NHV PDs

“Mindsets and Ideologies in Engineering: Understanding and Collapsing Technical/Social Dualism in the Context of NHV” 

Dr. Jon Leydens 

DESCRIPTION:

Most Mines students who graduate with an engineering degree know little about the culture of engineering except what they learn largely tacitly via their engineering coursework, internships, and limited interactions with professional engineering societies. Within the culture of both engineering education and engineering practice, how do engineers think about the relationship between the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems? Social here encompasses environmental, ethical, economic, political, cultural, and other issues.   

Research in this area indicates that within engineering education and engineering practice, the technical and social dimensions of engineering problems are treated as largely separate entities, even when they intersect substantively. But how and why? In this interactive professional development session, we will explore how and why certain mindsets and ideologies in engineering attempt to render social dimensions as largely irrelevant to framing and solving engineering problems; we will specifically explore the mindsets and ideologies that render social justice as seemingly irrelevant to engineering problem solving. Together, we will brainstorm ways to collapse rigid notions of technical/social dualism within the context of NHV (and other courses), seeking ways to move beyond an either/or approach (either a technical or a social focus) to a both/and approach.

Pre-Reading: Chapter 1 from Engineering Justice: Transforming Engineering Education and Practice (Leydens and Lucena, 2018).

“Save the Fish! Using a Town Hall Activity to Prepare Students for their Research Paper” 

Allyce Horan

DESCRIPTION:

Experiential activities provide students with opportunities to practice active listening, productive dialogue, teamwork, problem-solving skills, and reflection within a single class period. In this session, we will participate in a town hall-style activity where students will take on the roles of different stakeholders facing an environmental challenge that affects them in distinct ways. Teams work toward solutions and vote on the option they believe best addresses their needs. This exercise prepares students for their final research paper by offering an engaging, hands-on way to apply NHV course concepts while improving their understanding of audience.

“Alternative Approaches to Grading: Specifications, Labor-Based Grading, and Community Insights”

Heather Fester and Kim O’Connor

DESCRIPTION:

Are you interested in exploring alternative grading practices that can enhance student learning, clarify expectations, and potentially improve the grading process in your Nature and Human Values course? Join Kim O’Connor and Heather Fester for a facilitated discussion where they’ll explore different models of alternative grading currently being implemented by your colleagues in Nature and Human Values. In particular, this session will feature: 1.) A brief overview with definitions of the most popular alternative grading models, 2.) an in-depth look at specifications grading using a standardized NHV bundle system to assess learning in ethics and writing/research/presentation skills, and 3.) a discussion of how labor-based grading can be used to foster student ownership and responsibility for their work in the course. The second half of this engaging and practical session will be an open forum where we’ll discuss common challenges and solutions encountered with these models, and, most importantly, we want to hear from you! If you are already using or experimenting with alternative grading approaches—such as ungrading, specifications grading, contracts, labor-based grading, mastery/standards-based grading, or other methods—please come prepared to share your experience, insights, and questions with the group.

Two short articles on approaches to alternative grading will be assigned as pre-reading to ground our discussion. Reading 1 and Reading 2. You will also be encouraged to review Kim and Heather’s alternative grading policies (attached to the Sept. 29 email and calendar invite) and to bring your own if you have any!       

NHV Pizza Party

DESCRIPTION:

Every semester, NHV teams up with the Writing Center and the Arthur Lakes Library to offer a workshop specifically to assist with final research papers at any stage of the writing and research process. There will be stations to work with NHV faculty, writing consultants, and librarians—and of course, there will also be free pizza! Students can ask their professors questions or get help with citations and finding and evaluating sources. We will send out a flyer for the event very soon for you to share with students, and we ask that you try to be there and also remind students several times in between now and then about this opportunity for support with their research.

“Planning Assignments with AI in Mind”

Joe Vuletich 

DESCRIPTION:

In this PD session, we’ll workshop methods to catch, avoid, and potentially integrate AI-use into carefully constructed assignments. Starting with the assumption that generative AI reveals longstanding, implicit attitudes toward composition and communication in higher education and especially STEM classrooms, we’ll consider how to frame writing not merely as a tool for conveying thoughts, but also as a technique for thinking. How, in other words, can we design assignments that ask students to think through writing?

Given the relative novelty of GenAI, the methods Joe presents in this PD session are meant to be thought-provoking rather than prescriptive. After outlining 3-basic approaches to dealing with AI-use – punitive, preventative, and productive – and providing examples for each, Joe will open the PD session to a group discussion and development of different strategies for responding to AI in our writingassignments. By drafting different ideas about how to plan assignments with AI in mind, we will work (incrementally!) toward a time when we see AI as yet another transformative moment in this history of writing (not unlike the invention of the printing press, the widespread use of PCs, word processors, and spell-check, or the emergence of multimodal composition via the internet). Perhaps more importantly, we will work against the assumption that writing reflects the independent, individual thought of its author by collaboratively considering a topic too big for any one instructor.

NHV End-of-the-Semester Meeting 

DESCRIPTION:

Join us for the NHV EOTS, where we’ll discuss how the fall semester went and plan ahead for the spring semester. BOTS and EOTS meetings are required for all NHV faculty. Important administrative updates and discussions take place during these meetings along with valuable training for our work with students in HASS 100: Nature and Human Values. Lunch will be provided.

February 10 & 11 – NHV Listening Session – Professional Development 

With the changes resulting from the Executive Orders, this is an opportunity to gather as a program and community and discuss impacts on the work we do with students. You’re welcome to attend just to touch base with other NHV instructors and to reconnect with our community. We’ll have a relatively open agenda, and we’ll cover whatever is on your mind and heart right now. Light refreshments provided. Please bring your own lunch.  

February 19, 2025 – Teaching with AI HASS Reading Group led by Heather Fester

HASS faculty and NHV instructors will meet to discuss Teaching with AI by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. As a department community, we will explore GenAI’s impact on our classrooms, assignments, lesson plans, grading practices, and course or department policies. Please join us for the discussion and bring your own lunch. 

March 6, 2025 – NHV Pizza Party – Writing Center 

Every semester, NHV teams up with the Writing Center and the Arthur Lakes Library to offer a workshop specifically to assist with final research papers at any stage of the writing and research process. There will be stations to work with NHV faculty, writing consultants, and librarians—and of course, there will also be free pizza! Students can ask their professors questions or get help with citations and finding and evaluating sources.

March 11, 2025 – What’s with all the Killer Robots? An Exploration of the Ethical, Legal, and Social Implications of Artificial Intelligence Systems – with Laura Heller

The very fast-paced adoption of artificial intelligence systems into our daily lives and the even more advanced technologies on the horizon present serious regulatory challenges. This lecture presents some cases currently making their way through the courts to examine how the legal system is addressing these challenges, as one model for how to introduce the topic in undergraduate courses on engineering ethics, technology law and policy, or science fiction. 

April 1, 2025 – Cultivating Engaging Classroom Discussions with Trefny Faculty Developers Carter Moulton and Kira Marshall-McKelvey

Join us for a guided exploration of strategies for cultivating meaningful and engaging classroom discussions. During the workshop, we’ll explore a variety of proven strategies and discussion formats, as well as spend some time developing student-centered questions that we can apply to our next class session.

April 16, 2025 – Teaching with AI HASS Reading Group led by Heather Fester

HASS faculty and NHV instructors will meet to discuss Teaching with AI by José Antonio Bowen and C. Edward Watson. As a department community, we will explore GenAI’s impact on our classrooms, assignments, lesson plans, grading practices, and course or department policies. Please join us for the discussion and bring your own lunch. 

May 1, 2025

End of the Semester Meeting for NHV. 

 August 15, 2024, 9:30-11:00 am

Beginning of the Semester Meeting for NHV

September 30, 2024

Professional Development: Heather Fester, Jessica Salazar, Craig Hess, “Strategies for Engaging with Difficult Topics in the Classroom” 

Join us as we brainstorm and discuss potential strategies for when emotionally charged topics emerge in the classroom. Together with Mines HR Director Craig Hess and Mines Associate Counsel Jessica Salazar, we will consider how to juggle multiple perspectives in the midst of a charged conversation with students in NHV, which is especially important this semester with the impending election. In this interactive PD session, we’ll explore scenarios that might occur or have occurred in the classroom. We ask that you come ready to engage and also to share your own experiences, insights, and pedagogical strategies. Lunch will be provided. 

October 14, 2024

Professional Development: Heather Fester, “NHV Research Essay Workshop” 

One of the most mysterious parts of the NHV curriculum is the signature research paper. Different instructors have tried different approaches to this assignment over time with varying results. We invite you to bring your current paper assignment sheet and workshop it with your fellow instructors. We will start the session by inventory-ing a list of approaches and we hope to send you off with some ideas for preparing your students for the research essay. Lunch will be provided. This session can be joined by Zoom if you want to attend but aren’t on campus on Mondays.

October 23, 2024

Professional Development: Kim O’Connor and Joe Vuletich, “Getting Our Hands Dirty in NHV: Teaching through Tactile Activities” 

Looking for ideas about how to teach writing or ethical concepts in more hands-on, interactive ways? If so, this may be the PD session for you! In it, we’ll explore some materials-based approaches to teaching key HASS100 concepts. These include examining biases and blind spots through the use of optical illusions, playing with literal lenses (e.g., binoculars, kaleidoscopes) to understand how sources can shape what we see in a reading, building spaghetti towers to test the value of failure and cooperative learning, and cutting up paper handouts to explore the “big three” ethical frameworks and sentence structure. You’ll leave with several activities that can engage students and help make abstract ideas tangible and memorable. Lunch will be provided. 

October 30, 2024

NHV Pizza Party 

Every semester, NHV teams up with the Writing Center and the Arthur Lakes Library to offer a workshop specifically to assist with final research papers at any stage of the writing and research process. There will be stations to work with NHV faculty, writing consultants, and librarians—and of course, there will also be pizza! Students ask their professors questions or get help with citations and finding and evaluating sources. We will send out a flyer for the event very soon for you to share with students, and we ask that you try to be there and also remind students several times in between now and then about this opportunity. 

November 5, 2024

Professional Development: Ryan Lambert, “Using Games to Teach Ethical Frameworks: Exploring Pedagogy and Game Studies” 

In this professional development training, participants will learn how to use games to teach ethical frameworks. This session will explore pedagogy and game studies, and participants will play some games. Lunch will be provided. 

December 5, 2024

End of the Semester Meeting for NHV

January 8, 2024, 9:30-11:00 am

Beginning of the Semester Meeting

January 24, 2024

Professional Development: Comparative Ethics II with Dr. Heather Fester

This is a continuation of the Comparative Ethics PD last semester where we will explore a variety of ethical frameworks from across the world. Through short readings and open discussion, you will learn about ethical systems not often studied.   

February 12, 2024

Generative AI Learning Community with Dr. Heather Fester and NHV instructors

The NHV learning community has rotated topics each semester. This semester, join us as we read and discuss current scholarship on generative AI in the writing classroom. Bring your questions and see you online! 

February 26, 2024

Professional Development: Skillshare with Dr. Mairead Case

Dr. Case will share some assignments and classroom tools that have worked especially well over the years in NHV, and then we’ll have a full group roundtable where you can ask questions and share your own resources (specifically, for assignments, texts, or activities you’ve found especially useful for promoting student success or activating key components of NHV). Everyone leaves with some time saved and something new (hopefully also exciting) to try!

March 27, 2024

Professional Development: Recent Developments in Continental Ethics: Levinas and Badiou with Chris Johnson

This PD highlights two of the most significant contributions to continental ethics in the latter half of the 20th century. Though well known in Francophone philosophy, neither Emmanuel Levinas nor Alain Badiou are regularly invoked in discussions on environmental ethics. In order to add to the variety of voices and traditions consulted in environmental philosophy, this PD will consider in what ways these two disparate thinkers might offer solutions to the sorts of questions now familiar to NHV students. Badiou’s attack on what he considers the two poles of contemporary ethics (one Kantian, one Levinasian) will serve as the point of departure for our discussion. After surveying the ethical content of each figure’s work, including their similarities and differences, we’ll conclude by considering in what ways each may proffer answers to pressing questions in environmental ethics. 

April 22, 2024

Professional Development: Some Uses for Poetry in NHV with Dr. Chad Brockman

In this workshop, we will look at poetry as a type of “good writing” that is relevant in our courses and deserves more consideration by NHV students. During the workshop, Dr. Brockman will solicit everyone’s thoughts about ways—and reasons—we might try to incorporate poems and poetic uses of language in our teaching. Also, a few sample poems will be explored. 

May 2, 2024

End of the Semester Meeting

August 18, 2023

Beginning of the Semester Meeting 

September 22, 2023

Professional Development: GEM Anscombe’s Philosophy of Intention Regarding Tech with Dr. Nate McCabe

A philosopher active at the University of Oxford in the midcentury, G.E.M. Anscombe (also known as Elizabeth Anscombe), was a student of Ludwig Wittgenstein who translated his Philosophical Investigations into English, a friend of Philippa Foot, a mother to seven children, the coiner of the term “consequentialism,” and a formidable challenger of the philosophical status quo. While well-known in the fields of analytic philosophy and ethics, her thought has rarely been brought into conversation with the philosophies of technology and engineering, especially in the ways they are discussed in NHV. This talk remedies that neglect by introducing the general tendencies of her thought and highlighting their relevance to questions regarding the use of nuclear force, the weight of an action’s “effects” in ethical consideration, and her important ideas about an action’s “intentions.” 

September 25 & October 24, 2023

Alternative Grading Learning Community (NHV) – with Dr. Heather Fester and NHV Instructors

In this NHV learning community, we will explore the book Ungrading by Susan Blum and talk about possible applications of alternative grading principles in NHV courses.

October 23 and 24, 2023

Professional Development: Research Essay Workshop with Dr. Heather Fester

One of the most mysterious parts of the NHV curriculum is the signature research paper. Different instructors have tried different approaches to this assignment over time with varying results. We invite you to bring your current paper assignment sheet and workshop it with your fellow instructors. We will start the session by inventory-ing a list of approaches and we hope to send you off with some ideas for preparing your students for the research essay.

November 6, 2023

Professional Development: Media and Information Literacy with Sam Reichman 

In this PD, we’ll discuss how to prepare students to conduct strong research in the age of digital media and disinformation. Topics include ways to create a safe, brave environment for students to share their opinions and analyses; the broader context of the media landscape, including professional media consolidation and amateur media proliferation; ethics in journalism; polarization and media bias; and techniques for identifying and dispelling mis/disinformation 

November 16, 2023

Professional Development: Comparative Ethics with Dr. Heather Fester

In this PD, we will explore a variety of ethical frameworks from across the world. Through short readings and open discussion, you will learn about ethical systems not often studied in NHV.  

December 11, 2023

End of the Semester Meeting

January 7 and 8, 2023  

NHV Faculty Retreat 

January 8, 2023

Beginning of the Semester Meeting

February 14, 2023 

Professional Development: Unleashing Creativity in the NHV Classroom with Kimberly O’Connor

In this lunchtime PD, we’ll identify the defining characteristics of “creativity” and some reasons why we should devote time and space to open-ended, arts-based activities in the NHV classroom. Then, we’ll engage in a collage project that invites us to explore some big questions related to NHV, and wrap up by reflecting on the process, as well as what challenges and rewards exist in adding similar activities in our own course schedules. 

February 27, 2023 

Professional Development: Building Rapport with Students with Anna Angeli

Join us for a workshop on building student rapport. Prof. Angeli will  share a few of her assignments/methods, and then she will ask everyone to share something that works well for them in a discussion. 

March 15, 2023

Professional Development: “Good People, Well Spoken”: Rhetoric, Ethics, and Teaching Writing with Dr. John Duffy

Scholars of public argument have documented the polarization, irrationality, and dysfunction characteristic of contemporary public discourse, a condition widely perceived to undermine democratic practice and weaken the bonds of civic culture. We seem increasingly incapable, as political theorist Danielle S. Allen puts it, of “talking to strangers,” or engaging those with whom we disagree . 

In this talk, Dr. Duffy argues that teachers of writing and students learning rhetoric have a central role to play in addressing the dysfunctions of contemporary public argument. This is so because the teaching and learning of writing always and inevitably involves the teaching of ethics and ethical discourse practices, or what Dr. Duffy calls the “rhetorical virtues” of honesty, generosity, humility, intellectual courage, and related dispositions. Should teachers of writing engage the ethical dimensions of their work in the classroom, they can provide students with a healthier, more constructive model of argument that may have implications for public discourse and the common good. 

April 18, 2023

Professional Development: End of Semester and Reflection Activities with Laura Heller

After a long semester, with the pressure building inexorably towards exams and final papers, students (and instructors) may be feeling overwhelmed, stressed, discouraged, or burnt out, or just wondering what it was all about.    

Come join us to learn about and share ways to end the semester effectively and meaningfully, by integrating lessons from the semester, final portfolio activities, and the last days of class.  

We will discuss the purpose and requirements of the final NHV portfolio, focusing on the creative project aspect, and we will share ideas and examples for using that assignment to end the semester on a reflective and positive note.  We will also share some ideas for creative last-day-of-class activities that are independent of the portfolio requirements. 

May 4, 2024 

End of the Semester Meeting

August 18, 2022 

Beginning of the Semester Meeting

September 26 and 29, 2022  

Professional Development: Why and How [and How Not to] Use Case Studies to Teach Ethics to Engineering Students with Dr. Ali Kerr

October 24 and 25, 2022  

Professional Development: #LandBack: Content and Conversations with Meredith Parker

Prof. Parker will be sharing information, materials, and reflections on the Indigenous rights movement in South Dakota. 

December 8, 2022 

End of the Semester Meeting