UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Academics

Course Packs for Fall 2020: Please Submit Now

To ensure your classes have course packs on Monday, August 24, please submit your materials to printing services as soon as possible! Packets received after Monday, July 27 cannot be guaranteed completion because of the time it can take to confirm copyright information.

If you have any questions, please contact Kassie Hansen, printing services, at x8101 or printjobs@up.edu.

ATSI Presents Webinar Wednesdays, Moodle Mondays This Summer

Academic technology services & innovation will be offering a weekly series of “Wednesday Webinars” and “Moodle Mondays” to support faculty who are preparing for hybrid and online instruction this fall. UP faculty can find all session times, details, and RSVP forms on the Hybrid & Online Basecamp Moodle page.

  • Wed. 7/15 – Join ATSI interim director Ben Kahn for a session on using Moodle to “Make the Work Visible.” Learners in many online or hybrid courses struggle to understand what is expected of them, when, what they have already completed, and how far they have to go. Moodle has a built-in Activity completion feature to help students understand and plan their workload. Faculty can also get a clearer picture of student progress. In this interactive session we’ll cover basic set-up and best practices.
  • Wed. 7/22 – Instructional Design & Technology Specialist will lead this introduction to TechSmith Knowmia (formerly called Relay), a powerful tool for creating asynchronous instructional video. Learn how to create and upload media directly to Moodle, how to make simple edits, create engagement or assessment opportunities with tools like in-video quizzes and conversations, and how to view and interpret video analytics.
  • Wed. 7/29 – Are you wary of “Zoom fatigue?” ATSI instructional designer Maria Erb will facilitate this discussion focused on strategies to beat the Zoom blues. We’ll discuss how well-planned asynchronous activities and a class structure that is designed for the online medium can help you create a great learning environment at distance.
  • Wed. 8/5 – With final exams slated to be online and de-densified classrooms on campus, please join ATSI for this session on administering assessments via the Moodle Quiz module. We’ll discuss how to create or import questions, review available quiz options, show how to meet accommodation needs, and review the Proctorio digital proctoring tool.
  • Moodle Mondays: Mondays starting 7/13 through 8/10 – ATSI technical support specialist Dawn Lloyd will host drop-in “office hours” style sessions for any Moodle questions, queries or how-tos. Faculty can drop in for one-on-one help on Moodle issues large or small.

For more information contact ATSI at atsi@up.edu.

Malecha Steps In as Interim Pamplin School Dean

The Pamplin School of Business welcomes Tyson Distinguished Professor Gary Malecha as interim dean. Malecha joined the UP history and political science faculty in 1992 and regularly teaches courses on Congress, the Presidency, administration and public policy, American political thought, and food politics and policy in the United States and Europe. He is currently the faculty athletic representative at UP and served as interim dean of the College of Arts and Sciences in 2017-2018.

Meaningful Peer-to-Peer Conversations About Race: July 30

The Office of International Education, Diversity, and Inclusion is excited to invite faculty and staff to join us on Thursday, July 30 from 4 to 5:30 p.m. as we engage in meaningful peer-to-peer conversations about race. We will host three conversations for you to choose from on the following works, please read or watch one of the materials below in preparation for the conversations:

You will need to RSVP to these conversations Monday, July 27 so that we can assign you to a group. 

We are also seeking facilitators for these discussions. Facilitators are not trainers. These are peer-to-peer conversations. We are looking for facilitators who are comfortable helping manage conversation flow and reminding the group of community standards if appropriate. Structure and discussion questions are available here. 

If you have a discussion or affinity group already established or would like to have a conversation as an office unit, please share with us what you are doing and let us know if you would like us to help you invite others or if we can help with logistics.  

Email oiedi@up.edu with questions, comments, or accommodation requests and check this link for updates. Finally, don’t forget to RSVP here.

 

Chronicle of Higher Education Data Breach: Act Now

Information services has learned that the Chronicle of Higher Education recently suffered a data breach, most likely in February 2020. The breach affected approximately 3.5 million Chronicle of Higher Education users, some of whom are University of Portland students, faculty, and staff. The stolen credentials from the breach have also been discovered on publicly accessible sources.

If you have a Chronicle account, change your password immediately. If you have used the same or a similar password for any other account, those passwords should be changed as well.

Individuals can also contact The Chronicle of Higher Education support at 1-833-579-1097, Monday – Friday, 9 a.m. to 9 p.m., ET to inquire with any further questions regarding one’s account.

Please feel free to contact Andrew Ridenour, information security analyst, at ridenour@up.edu or x7626.

Farewell Birthday Brain Teaser for Provost Emeritus Tom Greene

University of Portland provost emeritus Tom Greene officially retired on June 30, and as a token of his esteem, Aziz Inan, Shiley School of Engineering, put together the following farewell birthday trivia brain teaser to thank him for his leadership and friendship:

  1. Multiply the left and right halves of Tom’s birth year Y1Y2Y3Y4 to obtain the number X. Then, look up the Xth prime number. Next, subtract the Xth prime number from the reverse of Tom’s birth year, namely Y4Y3Y2Y1 and read the result backwards. Surprise!
  2. Further, if Tom’s full birthday M1M2/D1D2/ Y1Y2Y3Y4 is split into M1M2, D1D2, Y1Y2, and Y3Y4, interestingly, half of the sum of M1M2 and D1D2 yields Y1Y2, and twice the difference of M1M2 and D1D2 results in Y3Y4.
  3. Tom’s birthday this year (2020) is numerically special: double the sum of the squares of the month and day numbers of his birthday. What comes out?
  4. The reverse of the difference of the squares of the digits of Tom’s new age this year equals the sum of the letter numbers of his last name, Greene.
  5. Tom’s 75th birthday will be special since the reverse of 75, namely 57, equals the sum of the letter numbers of his middle name, George.
  6. Tom’s 76th birthday will also be special since 76 equals the sum of the letter numbers of Thomas. Additionally, the rightmost two digits of that year equals the difference of the month and day numbers of his birthday.
  7. Tom’s 83rd birthday will be special too since 83 equals the sum of the reverses of the month and day numbers of his birthday, namely (M2M1 + D2D1).
  8. Tom’s 89th birthday will be a five-digit palindrome date. Also, 89 is the 24th prime number (see item # 6).
  9. His 90th birthday will be special too since Y3Y4 = M1M2 + D1D2.
  10. Tom’s 100th birthday expressed as M1M2/D1D2/ Y1Y2Y3Y4 has a special property: Y1Y2Y3Y4 = 2(M1+M2+D1+D2).
  11. Tom’s 153rd birthday in the year Y1Y2Y3Y4 will also be special: Y1Y2Y3Y4 = M1M2D1D2 + D2D1M2M1. Moreover, count the number of days left in the year after Tom’s birthday.
  12. Tom’s 189th birthday will be a seven-digit palindrome date.
  13. Lastly, Tom’s 508th birthday contains every whole number from 0 to 7, each appearing once.

For more information or to commission your own brain teaser, contact Inan at ainan@up.edu.

 

 

 

Olivia Bormann: “Let’s Get Together”

All University employees who identify as Black (adjunct, faculty, staff, administration, etc.) are invited to contact Olivia Bormann, associate director of development and DIP graduate intern. Bormann hopes to create an informal group for Black identified employees to meet and greet. The group has an email list so members can all stay in contact, organize more events, and share trainings and resources. Overall, the mission is to gather and provide informal support to each other. 

Please email bormann@up.edu to be part of the group at and if you have any questions/concerns or need ADA.

Scholarly Activity Portal Unavailable Thursday, July 16

The Scholarly Activity Portal is being upgraded and will be unavailable on Thursday, July 16, 2020 until 11 a.m. Please plan accordingly.

Users will no longer have to login to PilotsClassic after the upgrade and will continue to be able to find the Scholarly Activity Portal in the Academics section of PilotsUP. The upgraded portal will look significantly different in order to work within the newer version of PilotsUP, but will continue to have the same functionality. We have tried to incorporate as many suggested improvements as possible in this upgrade.

Please contact Michele Leasor at leasor@up.edu or x8264 with questions.

Easier Access to Clark Library Databases

Off campus users of Clark Library databases may have noticed their access feels more seamless. Library staff collaborated with information services to change the authentication method so it works through My Apps Single Sign-on, which reduces the need to log on as often. It seems like a small thing, but it makes a difference! Library databases are available through the library website or from the My Apps page. Please email reference@up.edu if you have questions about this change.

Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program Applications due Sept. 15, 2020

The Fulbright U.S. Scholar Program offers hundreds of awards each year to teach, research and conduct professional projects internationally. University faculty members and administrators as well as for professionals, artists, journalists, scientists, lawyers, and independent scholars are all eligible to apply. Awards vary in duration from two weeks for the International Education Administrator programs to a year for some research and teaching placements. View the Awards Catalog to determine if there is a good fit for your professional interests.

All eligibility criteria must be met at the time of grant application. Basic eligibility criteria are included below, but specific countries may have additional requirements.

  • U.S. citizenship
  • Two years since the date of completion of a prior Fulbright U.S. Scholar grant
  • Residing outside the U.S. for no more than one year in the six-year period preceding application submission
  • Generally, a Ph.D. or equivalent professional/terminal degree is required
  • Foreign language proficiency may be required depending on the country, type of grant activity (teaching or research), and the nature of the proposed project. English is sufficient for teaching activities in many areas of the world.

Contact John Orr, orr@up.edu, if you plan to submit an application this year.