WRRS is actively engaged in several projects in which we are partnering with Portland metro area secondary schools. The following are several of our recent activities.
The Challenge Program
WRRS faculty, particularly Greg Jacob, Hildy Miller, and Duncan Carter, have participated actively for over twenty years in The Challenge Program outreach effort to metropolitan area high schools. High achieving seniors may take First Year Composition (WR 121) or Survey of British Literature (ENG 204) for college credit. Challenge secondary faculty meet with PSU English faculty at intervals throughout the year.
<<Back to Top
The Academus Project
The PSU Challenge Program and McCullough Research are jointly sponsoring the Academus Project, [link to full Academus grant] a yearlong pilot study designed to enhance student achievement and improve college readiness by introducing computer technology to college-level English classes taught at Grant High School. The Academus team includes Karen Tosi, Sally Hudson, Chris Dreyer, Hildy Miller, and Zapoura de Ramos. Now well into its first phase, this project builds on the already successful and established Challenge Program in which college courses such as First Year Composition and Survey of British Literature are taught on site at local high schools by high school faculty working in partnership with PSU faculty. Beginning with one teacher’s classes, students have been provided with laptop computers linked to the PSU library and its vast electronic storehouse of global resources for learning. With this access, traditional readings in a literature course expand to include literary glossaries and concordances, intertextual readings, literary and nonliterary online texts, and primary and secondary research material of all sorts including author and sociohistorical sites. Traditional writing in a writing course expands to include increased technological competence, writing processes of inventing, drafting, revising, and editing using technology, online communication with the instructor and other students, electronic research, citation manuals, and the opportunity to create electronic portfolios used increasingly for college applications. Furthermore, PSU faculty whose research expertise lies in these scholarly areas can enter the high school classroom by delivering online lectures or engage in dialogue with students on topics ranging from Shakespeare’s tragedies to the history of rhetoric. In fact, students can even journey electronically to the Globe Theatre or to ancient Athens. Ultimately, the Academus project aims to demonstrate that this experiment in “learning without walls” and forging a close link between the University and the community can be accomplished at a manageable cost. If it proves to be successful in significantly enhancing student learning in its first phase, the project will expand to more classrooms in more disciplinary fields in high schools throughout the Portland metro area and beyond.
We are grateful to private donor McCullough Research and the PSU Challenge Program for their contributions totaling $40,000, which has made this project possible.
<<Back to Top
Improving Student Transition from High School to College Project
During 2004-6 Hildy Miller, Sydney Thompson, Grace Dillon, and Jens Larson joined with English and other faculty from many Oregon universities, colleges, and high schools in working to articulate better the transition students make from high school to college. A FIPSE grant of $50,000 awarded to University of Oregon to distribute amongst the projects of participating institutions provided the funds to undertake this effort.
Our project partnered one of our first year composition classes with a senior English class at Glencoe high school. Many students there do not see attending college as a viable option. So our first year students collaboratively wrote a “survival manual” from a college student perspective, including such important advice as how to finance schooling and how to choose the appropriate college. For their part, the Glencoe students researched possible schools for further education and filled out application forms, though, of course, it was up to them whether they actually sent them. The project culminated with a panel of first year composition students traveling to Glencoe high school and appearing on a panel for a question-answer exchange with students there. As a result of this student to student interaction, many Glencoe students began to envision themselves entering college.
<< Back to Top |
