 years before it wants new buildings, because that is how long it could potentially take to get buildings constructed, Seymour explained.
According to Seymour, it is hard for a project to even make it to the funding process. Seymour said: “The project has to be deemed the top priority of the college, and that means both campuses. So you have two campuses that each have an interest in growing the square footage of their facilities.”
The college has to compare the needs of the Cambridge campus with the needs of the Coon Rapids campus to determine which projects deserve the highest priority, Seymour said.
There are a number of attributes that are used to asses the validity of a project request, Seymour noted. “One is enrollment, another is the workforce development interests of the state, and a third is asset preservation, since the project will fix up an old, antiquated building,” Seymour explained. A fourth qualification is being able to share new spaces with multiple partners, such as if the college partnered with a state university, a school district or the city of Coon Rapids, Seymour noted.
The Fine Arts building hit on two of the four attributes, the bigger one being in terms of asset preservation, since the Fine Arts building is 40 years old, Seymour said. The second strength of the project is that the growth of enrollment in arts and music has been high, Seymour commented.
Seymour said that the college’s only partnership is its connection to the community’s senior population, who are interested in the arts. Seymour said: “We can make reference to the senior population’s interest in coming in and using the facilities available, such as glass blowing and things. It sounds good, but I do not know if the senior population would ever get in here, because I think there are students who use those facilities most of the time.”
“On the Coon Rapids campus, the Visual Arts Center has competed with the BioScience building and the student service spaces,” Seymour noted, “so it took 17 years for the music and art building to become a priority of the college.” Once the Visual Arts Center was identified as a priority of the college, it was put into the external process, which is the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU) process, Seymour said.
“So we do kind of a thoughtful planning process, and in the end we write a project narrative and people read it and they basically rate our project and then stack it up against the other requests for funding,” Seymour said.
The director of public relations, Mary Jacobson, said that Anoka-Ramsey has been trying to put more information about the building projects on the college’s Web site. Jacobson said, “The college also has different student groups like the student government and the advisory committee where events like building projects are talked about quite a bit.”
“A couple of times we have had legislators come through on tours,” Jacobson noted. She said: “It seems to me that those tours have been productive. I think the legislators ask a lot of good questions and they become a lot more aware of the college and what we’re doing here.”
The legislators can walk down the halls and see how crowded they are, especially upstairs in the art area, Jacobson commented. “Everything is out in the hallways and messy,” she said.
Lyudmila Spencer, a student at Anoka-Ramsey’s Coon Rapids campus, took Ceramics II in the Fine Arts building this semester. “I’m going to come back to Anoka-Ramsey and take Ceramics III in the new building,” Spencer said.
Spencer said she is eager to see what the Visual Arts Center will be like. She said: “I’m hoping that in the firing room there will be boxes for individual students’ stuff. It’s almost impossible to keep track of your own stuff here. It is crowded here, so I hope the new building will have more rooms.”
“As the college moves all art classes into the Visual Arts Center, the Fine Arts building will be remodeled for music,” Johns commented. Johns said that this will separate the messier classes in art such as glass blowing and ceramics from music classes, which require a clean environment.
Sidebar
Kelsey Schwarzrock is responsible for sending the building project narrative to Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU). Schwarzrock is a management analyst who works in the president’s office at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus.
Schwarzrock said the narrative explains exactly what the college wants to build. The narrative gives a description of the project and lists the college’s needs, such as the dollar amount needed for the building project, Schwarzrock said.
“The narrative is also our strategic plan and our initiative that says how our project meets our objective,” Schwarzrock said. The narrative has to address how the project is going to meet MnSCU strategic initiatives, Schwarzrock explained.
(more)
According to Schwarzrock, the narrative contains information about space utilization, enrollment and specific
areas that will be located within the building. Schwarzrock said: “I was at a meeting at MnSCU a couple weeks ago and the architect was presenting a whole floor plan of the new building. It was so cool to see the floor plan.”
Schwarzrock said that the floor plan showed an area for university programs that Anoka-Ramsey houses, but universities come in and teach here. “There’s space in the new building for those specific programs,” Schwarzrock said. Schwarzrock said that information about the programs is in the narrative.
“The narrative says how the project will create collaborations and partnerships with people externally,” Schwarzrock commented. “In this case, St. Cloud State, Bemidji State and Anoka-Hennepin schools will be involved in some way, shape or form in the project,” she explained.
Schwarzrock worked a lot with public relations director Mary Jacobson and vice-president Michael Seymour to create the narrative in the fall of 2008.
Seymour asked for input from deans who had an interest in the Fine Arts building, as well as to the chief academic officer and chief of student affairs officer, Schwarzrock said. “The deans and officers would send their comments and insights about the building project, and I would take their input and put it into the narrative,” Schwarzrock noted.
According to Schwarzrock, getting all the pieces together was the hardest part of working on the narrative during the week of organizing. “It’s hard to organize so many people and so much involvement in one project, but it’s also really interesting to see the different kinds of writing and the different kinds of ideas about the direction things are going here,” Schwarzrock noted.
“Most of the work I did on the narrative was organizing the writing and editing it,” Schwarzrock said. “It was probably altogether a week of organizing and editing before we submitted the narrative, then there was a response from MnSCU and a redraft of the narrative,” she commented.
“Because the narrative is what MnSCU uses to make their budget request booklet, I think that the narrative is going to be used by them as a reference material throughout the entire process in deciding what projects to fund,” Schwarzrock said.
According to Schwarzrock, the basic details about the project are the most important part of the narrative.
“MnSCU found the details they thought were the most valuable and the most important, took those details out of the narrative and put them in their budget request booklet,” Schwarzrock explained. Schwarzrock said she thinks MnSCU’s involvement was crucial to deciding exactly what information the government needs, since it would have been difficult for her to figure out what a legislator wants to know about the building project.
Legislators probably do not look all the way through the narrative, Schwarzrock said. “I think that what’s important for the legislators to see is just the really important parts, the most influential things,” Schwarzrock noted.
Schwarzrock said that the college broke the building project down into three areas: economic stewardship of the state, resources, and environmental consciousness. “Those three things were highlighted in our presentations,” Schwarzrock said.
Besides organizing the narrative, Schwarzrock facilitates tours for legislators. “Mary Jacobson and I led the tours, and I handled some of the logistics of the tours, such as putting the presentation together and preparing all the materials that we handed out,” Schwarzrock said.
Schwarzrock said that she and Jacobson arranged a preview tour in the summer of 2009 with some local legislators. “We organized a lunch for them and gave them a tour so that they were prepared for when we had the big tour with the Senate and the House legislators,” Schwarzrock commented.
“One of the local legislators who came last summer came to the tour with the Senate and House legislators and thought that we were doing really well,” Schwarzrock commented. Schwarzrock added: “It’s cool to see the whole process of our building project. I get to meet a lot of people.”
People with questions about the narrative can contact Schwarzrock’s office at 763-433-1507. People with questions about the building projects at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus can contact the Coon Rapids campus information desk at 763-433-1240.
Vice-president Michael Seymour
The construction of the Visual Arts building at the
Coon Rapids campus
Monday, December 7, 2009
President Morales coasts to victory in Bolivia
Bolivians reelected incumbent Bolivian president Evo Morales on Sunday. Morales decisively defeated his eight challengers by winning 68 percent of the vote. "Evo Morales has a mandate unlike any other president in the hemisphere," commented Cochabamba Democracy Center analyst Jim Shultz. Morales is expected to continue his program of change for Bolivia.
Source: President Morales coasts to victory in Bolivia by Associated Press
Dec. 7, 2009 Star Tribune print edition
Source: President Morales coasts to victory in Bolivia by Associated Press
Dec. 7, 2009 Star Tribune print edition
Wednesday, December 2, 2009
Professor Vincent
Hannah Schott
Nov. 30, 2009
Professor Vincent
“College is about grappling with ideas and pushing yourself to figure out where you stand,” said M. Bess Vincent, a social science professor at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus. People often ask new college students to explain their views on a public issue, Vincent commented. “Students need to know what that issue is so they can grapple with it for themselves,” she said.
According to Vincent, the most important lesson to learn from her classes is the art of argument. Vincent said she hopes students “learn how to put together a successful argument, think about what it is that is at issue, take a position, and articulate the support for that position without spouting what they have heard on the radio or TV or from their parents.” How students discover their feelings on an issue are the lessons they carry with them, Vincent explained.
However, that discovery is a process and it may not be something students realize in her classes, Vincent added. She said that she can not think of any particular moment in her undergraduate years when she felt like she had found herself. The discovery of personal opinion “is a series of learning experiences,” Vincent said. “If I can contribute to students’ learning experiences, then I feel gratified,” she commented.
At Anoka-Ramsey, Vincent teaches general sociology, criminology, juvenile delinquency and a course in relationships, marriage, and the family. Vincent, who attended a small liberal arts school in central Louisiana, took a psychology class and a sociology class in her sophomore year of college. Vincent said: “The psychology class was dealing more with brain stuff. I liked the sociology class better, so I decided I wanted to go with sociology as my major.” Vincent said that undergraduate experiences that she found intriguing are the lessons she tries to convey to her students.
Sociology has provided Vincent with some insights she can use in her everyday life. Vincent stated that she knows she can beat any of her friends at Apples to Apples. She said: “I can usually get a pretty good grasp of people and read people pretty well. Sociology really helps me understand the different roles and statuses that we play.”
Vincent, who has previously taught at the University of New Orleans, Tulane University, and Loyola University (New Orleans), said she teaches to a broader audience and a larger spectrum of types of individuals at Anoka-Ramsey than she experienced at any of the other universities. Tulane and Loyola were private schools with wealthy students, Vincent explained, while the types of students she taught at the University of New Orleans were more equivalent to the types of students she teaches at Anoka-Ramsey.
According to Vincent, the many night classes she teaches at Anoka-Ramsey are composed of non-traditional students. “The majority of the students I teach at Anoka-Ramsey are first generation college students with working, middle-class backgrounds,” Vincent said.
Vincent noted the difficulty of seeing some students try their hardest to learn and still not understand the material. Students who do not speak English as a first language have a difficult time, Vincent added. Vincent encourages students who do not understand English well to ask her for help. “That’s my job, to answer your questions,” Vincent pointed out.
“I want students to walk away from my class and feel that I was fair,” Vincent commented. Vincent said her liberal arts education allows her to see issues from many different angles, and said she tries to use that ability when teaching. “To me, class should be an extension of my everyday life, it’s just that I’m having a conversation with 45 people as opposed to sitting on my couch talking to one or two other people,” Vincent said.
Vincent uses in-class exercises throughout the courses she teaches. Vincent and a couple of her colleagues created a budgeting exercise called Calculating the Bottom Line, which Vincent uses in sociology class. Calculating the Bottom Line developed out of a course she and her colleagues took in graduate school, Vincent explained.
Vincent said that none of the in-class exercises she conducts turn out exactly like their descriptions on paper. “They have all been adapted,” Vincent said. “Usually the projects I do involve some kind of hybrid of one or two different exercises that other people have posed,” she added.
One of the exercises Vincent uses in criminology class came from a book for sociology teachers available through the American Sociological Association. “(The book) has a whole bunch of different exercises you can implement in classes,” Vincent said. According to Vincent, a lot of her ideas for in-class exercises are obtained from either that book or from a journal called “Teaching Sociology,” in which Vincent and her colleagues had their budgeting exercise published.
Vincent said that one of the most rewarding moments of teaching is when students incorporate knowledge they learned from her classes into assignments for other classes. “That means I have given them something that they retained,” Vincent said.
Nov. 30, 2009
Professor Vincent
“College is about grappling with ideas and pushing yourself to figure out where you stand,” said M. Bess Vincent, a social science professor at Anoka-Ramsey Community College’s Coon Rapids campus. People often ask new college students to explain their views on a public issue, Vincent commented. “Students need to know what that issue is so they can grapple with it for themselves,” she said.
According to Vincent, the most important lesson to learn from her classes is the art of argument. Vincent said she hopes students “learn how to put together a successful argument, think about what it is that is at issue, take a position, and articulate the support for that position without spouting what they have heard on the radio or TV or from their parents.” How students discover their feelings on an issue are the lessons they carry with them, Vincent explained.
However, that discovery is a process and it may not be something students realize in her classes, Vincent added. She said that she can not think of any particular moment in her undergraduate years when she felt like she had found herself. The discovery of personal opinion “is a series of learning experiences,” Vincent said. “If I can contribute to students’ learning experiences, then I feel gratified,” she commented.
At Anoka-Ramsey, Vincent teaches general sociology, criminology, juvenile delinquency and a course in relationships, marriage, and the family. Vincent, who attended a small liberal arts school in central Louisiana, took a psychology class and a sociology class in her sophomore year of college. Vincent said: “The psychology class was dealing more with brain stuff. I liked the sociology class better, so I decided I wanted to go with sociology as my major.” Vincent said that undergraduate experiences that she found intriguing are the lessons she tries to convey to her students.
Sociology has provided Vincent with some insights she can use in her everyday life. Vincent stated that she knows she can beat any of her friends at Apples to Apples. She said: “I can usually get a pretty good grasp of people and read people pretty well. Sociology really helps me understand the different roles and statuses that we play.”
Vincent, who has previously taught at the University of New Orleans, Tulane University, and Loyola University (New Orleans), said she teaches to a broader audience and a larger spectrum of types of individuals at Anoka-Ramsey than she experienced at any of the other universities. Tulane and Loyola were private schools with wealthy students, Vincent explained, while the types of students she taught at the University of New Orleans were more equivalent to the types of students she teaches at Anoka-Ramsey.
According to Vincent, the many night classes she teaches at Anoka-Ramsey are composed of non-traditional students. “The majority of the students I teach at Anoka-Ramsey are first generation college students with working, middle-class backgrounds,” Vincent said.
Vincent noted the difficulty of seeing some students try their hardest to learn and still not understand the material. Students who do not speak English as a first language have a difficult time, Vincent added. Vincent encourages students who do not understand English well to ask her for help. “That’s my job, to answer your questions,” Vincent pointed out.
“I want students to walk away from my class and feel that I was fair,” Vincent commented. Vincent said her liberal arts education allows her to see issues from many different angles, and said she tries to use that ability when teaching. “To me, class should be an extension of my everyday life, it’s just that I’m having a conversation with 45 people as opposed to sitting on my couch talking to one or two other people,” Vincent said.
Vincent uses in-class exercises throughout the courses she teaches. Vincent and a couple of her colleagues created a budgeting exercise called Calculating the Bottom Line, which Vincent uses in sociology class. Calculating the Bottom Line developed out of a course she and her colleagues took in graduate school, Vincent explained.
Vincent said that none of the in-class exercises she conducts turn out exactly like their descriptions on paper. “They have all been adapted,” Vincent said. “Usually the projects I do involve some kind of hybrid of one or two different exercises that other people have posed,” she added.
One of the exercises Vincent uses in criminology class came from a book for sociology teachers available through the American Sociological Association. “(The book) has a whole bunch of different exercises you can implement in classes,” Vincent said. According to Vincent, a lot of her ideas for in-class exercises are obtained from either that book or from a journal called “Teaching Sociology,” in which Vincent and her colleagues had their budgeting exercise published.
Vincent said that one of the most rewarding moments of teaching is when students incorporate knowledge they learned from her classes into assignments for other classes. “That means I have given them something that they retained,” Vincent said.
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