Course Development Grants

Elena V. Valdez - Graduate Student - English Department

that seeks liberation from the hierarchies of power that have structured the uneven relationships between race, class, gender, and sexuality and governed the politics of knowledge production. The course culminated with an oral history assignment that students conducted in small groups and in collaboration with the Chicana por mi Raza public humanities project. The grant funded a visit to Rice for Dr. Maria Cotera, Department of American Cultures, University of Michigan to conduct workshops with students.

Chase L. Lesane-Brown - Faculty - Department of Psychology

This course provided a review of psychological research and theories that address important issues of diverse individuals and families. The grant funded a former student of the course to serve as teaching assistant and organize current students in group service projects for children and families at service learning sites in the Houston community. Examples of the work done by students in the community were a college application pamphlet and well being 101 presentation. Pamphlets were mass produced to pass along to case managers and their clients within the refugee and service foundation. A student later wrote that "the service experiences were a big wake up call for a student like me. Sometimes I forget the struggles my parents went through to put me in the position to be successful and many of the assignments allowed me to go back in time with them as they informed me of how much has changed and where my family comes from."

Jayoung Song - Lecturer - Center for Languages and Intercultural Communications

The purpose of this course was to implement 360 virtual reality (VR) videos for the teaching and assessment of intercultural competence. After students developed the academic and cultural expertise to understand how language works and how much communication and understanding is both constrained and enabled by the linguistic resources we put to use in our everyday interactions through VR videos, students reached out to the Korean communities in Houston in order to volunteer with seniors and immigrants. The grant supported site visits intended to provide students with opportunities to bridge the gap between the study of language through data samples and real experiences in the local community.

Amanda Perkins Ball - Faculty - Department of Kinesiology

This course makes a significant contribution to the Sports Medicine Program curriculum because it examines the sports injury process from a psychological perspective. The grant funded a student-led symposium where students presented their theoretically-derived, psychological-based interventions for injured athletes to a small diverse panel of professionals from the Houston Community.

Krista Comer - Faculty - Department of English

The course allowed student researchers to venture together into Houston’s literary and art scenes in order to think about the economic marketplaces of American cultural institutions as well as their celebrated figures. To answer the question "What does a city’s literature tell us about the place, its history, its culture, or what is imagined as possible?" The grant supported class visits to arts venues in the city of Houston and two Rice undergraduates to prepare material for posting, conducting additional research, writing short essays, and offering their talents as readers and thinkers for the Literary Houston at Rice University Website. http://literaryhouston.rice.edu/