Professional Development

Part of the old SUNY Cortland Mission Statement states,

Our students gain skills, knowledge and conceptual understanding in their discipline; furthermore, they grow intellectually and acquire fundamental life skills and values. Among these are a desire to learn, an ability to think critically, an awareness of the excitement of discovery, an appreciation of diversity, and a respect for physical and emotional well-being.

I believe that faculty should grow intellectually. My desire to learn helps me develop abilities to think critically, help me be aware of the need for further discovery, enable me to appreciae diversity, and show respect for physical and emotional well-being. In the past four years, I have made consicous efforts to participate in many professional development activities. On this page, you will see an overview of major professional development experiences I had and you will review a list of activities I participated in since fall 2005.

Overview

I am a firm believer of lifelong learning. I'm committed to classroom instruction innovation and collaboration in curriculum development. SUNY Cortland provides a variety of professional development programs for new faculty. While teaching, scholarly work, and service keep me busy all the time, I committed myself to participating in professional development that has benefited my teaching, scholarly work, and service in this community. There are four major areas of professional development experiences that I benefited over the years: 1) Mastery of Subject Matter; 2) Grant writing; 3) Collaborating with local schools; and 4) Faculty development activities

1) Mastery of Subject Matter

A. Formal Preparation

Degree	Year	Institution	Major Area	Years in Residence
Ph.D.	2004	University of Georgia	Social Science Education	2000-2004
MA	1991	Beijing Foreign Studies University	American Studies	1988-1991
BA	1988	Beijing Foreign Studies University	English Literature	1984-1988

B. Status of Degree

Ph.D in Social Science Education, completed in 2004, in residence from fall 2000 to spring 2004, passed comprehensive exam in fall 2003.

Title of the Dissertation:

Developing High Order Thinking Skills: Chinese Graduate Students in Programs of Social Sciences, Humanities, and Education in the United States.

C. Experiences of Professional Development and Growth related to subject area

I have been actively participated in academic communities by being members of associations and organizations in the field of education. I am an active member of the following organization and associations and have been providing service to some of the listed organizations and societies.

AERA (American Educational Research Association) - since 2003 (confirmation of membership till December 2011)
Reviewers of AERA conference proposals since 2007
ASCD (American Supervision and Curriculum Development) - since 2005|
CIES (Comparative and International Education Society) - since 2008

Comparative International Education journal and CIES membership renewed until 2010 recently

CANDE (SIG under CIES)
The Citizenship and Democratic Education SIG
at http://cies.us/SIGS/CANDE/membership.htm

NYSCSS (New York State Council for the Social Studies) - since 2008
NCSS (National Council for the Social Studies) - since 2000

Comprehensive Member until 2012
International Assembly (Affiliated Organization under NCSS) Member since 2000
Reviewer for IA at NCSS since 2005
Member-at-Large since 2007
Coordinator of Adopt-A-School Project since 2008
Reviewers of NCSS/IA conference proposals since 2005

NCEE (National Council for Economics Education)

GATE Global Association of Teachers of Economics

I attend meetings and annual conferences of these organizations, submitted proposals, review proposals, chair presentations, present at these conferences, subscribed their journals, and submit to their journals for publications. It is through my membership of all these organizations that I keep up with the latest development in research in fields of social education, social studies curriculum and instruction, global education, and multicultural education. It is through the journals published by these origanizations that I learn how to integrate educational theories into best practices in my daily teaching, scholarly work, and service.

Journals that I subscribe and read on a regular basis include the following:

Rethinking School
Social Studies and the Young Learners
Social Education
Social Studies Practice and Research (Reviewers and editors of manscripts)
Comparative Eduation Review
Educational Leadership
Educational Researcher
American Educational Research Journal

Rethinking Schools is a wonderful organization that challenges us to reconsider what schools children reallyl need and learn from.

Due to the limited funds for traveling to conferences, I participated in online professional development workshops. While I have not recorded every webinar I have participated, I found them very useful, cost-efficient, and time-efficient. The technology allowed me to participate just as if I were in the same room with the presenters. Please click here to see one of the webinars I attended online about applying differentiated instructional strategies.

At the local level, the most exciting professional development activity in which I participated since my first reappointment was HIS 329 US Labor History and Films, taught by Dr. Randy Storch. I didn't take the course for credit, but I came to every session during the winter session of 2007 for four hours every day for 12 days. I read all the course reading assignments, watched films, and participated in analyzing the films and printed sources that helped me understand the U.S. labor history.

I still benefit from taking EDU630 -- Media In Classroom, a graduate course offered by Prof. Karl Klein from OCC -- Onoendaga Community College. I took it during fall 2006. With all the time committed to the course, I learned the whole suite of I-Mac software including I-tune, I-Photo, I-Movie, II-DVD, and GarageBand. I created a DVD for my students in EDU375 using I-Photo, I-Movie, and I-DVD to record their outdoor education experiences at Raquette Lake in spring 2006 and each of the following semesters. The skills I learned from this class greatly enhanced my instruction in the courses I have been teaching and helped me present with I-life software at the national conferences.

In spring 2009, I attended the Africana Dance class and learned how to integrate dances into elementary social studies curriculum and learned about Dr. Yomee Lee's instructional style from my observation. She provided her students with many opportunities throughout the semester to demonstrate their learning through public performances and service learning projects.

On April 22, 2009, I attended the whole day conference of NYSACE -- New York State Association of Comprehensive Education. The theme of this conference is Teaching Writing to Improve Reading K-8. Nevertheless, the presentations throughout the day were valuable to teaching writing at all levels including college level. The conference was co-hosted by NYSACE of Central New York Region and Center for Educational Exchange at SUNY Cortland. At the conference, Dr. Timothy Shanahan, University of Illinois at Chicago, shared with what research says about writing instruction, explored eleven approaches to writing instruction including strategy instruction, summarization, sentence combing, process approaches, explicit grammar teaching, and word processing, examined the relative effectiveness of these methods based on empirical research. In a different presentation, Dr. Shanahan shared with us the guidelines for making reading-writing connections. I learned that writing must be taught through the school curriculum and that writing must be one of our foci in college teacher education programs.

On April 25, 2009, I attended a whole-day professional development seminar for K-12 teachers while I was invited to make a presentation at the seminar on comparative textbook analsysis of different perspectives on the Korean War at the Five College Center for East Asian Studies, a regional association of NCTA - National Consortium for Teaching about Asia. Dr. George Kallender from Syracuse University presented on "An Introduction to Korea's Modern History" and Dr. Hongying Wang from Syracuse University presented on "China's Transformation and Challenges".

2) Grant Writing

I participated in grant writing workshops presented by Dr. David Bauers. Not only did I learn that there are grants available from both government and private organizations, but also I learned from Dr. Bauers how to become an effective teacher by using narratives. In spring 2009, I participated in the NSF's grant workshop in Binghamton University.

3) Collaborating with Local Schools

I participated in the PDS planning meetings. PDS, Professional Development Schools, is a new initiative at the School of Education, and will engage local school teachers and college faculty members to work together and provide the best learning experiences for the students in public schools. I have been faithfully attending all PDS planning meetings and hope to find a partner who will work with me to conduct some of the projects in his or her classroom so that such activities will benefit both pre-service teachers and young learners in the classroom.

4) Faculty Development Activities

I participated in a college-wide series of conversations on the topic of teaching for social justice and multicultural education. The series of conversations were sponored by sponsored by Teacher Education for Social Justice (TESJ) and the Faculty Development Center. This year-long exploration of the relationship between social justice, multiculturalism, and education in our classrooms and in the classrooms of our students enriched my teaching repertoir. One goal of this ongoing conversation is to discover and explore the ways our shared beliefs and values about our pedagogical practices and social justice and multiculturalism. Another goal was to build an interdisciplinary coalition of teacher educators interested in addressing the specific needs of our students and our teacher education programs. I would like to particicpate in more of such collaborative inquiries.

The writing workshops I attended helped me sharpen my skills of reviewing students' essays as a non-native English speaking instructor. As a professor of English in China, I taught writing for English majors in China and have been writing all the way up to accomplish the doctoral program in social science education. I believe writing helps one think reflectively and systematically. As course assignments, reflection essays and reading response essays are required for both undergraduate and graduate students. Tips I learned from writing workshops help me communicate with students by exchanging views about the assignments and grading rubrics. When students understand what is expected from them, they usually do a better job. I encourage students to help each other by way of peer review.

Writing workshops and portfolio development workshops not only have provided me with opportunities to meet with other faculty on campus, but also have presented valuable and feasible ways of organizing my research agenda and professional portfolio development for the reappointment review.

Attending the academic advisement training sessions hosted by Dr. Andrea Lachance and Prof. Karen Hempson made me confident to provide academic advisement for majors in our program. Through advisement, I have acquainted myself with the curriculum development processes and have been able to share my views on the curriculum that the department has been working laborously on in the past semesters.

I keep these programs in mind when I go to the classroom to teach. Teaching is never a discrete process. Instead, it is a holistic process during which one's beliefs, attitudes, values, knowledge, and skills all come into play.

Lists of Previous and Ongoing Professional Development Activities

This is not an exclusive list of the projects and programs in which I participated since my first reappointment. Most of them are provided at SUNY Cortland in the local community. But there are a couple of online seminars I attended and benefited from.

Here is the list of professional development I attended from June, 2013 to May 2014.

Here is the list of professional development I attended from May, 2012 to May 2013.

Here is the list of professional development I attended from May, 2011 to May 2012.

Here is the list of professional development I attended from June 1 2010 to May, 2011.

conference

Here is the list of professional development programs I attended from October, 2009 to Fall, 2010.

Here is the list of professional development programs I attended from March, 2008 to October, 2009.

Here is the list of professional development programs I attended from September 2006 to Feburary, 2008. (in reverse order)

Here is the list of professional development programs I attended from August, 2005 to September 2006.

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