Faculty/Staff Accomplishments and News Briefs 4/25/18

Faculty/Staff Accomplishments and News Briefs 4/25/18

In this issue, we celebrate the accomplishments of faculty and staff in education, foreign languages and literatures, and health services. News briefs focus on Honors Grading, Accessibility resources, and lasting results of Meredith’s 2005 A Tide of Hope campaign.

Director of Health Services Mary Johnson has been awarded the Clinical Practice Excellence award from the Duke University School of Nursing. This award is presented by the Alumni Council and the dean annually to an alumnus who has made a significant difference in both clinical practice and community health promotion within ten years of their graduation from Duke.

Associate Professor of Foreign Languages and Literatures Veronique Machelidon and Patrick Saveau (French and Cultural Studies, Franklin University) published a collection of critical essays, Reimagining North African Immigration, Identities in Flux in French Literature, Television and Film.  Their book is available through Manchester University Press. Taking the pulse of French post-coloniality, the essays by 13 scholars (including the two editors) explore the many different faces of Frenchness at the dawn of the 21st century.  The volume examines the challenges and hopes facing multicultural France today, in relation to the legacies of the colonial past.

Instructor of Education Christina Spears is a featured writer for EdNC in the Teaching-in-Color series. She is quoted in the initial article that presents the importance of the series, and her first installment was published on March 28. Spears has taught special education at Apex Friendship High School and as an adjunct in the Meredith education department. On May 1, she will begin a new position as Special Assistant to the Wake County Public Schools Assistant Superintendent for Equity Affairs.

News Briefs
Honors Program Reminder About Honors Grading
Mary Doyle has sent you copies of your Honors students’ contracts for Spring ’18.  Remember that Honors students must earn an AH or BH grade in contracted courses to receive Honors credit.  (AH means ‘A for the course, Honors contract completed satisfactorily’, and BH means . . . you get the idea.)

Teachers may still use A-F grading in cases where an Honors contract is not satisfied. When reporting grades on WebAdvisor in coming weeks, please remember to use AH / BH grading, as appropriate. By doing so, you will save the Honors office many hours of follow-up and you will not be contacted again by email!  Thank you for your collaboration with Honors students and for enhancing their Meredith College education.  Please write to Brent Pitts at pittsb@meredith.edu if you have questions.

Easy Access—Accessibility Resources for Faculty and Staff

Warning: Shameless promotion of the opportunities you will have during PIE, May 14-16.

Brightspace, our new LMS, will make creating accessible course content simple. Watch these YouTube videos to get excited about a few of the things we’ll be learning during PIE.

Make learning more accessible with Brightspace And New Accessibility Checker in Brightspace HTML Editor

During PIE, you will have opportunities to learn more about Brightspace, the new MyMeredith, and Google tools and accessibility features. You will also have the chance to work on fall course materials with support from colleagues. —Submitted by Carolyn C. Koning, Assistant Director for Disability Services

Lasting Results of Meredith’s Tide of Hope Fundraising
After the December 2004 tsumani that devastated Sri Lanka, Meredith College launched “A Tide of Hope, a long-term relief effort to support people in the country. One of the beneficiaries of this support, Eroshan Weerathunga, visited Raleigh in mid-April to meet the Meredith employee who anonymously gave $30 per month to support his education. His visit was covered by WRAL News. Weerthunga, who is now an engineer for General Electrical in Toronto, told WRAL that “… without that help, I wouldn’t recover from the tsunami at all and without their help, I wouldn’t come this far and I wouldn’t enjoy my life again and I wouldn’t get past that destruction. Watch the full story on WRAL.com