Faculty Focus-October 8, 2024
Faculty members put their knowledge into action so students and others are able to benefit from it. Recently, faculty presented at conferences, won awards, published books and articles, and were accepted into fellowships.
Jennifer Baker
Assistant Professor of Design in Performance and Communication Arts Jennifer Baker recently presented at the national conference for the Association for Theatre in Higher Education in Atlanta. She participated in multiple panel discussions in Disability, Theatre, and Performance (DTAP) and in Innovations in Pedagogical Models in Teaching Theatre with the Music Theatre Dance Association (MTDA). Her presentations focused on the intersection of visual design practices with critically underrepresented groups and culturally relevant topics.
She presented "Rest is Resistance in Design" during the DTAP Panel Discussion, offering practical applications of Tricia Hersey's text as an interactive protest against conventional narratives. The focus is on integrating stillness and purposeful rest into the creative process for theatre makers, encouraging a freer design process by overcoming internal criticism to foster abstract ideas and visual research. Additionally, she shared "Seeing Each Other: Connection Across Difference through Personal Narrative and Design Imagery" at the Innovations in Pedagogy in Theatre in Higher Education: A Gallery Walk 2024. This presentation featured exercises for students to collect visual research, enhance editing skills, and engage in personal narrative discussions. By listening and taking risks, students broaden their design perspectives, learning from diverse experiences.
Baker's presentation in Innovations in Pedagogy in Theatre in Higher Education is included in a collective submission for publication in the 1st Edition Issue of MusicTheatreDance: The Journal of the Music Theatre Dance Association in Fall 2024/ Winter 2025, through MDTA.
Pedro Ponce
Associate Professor of English Pedro Ponce has won the 2024 Tom La Farge Award for Innovative Writing, Teaching, and publishing. The annual $10,000 award is designed to encourage and foster literary activity that combines serious play, imagination, erudition, and innovative practice. He will be presented the award at the Grolier Club in New York City on Friday, October 11.
According to the Tom La Farge Award website, "The consensus of the committee was very strong that [Ponce’s] fiction exemplifies the spirit of serious play and innovative practice that the award seeks to encourage. Pedro is also a devoted teacher of creative writing and literature."
Ponce is the author of The Devil and the Dairy Princess (Indiana University Press, 2021), winner of the Don Belton Fiction Prize and finalist for the 2021 Big Other Book Award for Fiction. Ponce is also the author of Stories After Goya, Alien Autopsy, and Superstitions of Apartment Life. His short stories and flash fiction have appeared in Ploughshares, Copper Nickel, Witness, and other journals. His work has also been featured in anthologies such as The Best Small Fictions 2019, New Micro: Exceptionally Short Fiction, and Boundaries Without: The Calumet Editions 2017 Anthology of Speculative Fiction. His work has been recognized with a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, and with residencies at Ragdale, the Vermont Studio Center, and the Virginia Center for Creative Arts. He teaches writing and literary studies at St. Lawrence University, where he was recently appointed to the William L. Fox Professorship in Public Health.
Jessica Madden
Visting Instructor of Dance Jessica Madden presented at the National Dance Education Organization's Annual Conference in Seattle on October 1. The theme of the conference was "Revitalize: Breathing New Life into Your Dance Programs and Teaching Methods," and her presentation, "Dance & Mental Health: Pedagogical Considerations," addressed the mental health benefits of both physical activity and the arts, especially within the field of dance education. Coming from the perspective of six years teaching dance within university-level general education curriculum – before, during, and “after” the pandemic – she explored the question: “How can we be intentional about modeling and creating space for mental-health-supportive practices in both the framing and implementation of our pedagogy, and for ourselves as educators?” She also explored some simple but effective methodologies that can go a long way towards supporting students’ mental health, giving them tools they can incorporate into their lives long after they leave class. Time was also spent considering how educators can model healthy practices, through transparency, boundary setting, and self-care."
Zhenjun Zhang
Professor of Chinese and Coordinator of Asian Studies Zhenjun Zhang has published a new book, Classic Chinese Poems of Morning and Texts of Lament (co-edited with Victor Mair).
Similar to Western elegies and eulogies in nature, poems of mourning and texts of lament were composed and celebrated over 3,000 years in China. They are central to the Chinese literary tradition but have been largely unknown to English readers.
Including 120 major pieces by leading literary figures from 800 BCE–1800, this volume is the first English anthology of classic Chinese poems of mourning and texts of sacrificial offering and has been praised by well-known scholars in the field. With annotated translations by leading scholars and reading guides accompanying each piece, this book reveals a powerful literary heritage to students and serious readers of Chinese literature, history, and civilization.
Alanna Gillis
Assistant Professor of Sociology Alanna Gillis recently published the article, "Why Hyflex Teaching Should Not Become the New Normal in Higher Education" with co-author Alleigh Szabo '24.
This research project started the first semester both student and professor began at St. Lawrence and it is now successfully published and available during Szabo’s first semester at Penn State, where she is pursuing a Ph.D. in educational psychology. Her research interests in grad school pertain to social-emotional learning as a primary intervention for mental health challenges, social-emotional program implementation (i.e., professional development, evidence-based programs), and community partnership in research, design, implementation, and evaluation.
Amanda Oldacre
In February 2024, Assistant Professor of Chemistry Amanda Oldacre was accepted into the Nielsen Center for the Liberal Arts Early Career Teaching Workshop. This is a year-long fellowship that includes travel to three separate sessions at the Nielsen Center for the Liberal Arts at Eckerd College.
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