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Alumna earns Fulbright Teaching Assistantship in Greece
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Carly Rousseau '14 is on her way to Greece. An experienced traveler who studied abroad during her undergraduate years, Rousseau recently earned a Fulbright Teaching Assistantship for the next academic year. "I am beyond ecstatic to have this opportunity," she said. "I cannot wait for my time abroad."
While waiting to travel overseas, Rousseau will continue to concentrate on her job as a social worker for the Department of Children and Families (DCF) in Springfield, Massachusetts. "I developed a passion for promoting child welfare and DCF is an amazing opportunity to make an impact," Rousseau said. "I have the opportunity to strengthen families by giving them access to the resources and support they need to succeed as a family."
Rousseau's path to DCF and Greece was paved by her studies at UMass Dartmouth and her experiences after graduation. After graduation, she stayed at UMass Dartmouth working as a study abroad advisor in the International Programs Office. After this, she worked as a long-term substitute teacher in a middle school and as a residential caseworker at a girls' home. "My degree has allowed me to hold positions in a variety of fields," Rousseau said. "Every opportunity may not have been my dream job, but every new position was a learning experience that allowed me to decide what I do and do not want in my career."
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Dr. Jennifer Koop earns NOAA grant to work with Atlantic sea scallops
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When Dr. Jennifer Koop joined the Biology Department in September 2015, she brought her passion for parasites with her. Earning her PhD in Biology from the University of Utah and completing her post-doctoral work at the University of Arizona, Koop's research aims to answer a big question - how and why are parasites successful invaders? "The ability to predict how parasites will affect hosts across spatial and temporal scales is important from both scientific and conservation perspectives," she said.
An evolutionary biologist, Dr. Koop focuses her research on three systems - Darwin's finches, aquatic faucet snail, and Atlantic sea scallops. In her research, Koop explores the interactions between each of these host organisms and the parasites that infect them.
Most recently,
Koop was awarded a grant from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration for her proposal, "Transmission of apicomplexan infection and development of gray meat in Atlantic sea scallops, Placopecten magellanicus." The proposal was submitted with Susan Inglis, who will be joining Koop as her research associate. "Over the next two years, we will conduct a number of experiments aimed at identifying the progression of gray meat symptoms in Atlantic sea scallops," Koop said. "
Our research is likely to have a major impact on the local community because we will be providing fisherman and policy makers with the information they need to design better management practices for Atlantic sea scallop fishing."
Not only does Koop's research impact the local community, it also impacts her students.
Her students are involved in all components of her research, learning biological skills both at the bench and in the field. The experiments they carry out in the lab can be used as case-studies and classroom examples. "My students earn a unique opportunity to ask questions about everything−from the justification for the study, to the rationale for the design, to the interpretation of the results," Koop said.
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AEPL Conference: Deep Reading: Reinventing Identity through Imagination
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On June 23rd - 26th, UMass Dartmouth hosted the Assembly for Expanded Perspectives on Learning (AEPL) for a conference titled "Deep Reading: Reinventing Identity through Imagination." As an official assembly of the National Council of Teachers of English (NCTE), the AEPL explored layers of literacy−from immersion to reflection−in hopes of suggesting a pedagogical shift and expanded ways of thinking about how individuals and schools approach teaching and learning.
Supported by the College of Arts and Sciences, the College of Visual and Performing Arts (CVPA), the Associate Provost for Graduate Studies, and the Graduate Student Senate, the conference called for a transformative education where reading, identity, and imagination offer hope to us all. UMass Dartmouth Professor Dr. Maureen Hall, one of the co-organizers of the conference, believes that deep reading provides a connection to the self and to others. "Deep reading is a kind of counterculture," Hall said. "It is a foil to the surface kinds of education that are promoted in the high-stakes' testing environments that are the current reality in most K-12 settings."
From UMass Dartmouth, Dr. Robert Waxler and Dr. Ricardo Rosa were featured keynote speakers. Dr. Waxler, an Associate Professor in the English department, discussed the benefits of deep reading, the role of narrative in our lives, and how deep reading is integral to the Changing Lives through Literature (CLTL) program. His work exemplifies the power of language as a conduit for traveling inward to our most private selves and outward to our communities. He reminds us of the centrality of linguistic narrative to our personal and communal journeys towards understanding human identity.
Dr. Ricardo Rosa is an Assistant Professor of Educational Leadership at UMass Dartmouth. His current research centers on emerging articulations of educational privatization and its effects on organizational behavior in educational settings and possibilities for transformative leadership. His research also focuses on curricular theory and praxis within and beyond the boundaries of normative schooling. Dr. Ricardo Rosa's talk was entitled, "Literacy and High-Stakes' Testing Disaster Education: The Detaining of Bodies and the Arresting of Minds."
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