Colleges Collaborate on “Windows to the World”

On October 16 – 19, the Monterey Institute, NPS, and DLI will be co-sponsoring Windows to the World: A Cultural  Education Film Symposium.  Films will be shown at the following locations during the Symposium:

Thursday, October 16:  DLI
Friday, October 17:  Community event at the Golden State Theater on Alvarado Street in downtown Monterey
Saturday, October 18:  NPS
Sunday, October 19:  MIIS

Here is a flyer for the event and additional information can be found here. Please note that it would be helpful for you to register for the films that you are interested in. NPS and DLI require gate access, so registering to attend any of the films shown on those campuses will be necessary and makes entering their facility easier.  The October 17 event at the Golden State Theater is open to the public.

Four films will be shown at the Monterey Institute on Sunday, October 19 – two at 1PM and two at 3:30PM.  There will be a 15 minute introduction by a faculty expert for each film, followed by a 30 minute discussion.  There will also be a reception at the end of the last set of movies.

New Courses Pilot Monterey Way 2.0

This fall, students have the opportunity to take five new courses, designed to bring students from several programs together, and to exemplify the principles of immersive learning, high performance thinking, and open architecture that define Monterey Way 2.0.

Twelve students, representing four programs within GSIPS, are taking Michel Gueldry’s French for International Professions and Organizations.  This course emphasizes co-creation of knowledge. The first three weeks will focus on developing inter-cultural competence, but the remainder of the class will be negotiated with the students based on their background, specializations, and interests.

Forty-eight students (19 from GSIPS, 14 from FGSIB, and 5 from GSTI) are taking The China Factor, team-taught by Yuwei Shi, Wei-Liang and J.D. Yuan.  This course approaches the phenomenon of China today from the perspectives of government, economy and business, and engages students in developing their own scenarios for China in 2030.

David Colclasure’s course, Ethics in the Era of Globalization, enrolled sixteen students from 3 different programs within GSIPS. Students investigate the social mores and moral value systems in a variety of cultures and apply skills involved in ethical discourse and decision-making in a professional context.

Fundamental Concepts and Terminology for Economics, taught by Tanya Pound, has an enrollment of 62, mostly from GSTI. Students learn about various aspects of the economy, including macroeconomics, securities, finance, and accounting, by developing presentations on selected topics for presentation to the class. During the second half of the semester, some of the presentations will be given in languages other than English, and interpreted by second year students. In keeping with the Monterey Way 2.0, students not only learn the concepts and terminology of economics and finance, and the cultural dimensions of these concepts in different societies, but they acquire a higher order skill set that they can use to develop their knowledge of other unfamiliar disciplines. The course is student-driven, in that all presentations except for the first will be made by students.

International Business Project Management, taught by William Brooks, has 32 students: 2 from GSIPS, 6 from FGSIB, and 23 from GSTI. This course satisfies program requirements for both TLM and MBA curricula.  It emphasizes the practical management of multidisciplinary project teams throughout the project life cycle.

Several of these faculty members are participating in an ongoing Faculty Learning Community, facilitated by Bob Cole and Jean Turner, to support each other in exploring applications of Monterey Way 2.0 pedagogy, and considering new approaches to assessing learning outcomes within this pedagogical framework.

Search the MIIS VHS Video Collection Online

Working with colleagues at Middlebury in a joint project this summer, the William Tell Coleman Library has added the Institute’s VHS video collection (more than 2000 items) to the Online Public Access Catalog (OPAC).

The primary purpose of the project was to increase access to the collection for faculty and students by converting the existing Media Services data on the collection from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet into a set of MAchine Readable Cataloging  (MARC) records.  The project leveraged Middlebury cataloging expertise, made full use of the recent updated Millennium server’s capacities, preserved all useful  data  and presented it in a simple and web searchable format.   After several months of hard work by librarians on both campuses, under the guidance of Terry Simpkins and his talent cataloging staff at Middlebury, MIIS faculty and students are now able to find, identify, select, and obtain VHS video materials in the same way that they search for printed books and periodicals.  The project has greatly enhanced the usability of the video collection on and beyond campus.  A portion of the commercial tapes of documentary videos, performances, performance art, and feature films will be added to our library holdings on the largest union catalog — OCLC’s WorldCat.   Video tapes can be checked out at the Lab and Media Services Center for 24 hours. They will not be lent to other libraries except to Middlebury through interlibrary loan.

–from the Library

Copyright note:
The video cassettes and other A/V materials in the library are subject to the Revised Copyright Act of 1976, Title 17 of the U.S. Code, Sections 101-810, which took effect on January 1, 1978. The library prohibits the use of these materials in any way that violates Federal or State laws.

Publicizing MIIS Events

If you are planning an Institute event and would like the extend an invitation to the public and/or members of the local press, please contact Beth McDermott in Institutional Advancement (beth.mcdermott@miis.edu or extension 3509).  She can assist you with outreach to local media outlets to build awareness of your event, as well as for the Monterey Institute, throughout the community.

— from the Office of Institutional Advancement

Walking a Mile in Clara’s Golf Shoes

In a recent blog post, Golf Digest editor Bob Carney agreed with Clara Yu on the issue of a language requirement for LPGA members (now withdrawn after much public denunciation). He said, “Being an old Peace Corps volunteer myself and a supporter of golf in the Olympics…I liked this letter from Clara Yu, president of the Monterey Institute of International Studies, where they teach lots of languages.” He then includes the full text of Clara’s letter, which both reflects on the LPGA’s position and offers a constructive solution: custom language learning for golfers delivered by the Monterey Institute.

Regardless of whether the LPGA takes us up on our offer, the whole world now knows how we think about languages: … “in this world, whether walking 18 holes, or walking up to a lectern at the United Nations, isn’t speaking another language a worthwhile skill to possess?”

Middlebury News and Events also covered this story.

Open Enrollment for Benefits

The HR office would like to remind all employees that the Open Enrollment period for benefits will end on September 19.

Open Enrollment provides the following opportunities:

1. If you or your dependents are not currently enrolled you may add yourself and/or dependents to the medical, dental, or vision plans. Please contact Human Resources for coverage application form(s) if you would like to add coverage.
2 If you are currently enrolled in the medical, dental, or vision plans you may terminate your own or your dependents’ coverage. Please contact Human Resources for coverage change form(s) if you would like to end coverage.

In addition, there is one thing all benefit-eligible employees must do as part of Open Enrllment: return the Section 125 (Flexible spending) election agreement.  This plan allows you to do 3 things:

1. If you are on MIIS insurance plans, you can have the premiums deducted from pre-tax dollars.
2. You can have a portion of each paycheck (in pre-tax dollars) deposited into an account that you can draw upon to pay for medical expenses not covered by insurance.
3. You can have a portion of each paycheck (in pre-tax dollars) deposited into an account to pay for dependent care.

If you do not want to do any of these three things, you still must sign and return the form indicating that you do not wish to participate.

Welcome to MIIS@work

As we work to build a cohesive community of professionals collaborating to achieve common goals, effective communication to and among faculty and staff is an indispensible ingredient for success.

This summer, Beth McDermott and Amy McGill convened a focus group of MIIS employees to learn more about how people perceive communications on campus, and how communications might be improved.

MIIS@work* grew out of that conversation.

Because we know that most MIIS employees are too busy to check a blog for news on a regular basis, we plan to email all faculty and staff a linked list of the latest stories once a week.

The blog also includes a list of links to online resources useful to MIIS employees, including the blogs published by student services and the library.

Because we learned from the focus group that there is a strong need for more information about Middlebury, and its evolving relationship with MIIS, we have included links to several Middlebury blogs, including those of the president and provost.

Communication, though, is more than just information transmission.  We need to hear your voices.  Anyone is welcome to become a contributor. Your contributions don’t all have to be traditional “news items.”  Do you have ideas about how we can strengthen the Institute and make it a more vibrant and innovative place to work?  Is there a special person or achievement you would like us all to celebrate? Your colleagues want to hear your stories!

If you want to learn how to post directly to the blog, just let us know.  If you would rather email your contributions to Amy , she’ll make sure they get posted.  You can comment on any existing post by clicking the “comments” link below the title of the post.

* Thanks to Devin Lueddeke for naming our blog!

MIIS, Bread Loaf Co-sponsor CATESOL Workshop

Patricia Szasz, Director of Intensive English Programs, and Therese Tishakov, GSLEL’s Director of Career Services, have collaborated with Middlebury’s Bread Loaf School of English to develop a workshop for teachers on “Creative Voices in the Classroom, ” offered on October 11 under the auspices of the Steinbeck chapter of CATESOL (California Teachers of English to Speakers of Other Languages).

Other community partners in this event are the Monterey Peninsula College, Hartnell College, Youth Arts Collective, the Dare to Dream Fund, and the Steinbeck Center. The workshop will be held from 9 am to 1 pm at Hartnell College. Admission is $25 for teachers/$10 for students.

The featured speaker is Andrea Lunsford, Louise Hewlett Nixon Professor of English and Director of the Program in Writing and Rhetoric at Stanford, and writer-in-residence at the Bread Loaf School of English of Middlebury College.

Monterey Institute TESOL/TFL students and faculty will also have a special session with Prof. Lunsford on October 10 at 1 pm, on campus in B105.

Download flyer.

The Pizzas are Coming!

Last year’s “pizza process” led to the creation or strengthening of several programs that contribute to academic excellence and exemplify Monterey Way 2.0 principles of learning, such as open architecture and immersive learning.

  • • The James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies has built a “Nonproliferation Schoolhouse” in Second Life
  • • Custom Language Services has developed a new curriculum for diplomats who want to learn English
  • • The Graduate School of Language and Educational Linguistics successfully piloted the DELCAT (Diploma in English Language Curriculum, Assessment and Teaching ) concept with a group of teachers from Spain this summer.
  • • The Digital Media Commons is up and running, with a media production space equipped with new iMacs on the second floor of Kade, and digital media tutors available to help faculty and staff who want to learn new skills in a project-based environment.

This year, the Innovation Incubator will challenge groups to design and implement ideas that respect the various cultures we have on campus while at the same time finding innovative solutions to the divisions and silos that get in the way of the effectiveness of the organization as a whole..

And yes, we plan to feed you lots of pizza! Stay tuned!

— from the Innovations Incubator

New Technology on Campus

The Simul2 interpretation lab now sports two new 32” Plasma screens, soon to be joined by a third unit in the Simul3 lab in the IIRC building.

In addition, each of the three Simul labs will soon receive a Sony SLV D380P – DVD/VCR combo unit, replacing the older VCRs to allow more digital content to be deployed in the interpretation booths.

A second IP-based videoconferencing site will also come on line soon. A new Polycom videoconferencing unit will generally reside in the board room, but is portable within McCone. This will complement the VC service now available in the Fletcher-Jones conference room in the Library.

How do you set up a VC?
1)    Ascertain that your videoconferencing partner has comparable equipment.
2)    Reserve the space. (Contact the President’s office for the Board Room or Ann Flower in the Library for the Fletcher Jones room, or consult with ITS about other possible locations in McCone).
3)    Make arrangements with ITS for VC support. This includes putting them in touch with a technologist at the other end for a test call.
4)    Sit down and talk with your colleague on the other side of the country—or the world.

— from Information Technology Services

First Town Hall Meeting of the Year Scheduled

Town Hall meetings have been scheduled approximately once a month throughout the fall semester, to give the Institute community a chance to hear from President Clara Yu about important new developments and directions for the Institute.  The first Town Hall Meeting, on September 18, will also include President Designate Sunder Ramswamy. Clara and Sunder will answer questions from the audience, as well as questions submitted in advance. (Look for a submission box near the Library circulation desk a couple of days before the meeting.)

Additional Town Meetings for faculty and staff are scheduled for October 28 and November 20, and a meeting for students is scheduled for September 25.

All meetings will be held in the Irvine Auditorium from 12:15PM – 1:45PM.

Fall Enrollment the Largest Ever

At last count (day 3), our fall FTE of 791 surpassed the most recent record (728), reflecting a large entering class and excellent retention of continuing students. Congratulations to our enrollment managers and admissions staff, and all those students, faculty, staff and alumni who helped to tell our story to the world.

Donors Recognized

Institutional Advancement will soon be releasing a publication recognizing those donors who made gifts to the Institute during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2008.  We are happy to be able to recognize and acknowledge these individuals and organizations and plan to distribute copies on campus in mid-September.

–from the Office of Institutional Advancement

New Faces

Welcome to the following staff members who are new to the Institute as of this summer…

  • Nina Dutra, Dean’s Assistant, FGSIB
  • Robert Horgan, Enrollment Manager
  • Patricia Lewis, Deputy Director of CNS
  • Florence Lu, Coordinator of Student Services
  • Deborah Ortega, Office Services Assistant
  • Shawna Routh, Administrative Assistant, Student Affairs

And a couple of more familiar faces…

We’re pleased to have Tate Miller back on staff after a year away. He recently started a new position as Director of International Program Development, in the Provost’s office.

Sarah Springer, who has been an adjunct faculty member and consultant for a number of years, has joined the regular staff as a CALL specialist with GSLEL and instructional designer working with the Teaching and Learning Collaborative.

MIIS@Work invites each of our new colleagues to comment on this post, telling us all a little bit about themselves and their new roles.   And we invite the rest of you to mention any other new colleagues we may have missed.

(If you’ve never posted a comment on a blog, it’s easy!  See the About page for some help.)