UPbeat

News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.

Academics

Call for Exploration Level Course Proposals for the UP Core (Oct. 1)

The Undergraduate Core Curriculum Committee is readying for its annual October 1 priority review deadline to consider new exploration level (X) courses for the UP Core. These courses are upper division offerings that emphasize interdisciplinary thinking with some grounding in the liberal arts–but they can come from any UP discipline. They should have no pre-requisites outside of UP Core foundation level courses, and can be cross-listed with regular sections for majors / minors.

The proposal submission form is linked on the pilots.up.edu page for the UP Core (along with further information about X courses). The UCCC will review courses at other times in the year, but October 1 is our only annual priority deadline.

Questions can be directed to UP Core Director Andrew Guest (guesta@up.edu).

Be UP’s Collegium Participant in June 2025! (Apply by Oct. 20)

Faculty of all disciplines are invited to be part of Collegium, an annual colloquy that integrates faith and intellectual life. Collegium will be held at St. John’s University (home of The Saint John’s Bible) June 6-13, 2025. All travel, accommodations, and fees are covered by UP’s annual dues.

The week combines plenaries on Catholic Social Teaching and imagination, readings, viewings and robust small group discussions on navigating one’s academic vocation in these fraught times, as well as spirituality sessions that reflect the breadth of Catholic expression. Recent UP Collegium alums are happy to share their experiences: Joane Moceri, Kala Mayer, Tshombé Brown, Anne Santiago, Rachel Hutcheson, just to name a few.

If you’d like to be included in this year’s cohort, please contact David Mengel (provost@up.edu) by October 20.

For a comprehensive look at Collegium activities, check out www.collegium.org or contact Director Karen Eifler (eifler@collegium.org).

Fundamentals of a Successful Grants Program (Sept. 20)

Join us for the next offering of the Pamplin School of Business’ Learning Lab series! “Fundamentals of a Successful Grants Program” led by Brianna Richards (MBA Nonprofit ’24) of Contour Strategies.

This free, hands-on grant-writing workshop is open to all students, alumni and business partners.

When: September, 20 – 9 a.m.-12 p.m.

Where:  Franz Hall, Room 120

Click the registration link to learn more and reserve your spot:

RSVP Here

Open Position: Core Team Faculty for Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence Grant (Sept. 20)

The core team for the Howard Hughes Medical Institute Inclusive Excellence (HHMI-IE3) grant is seeking one more faculty member. The grant funds 134 participating institutions who work together in seven “learning community clusters” aimed at creating inclusive STEM learning environments. The University of Portland’s cluster specifically focuses on the challenge of meaningful evaluation of effective and inclusive teaching, which will inform faculty practices, including promotion and tenure decisions.

In addition to participating in participating in the governance of the University of Portland’s part of the grant, this member would serve as the team’s representative to the cluster’s Learning Team 1 (LT1), which is tasked with evaluating policies and  examining how we might change academic policies at our institutions to shift towards inclusive excellence in teaching. This learning team meets virtually at 10:00 a.m. on the first Friday of each month, so the LT1 representative would need to be available at that time. Each learning team representative earns an annual stipend of $2500.00.

For more information or to apply for the open position, please contact Tamar More, team lead, at more@up.edu by September 20.

Open Call: Faculty Interested in AI and Ethics (Sept. 23)

Building on several successful College of Arts and Sciences initiatives that bring together Artificial Intelligence and Ethics in conversation, CAS is hosting the AI and Ethics Working Group on September, 23 from 1-2:30 p.m. in BC 215. We will continue conversations that began this summer regarding faculty research, grant planning, and curricular innovation related to AI and Ethics.

All interested faculty are invited to join.

For more information or questions, please email Christi Hancock hancock@up.edu

Center for Teaching and Learning: Constructive Dialogue Lunch (Sept. 25)

Faculty and staff are invited to a lunch discussion on Constructive Dialogue. The CTL is partnering with Anne Santiago, Ph.D., the Dundon-Berchtold Faculty Fellow for Constructive Dialogue, to explore how we, as faculty, can support student learning in this area. 

With a student body diversifying at a pace much faster than faculty demographics, along with students wanting to connect classroom experiences and content to present-day phenomena, we are likely to encounter socially challenging or politically​ charged topics in classroom discussion​s. How we manage those discussions can significantly move us forward in achieving our instructional goals. 

Where: Teske Room

When: September 25, from 12:20 p.m. to 1:15 p.m.

Seats are limited and lunch will be provided, so please RSVP to the Center for Teaching and Learning (ctl@up.edu) by September 22 ​to reserve a space. 

Seeking Faculty Contributions: “Portland and the Public Imagination” (Sept. 30)

Does your area of expertise intersect with the city of Portland in interesting ways? Could it? If Portland is both a place we live and a set of stories we tell about that place, how could your disciplinary field or community experience offer new ways of representing the city, or questioning stereotypes about it? We are creating a new Core Exploration “Big Ideas” course for Spring 2025 titled “Portland and the Public Imagination” and are seeking faculty from across UP to contribute modules in their disciplines/areas of interest.

For the bulk of the semester, we’ll host guest faculty each week who will select readings, develop discussion questions, and craft a class plan (including a mini-lecture and an interactive, student-centered component) on a focused Portland topic, object, stereotype, or locale (consider: bridges, rain, “foodies,” the urban growth boundary, gentrification, bikes, etc.). Guest faculty earn a $500 stipend for their contributions.

If you’re interested, email the course conveners, Jen McDaneld (mcdaneld@up.edu) and Molly Hiro (hiro@up.edu), with a brief description of a proposed topic and how it’s relevant to telling a Portland story, by Monday, Sept. 30.  

Lunch Discussion: Civil Discourse in our Classrooms (Oct. 1)

Engaged Humanities @UP and the NEH-funded Civic Humanities Working Group invite all interested UP faculty to join a discussion (and lunch on us) on cultivating genuine conversation, and even disagreements, in our classrooms. We’ll invite attendees to read a brief recent Washington Post article on how other campuses are encouraging spaces for open discussion prior to the event. Then we’ll talk over lunch about what conversation at UP looks like right now, our approaches to creating good conversation, and how we might import new ideas for fostering civil discourse on our campus from the article and elsewhere. We’ll also consider the limits of these approaches and the thorny question of how to determine the boundaries of what we talk about in our classrooms. 

Event Details: Tuesday, October 1, 12:30-1:45 p.m. – Location TBA

This lunch is sponsored by UP’s 3-year NEH Humanities Connections Grant, by the Civic Humanities Working Group (CHWG—convening this year), and by UP’s College of Arts and Sciences. We’ll share more about the grant and what the working group is up to at the lunch as well. 

Faculty from all disciplines are welcome to join, but limited seating is available. Please email Molly Hiro (hiro@up.edu) to reserve your spot by September 20. Location TBA and will be shared after you RSVP. 

Seeking Applicants: Inclusive Teaching Scholar Program

All Full-time Faculty members are invited to apply for the Inclusive Teaching Scholars Program. This program seeks to identify and support at least one person from each academic unit for a total of 5 or 6 scholars who would function as a cohort.

Individually, Scholars will undertake or enhance an inclusive pedagogical project in areas that may include inclusive classroom strategies, assignments, activities, and assessments that support diverse student perspectives, and/or the development of or utilization of learning materials from underrepresented scholars.  Collectively, they would help each other, our campus enterprise, and serve as the conduit between the CTL and each academic unit for all things under the inclusive teaching umbrella. 

Scholars will be compensated $1000 for participation in the year-long program. This program is supported by the Howard Hughes Inclusive Excellence IE3 Grant. 

Applications are due September 27.

The application form and information sheet can be downloaded at the link below:

Inclusive-Teaching-Scholars-Program-APPLICATIONDownload

Email ctl@up.edu with questions or call Terry Favero, at x7373.

Spring 2025 Provost’s Initiative for Undergraduate Research (Oct. 7)

Since its inauguration in 2015, the Provost’s Initiative for Undergraduate Research has provided support for faculty members from across the University who collaborate with undergraduates on a semester-long research project. The provost’s office is committed to increasing opportunities for student experiential learning, and this initiative represents a key element in achieving that goal.

Access the online application and a help sheet for the Spring 2025 Provost’s Initiative Grant below:

Spring 2025 Provost’s Initiative Grant

Applications are due October 7, 2024 by 5 p.m.

Faculty members are invited to apply for a Provost’s Initiative grant for support to collaborate with an undergraduate on a co-designed research project during the spring semester 2025. Students are expected to meet and work with the faculty member weekly. Students will enroll in a 493 course and will earn a minimum of 1 credit for their work on the project and produce a deliverable (research paper, lit review, or presentation, etc.) appropriate to the discipline. (Note: 1 credit hour typically requires 45 hours of work on the project, which includes faculty meeting time.) Faculty members who are new to undergraduate research at University of Portland will receive $1,500 for mentoring the student in research, while experienced faculty members will be compensated $1,000.

Questions? Contact Undergraduate Research (ur@up.edu)