Please welcome the inaugural issue of the CMC’s very own literature and art journal, Rocky Mountain Reflections. The first issue features both written and visual art work, submitted by students, faculty, and staff.

Print copies are making their way to each campus. The journal is also available online at http://coloradomtn.edu/library/rmr. If you are interested in printing it out yourself, please see attached information.

It is our hope that the journal will become a home for all facets of creative arts, providing a forum for the Colorado Mountain College community to share fresh ideas, extraordinary stories, and unique visions. Rocky Mountain Reflections addresses and fulfills many of CMC’s college-wide learning outcomes and adds another program to our growing roster of measures to increase our students’ personal and academic success.

Rocky Mountain Reflections will be published twice a year, at the end of spring and fall semesters. The success of the journal will greatly depend on your continuous support. Please encourage students to submit their work for publication. We are accepting submissions year-round: http://coloradomtn.edu/library/rmr/submit/.

TESOL Conference

Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages, Inc. (TESOL)

April 5th, 2010.

We are all busy at CMC and finding time to attend a conference can be a challenge. Having just returned from the national TESOL conference in Boston, I am reminded of the value. Learning new approaches, getting new ideas and networking with colleagues in my field is invaluable for my work in both ESL and pre college English classes. Here is a glimpse of what I gained by attending.

First, from “Beyond This I Believe” presented by Kate Spike, Director of Bowling Green State University, I learned how students are using StoryCorps, NPR, AARP and Frontline to enhance speaking and listening skills and learn about the culture of the United States. This particular project was on Aging. Students first did research using the following websites. Next, they visited the local senior center where they were matched with a partner whom they interviewed and recorded. They then created a story which they presented.



Useful Websites
StoryCorps http://www.storycorps.org/
National Public Radio http://www.npr.org/
NPR StoryCorps: http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4516989
AARP: http://www.aarp.org/
List of resources on Aging http://www.fanlight.com/webresources.php
Frontline Living Old http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/livingold/view/
Do you Speak American? http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/map/map.html/

Second, along with other CMC instructors, I visited Harvard’s Bridge program. Each section of the program was described in detail and we each learned of a different aspect. This flowchart outlines this progressive and forward thinking program Harvard has in place for its employees.


Besides three days of conferencing, I had a chance to see why Bostonians are so proud of their city.

I am so thankful to CMC for allowing me the opportunity to attend this conference.
Jennifer le Roux
Professor Adult Basic and Developmental Education, Alpine Campus.

E-Learning Consortium of Colorado Conference

 Keynoter: Rovy Branon from ADL Co-Lab

Hi All,

I attended the ELCC Conference on April 14 - 16 in Vail with several CMC colleagues: Daryl Yarrow, Susan Herman, Gabe Aguilar, Suzanne Thompson, Kathy-Kiser Miller,our Emeritus Peter J, and Louis Beatty (one of the two elite technoraties with an Ipad). This remains my favorite Rocky Mountain conference because it is by and for two and four-year colleagues for peer-teaching sessions by both the tech support and instructional side of the house.

Our own college was active in those contributions. Susan and Kathy gave a great session Friday morning on the the use of Voicethread to create a faculty tutorial and for use by learners in two of Kathy's classes.

One inviting aspect of this conference is that it is a safety net for presenting teaching and learning technologies in progress. Hotel networks are notorious for their lack of dependability, especially with hands-on lab sesssions. Kathy, Suzanne, and I were involved in two presentations in Second Life that had big challenges, but the celebration of poetry month in Second Life out did the challenges. We had readers both in-world and from the conference lab.

Thank you, Margaret Maxwell, for reading your wonderful work from Aspen in-world. Thank you, Kathy Kizer-Miller for bringing Lindsey Royce's work to the world, and thank you Suzanne for sharing your talent. As I tweeted that day at elcc#10: "The poets are reading. Good medicine :)."

And a little about the poetry event at Colorado EduIsland. The community colleges of Colorado have been meeting for about a year on this shared virtual space to determine policy, practice, appearance and events by single schools or across schools. Rhonda Dove (ProCo Clarity) is an extraordinary builder and has given a lion's share to helping the community come into practice. Cheryl Comstock (Ize Messmer) has given an enormous amount of time to leadership and communication. Kathy Kizer-Miller (Miranda Menjou) has been one or our invaluable participants as a faculty member who is has quite a bit of experience using Second Life as one aspect of classes she teaches. I have not included all steering committee members here, but this collaborative experience is a hopeful one, and we think we are just starting to see it taking off as another opportunity to meeting and learning across the miles.

The next celebration of poetry month is this week on Colorado EduIsland at 10 MDT on Wed. This group will be already attending a global online conference and the celebration is one of the sessions. Again, there will be scheduled poets and an open mic. Please let me know if you would like to be listed as a scheduled poet.

As a last note, I tend to listen to the keynoters at this conference to talk about the cutting edge. I came away with a couple concepts: Faculty Entrepreneurialism and "The University of One" and more talk about augmented reality and the use of phone to read compacted information in QR (scanner) codes through the phone cameras. I spent Saturday playing with the QR and wrote about it here With many students having camera phones, they could be used to construct a campus scavenger hunt :).

So there you have it, loved this conference. Stay tuned to more about it from our various attendees :).

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Adjunct Faculty News!

/AdjFacNews7%21.pdf

Joyce Mosher Shares Materials: Student Performance of Texts

Joyce Devlin Mosher, Associate Professor of English Communications at Summit, presented Sound Practices: Performing College Reading and Writing at two conferences recently: the National First Year Experience Conference in Denver in February, 2010, and Teaching English at the Two-Year College Conference in Little Rock in October, 2009. Drawing on current research, Joyce has developed methods that make student voices and performed texts the central learning events in the classroom: Download a Copy of Sound Practices

The booklet contains many sample exercises that can be adapted to any college classroom and faculty training program. Contact Joyce with your ideas and questions, as this pedagogical approach is a work in progress.

Delectable Curriculum Innovation: An Interview with Todd Rymer

Why is Todd Studying a Seed Catalog?

As a food professional, Todd Rymer, Director of Culinary Education at the Vail /Eagle Valley Campus has been following Chefs Collaborative, one of the first organizations to directly connect chefs with food growers, for over a dozen years. Todd helped found a Slow Food convivia (chapter) in the Vail Valley about six years ago. Slow Food is an international organization promoting food that is “good, clean, and fair.” The movement focuses on local food as well as food free of chemicals, and food that provides a fair wage for the agricultural growers.

In addition to these important issues, a sustainable foodservice operation must also consider issues of energy, water consumption, chemicals, equipment, to-go containers, recycling and marketing of “green” practice. About three years ago, CMC added a course in Sustainable Cuisine to the CCCNS. As consumers and foodservice operators have further embraced sustainability, market research provided support to move this knowledge and practice into the CMC curriculum – an academic process that requires patience in the face of curriculum development that can still be timely and competitive.

So starting next fall, CMC will offer a certificate in Sustainable Cuisine Operations. In addition to many of the culinary courses already in the curriculum, the certificate includes: Intro to Sustainable Cuisine, Sustainable Food Operations and a revised course that adds vegan and vegetarian entrees preparation to Center of the Plate courses that formerly focused on beef, pork, poultry, and seafood entrees. As the certificate is expanded, courses will be offered in agro-ecology to help students learn about the environmental impacts of food production for restaurants that not only buy food, but grow it.

As we ended our conversation last week, I noticed a seed catalog on his desk—why was it on his desk? It’s part of his ongoing professional development—he’s taking a Colorado Master Gardner’s Class to forward his own expertise and share that development back with the newest of practices.