KCC Ovations
Professor Alyse Keller
Dr. Alyse Keller (Speech Communication) has been named an Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities Faculty Fellow for the 2021-2022 academic year. One of 51 scholars and teachers from across all CUNY two- and four- year campuses, the fellows will be divided into three cohorts to, as the fellowship notes, “spend the year sharing ideas and rethinking the role of the humanities classroom in preparing our students for their future careers and to contribute to a more just and equitable democratic future."
Keller will be responsible for creating a workshop, publication, or performance (a public event) by the end of her fellowship semester. It will be in collaboration with 2 or 3 other members of her fellowship cohort. She must create one assignment in her TLH approved courses that will engage practices and principles of active learning. Students enrolled will be referred to as Andrew W. Mellon Transformative Learning in the Humanities Student Scholars and can add that to their resumes/CVs and receive TLH funded MetroCards for their participation in the course.
"I understand active learning, in the context of this fellowship, to mean pedagogy that is student-centered and engages a diverse array of learners. With this in mind, one active learning strategy I will employ in my course is embodied/performative learning,” she said. "Generally, the concept of active learning is something I expect to learn more about during this fellowship as we will have three meetings in which we will share our ideas of active learning with each other."
The course Keller is teaching for this fellowship is titled Health Communication. She plans to use performance and narrative techniques to infuse the course with active learning pedagogy.
"I am thrilled to have the opportunity to collaborate with faculty members from across every campus at CUNY and brainstorm ways in which innovative and active pedagogy can help transform CUNY.” Keller has already participated in their first orientation meeting. "It was inspiring to learn what other faculty are achieving in their professional lives at CUNY. I walked away feeling reinvigorated and excited to begin work with my cohort of 18 faculty this fall.”
Keller looks forward to examining how a focused approach to active learning in the classroom is received by her students. "I hope it will make me a stronger teacher/scholar and I can bring that into the classroom with my students. "
In addition to her fellowship, on May 14, Keller chaired a panel titled Language & Technology at the 5th biennial meeting of the CUNY Language, Society, and Culture Conference, hosted by the Speech Program at Kingsborough and spearheaded by her colleague, Dr. Laura Spinu. The panel consisted of three presentations with topics ranging from digital communication systems in prisons to the use of text message emojis.