Special Guest Speaker Craig Nelson
Presidential Teaching Scholar Presentation
Faculty Teaching Scholar Reception

Special Guest Speaker Craig Nelson, PhD, Biology, Indiana University

Achievement, Equity and Retention: Key Pedagogical Changes that Can Make a Real Difference in ANY College Classroom WITHOUT Lowering Standards a workshop for teachers

Thursday, April 16, 2009 12:00 pm to 1:30 pm LaPenta Union McGrath Room B Light lunch will be served

Craig Nelson, PhD, Biology, Indiana University and Carnegie Scholar, has taught diverse courses in biology, intensive freshman seminars, great books and other honors courses, several collaboratively taught interdisciplinary courses, and he regularly teaches a graduate course on "Alternative Approaches to Teaching College Biology." His SOTL papers address critical thinking and mature valuing, diversity, active learning, teaching evolution, and genres of SOTL. His awards include several for distinguished teaching, the President's Medal for Excellence (IU), and Outstanding Research and Doctoral University Professor of the Year 2000 (Carnegie/CASE).

Specific topics will include: 1. How can I radically reduce or eliminate low grades in lecture courses without lowering standards? 2. How can I make my students brighter and harder working using only 1 hour of class time (in ways that level the playing field for all groups)? 3. Does my assessment system unfairly and unnecessarily favor particular groups? 4. How do many traditional teaching techniques unnecessarily disadvantage many non-traditional students (first-generation, rural, inner-city, etc.) and how can we make our courses fairer without lowering standards? We will need to distinguish between keeping or even raising standards for achievement and certain dysfunctional illusions of rigor that can get in the way of effective teaching. Mini-lectures will alternate with writing and small- and whole-group discussions of examples and implementation. Participants will be asked to consider and discuss how these approaches might apply in their own teaching

Please contact Diana Breen at ext. 2626 for more information.

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Presidential Teaching Scholar -- Donald Moscato, PhD
March 12, 2009 - 12:00 pm

Establishing an Iona Presence in the 3D Virtual World of Cyberspace

Thursday, March 12, 2009 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm Hagan Room 108 Refreshments will be served

CELTIC invites you to attend a special presentation by Presidential Teaching Scholar Donald Moscato, PhD, Department of Information Systems, Hagan School of Business. In his multimedia presentation, Professor Moscato will present the results of his ongoing project to create an Iona presence in the virtual world of Second Life.  He will demonstrate the creation of a visual cyberspace presence of the college that will allow any faculty member at Iona to conduct classes, conduct live meetings, present art and music concerts in cyberspace.  The campus is open 24/7 and has the potential to be available to anyone in the world to visit at any time of the day.

Many other high-profile universities have established a presence in the 3D virtual world as well as both profit and non-profit organizations.  Come to the presentation and see for yourself and then reflect on the potential of this modality for future scholarly and aesthetic endeavors.

Please contact Diana Breen at ext. 2626 for more information.

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Faculty Teaching Scholar Reception
March 26, 2009 - 3:00 pm

Read more about their award winning projects

Meet CELTIC 2008 Grants and Awards Recipients.  Talking with past recipients might be helpful in developing your own proposals. We hope to see you there! Thursday, March 26, 2009 3:00 pm – 5:00 pm Faculty Reception Room Refreshments will be served

2008-2009 Presidential Teaching Scholar Award

Donald Moscato
Department of Information Systems

Establishing an Iona Presence in the 3D Virtual World of Cyberspace
Presentation Date: Thursday, March 12, 2009, 12 pm, Hagan Room 108
Don Moscato will present the results of his ongoing project to create an Iona presence in the virtual world of Second Life. He will demonstrate the creation of a visual cyberspace presence of the college that will allow any faculty member at Iona to conduct classes, conduct live meetings, present art and music concerts in cyberspace. The campus is open 24/7 and has the potential to be available to anyone in the world to visit at any time of the day.

Many other high-profile universities have established a presence in the 3D virtual world as well as both profit and non-profit organizations. Come to the presentation and see for yourself and then reflect on the potential of this modality for future scholarly and aesthetic endeavors.

2008 Celtic Excellence in Teaching Awards

David Allen
Department of Mathematics

Improving Mathematics Education at the College Level
To improve the learning of Iona College mathematics and mathematics education students I propose the implementation of an unorthodox method of teaching that consists of a combination of immersion in mathematics, variations of the Socratic method as well as a more focused approach on arguments and constructions in mathematics. Students will be exposed to mathematics as studied by a professional mathematician and the same techniques and methodology will be applied. Small seminar groups will be formed that will foster student faculty interaction on various constructions in mathematics, with the philosophy that understanding comes after deep reflection.


Christina M. Carlson & Amy Stackhouse
Department of English

An Understanding of the Problem of Plagiarism and Intellectual Property Infringement from a Faculty Perspective.
In 1645, John Milton articulated the composition process that many of us still follow. We come up with ideas, we research, and we discuss our work with colleagues. In many ways, the writing process is a social process, but problems can arise when writers fail to recognize the fine line between their own ideas and those of other people and neglect to give credit where credit is due. This problem manifests itself as plagiarism in the college classroom.

It has become clear to us that the time has come, in Milton’s terms, to consult and confer with our judicious friends, our colleagues at Iona. Thus, the next aspect of this issue that we would like to research is the understanding of the problem of plagiarism and intellectual property infringement from a faculty perspective.


Lubomir Ivanov
Department of Computer Science

An Introductory, Hands-On Course on Robotics
The main goal of this project is the development an entry-level, hands-on, undergraduate course on Robotics open to any Iona undergraduate students and requiring no prior background in Computer Science. The course examines many aspects of modern robotics from an intuitive, non-expert point of view. The focus is on developing student algorithmic problem-solving skills, demonstrating the importance of hardware-software interaction, and teaching basic programming skills using the Python programming language. The lab component of the course engages students in active learning through hands-on experimentation with Scribbler robots programmable in Python. Mindstorm robots are used to demonstrate more advanced robotic projects. The interdisciplinary nature of Robotics is emphasized throughout the course.

Nancy-Jo Johnson
Department of Mass Communication

Video Podcast Techniques and Procedures to Enhance Teaching Effectiveness and to Improve Student Learning
Video podcasting, or producing rich media content for downloading onto a hand-held, mobile device, such as a video iPod, is one of many digital frontiers that educators are exploring to enhance teaching effectiveness and to improve student learning. Not all of us, however, have an expertise in gathering images, editing them in a comprehendible way, and distributing them digitally to our intended audience, our students. In this project, I will experiment with various video podcast techniques and procedures, incorporate video podcasting as a key component into an academic course, and design a workshop for Iona College faculty and staff to introduce them to video podcast techniques and procedures.

Jeanne Matich Maroney
Department of Social Work

The Social Work Skills Project: Phase V
Launched and supported by multiple CELTIC Excellence in Teaching Awards (2003, 2005, 2006, 2007), the Social Work Skills Project has been designed to foster a competency-based approach to social work skill instruction and assessment. It is a collaborative undertaking of Iona, CNR and Concordia social work faculty, field instructors and students. Originally intended to be a time-limited, self-contained endeavor, the unfolding process of its first phase directed it on a modified course, and as a result, set the stage for a much broader undertaking.

Social work students in both undergraduate and graduate programs are required to use process recordings as a tool for learning in their field practica. Although we are well into the digital age, resources for students to complete process recordings and share them electronically with their field instructors have been limited to individual students/field instructors’ abilities to self-generate templates that can be shared via e-mail. In many instances, students spend considerable time setting up word processing files with the requisite columns that are typically limited to the entry of narrative text. In others, much time is expended on their manual completion (i.e., handwritten). The CD-ROM and its accompanying manual were intended to serve as a resource for social work students and their field instructors in the utilization of the process recording as a teaching and learning tool.

2008 Faculty Instructional Technology Award (FITA)

Lubomir Ivanov
Department of Computer Science

Project "iPhone"
The goal of this project is the investigation of the applicability of the Apple iPhone Software Development Kit (SDK) in educational setting. The project involves investigating the complexity of installing and using the Apple iPhone SDK for developing Apple iPhone applications as educational projects in a number of Computer Science courses.


Robert Lavelle and Margaret Smith
Department of Education

This project has two purposes: The first purpose is to help improve the experiences of students in mathematics classes at Iona College; the second purpose is to help teacher candidates to use technologies available in the schools.

This project focuses on two important issues of instruction: The use of calculators in the classroom and the use of presentation tools in classroom instruction. The advances in and availability of technology have been reflected in changes in both calculator functions and presentation tools (Gamble-Risley, 2006). These changes have made technologies not only more accessible, but raised the expectations of their use in classroom instruction. To examine the role of these technologies, the background section will look at the importance of each of the technologies in classroom instruction.