Monthly Archives: September 2018

Important message from President Austin

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Dear USC students,

 

The university is committed to maintaining a safe environment for you.  Our department of public safety (DPS)—one of the very best in the nation—works around the clock to ensure your wellbeing.  However, as DPS reminds us all: safety is a shared responsibility.  This means looking out for yourselves, and for each other, especially when those around you are putting themselves at risk.

 

The website http://safety.usc.edu provides detailed information about safety at USC.  I encourage you to visit this site, to download the free mobile safety app LiveSafe, and to familiarize yourself with USC’s resources and safety tips.  A few specific reminders are:

  • Be aware of your surroundings: if something doesn’t feel right, it probably isn’t.
  • If you see something, say something.  Don’t hesitate to contact DPS.  Program DPS’s phone numbers into your phone, and familiarize yourself with the emergency phones, both on and off campus.
  • Don’t walk alone off campus after dark.  Take advantage of Campus Cruiser or Lyft, or use the safe-walk feature in the LiveSafe mobile safety app.
  • Be aware that intoxicated or distracted individuals are more vulnerable to crimes or injuries.  Being on a phone or wearing headphones can diminish your personal safety awareness.
  • If you or someone around you needs help dealing with life changes, anxiety or depression, or other personal issues, reach out to the Counseling and Mental Health team in USC Student Health.

 

The contact information for the resources above can be found at http://safety.usc.edu or on the attached list.  Keep it handy!

 

We all benefit from living in one of the largest and most dynamic cities in the world, but it also requires that we proactively exercise good judgement.  Please take an active role in ensuring your own safety—and the safety of those around you.

 

Fight On!

 

Wanda M. Austin

Interim President

 

Safety resources sheet

Farewell to the EdD Office

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Good Afternoon Trojans,

I wanted to take this time, to let all of you know that I will be leaving the EdD Program’s Office on Wednesday October 10th.  I have recently accepted a Student Advisor II position with Rossier’s PHD office.  I want to personally thank all of the students I have encountered in my two years within the EdD office.  You all have made my time within the office worthwhile.  I’m glad to have been granted the opportunity to meet many of you personally and learn your stories.  I was fortunate enough to witness many of the students from the cohort of 2015 graduate this past Spring Semester.  You all will always hold a special place in my heart, as you were the first students I began advising when I came into the office two years ago.  All students who have questions and concerns should continue to contact me over the next week and a half.  I will update Terri and Jordan regarding any pending academic cases.  After October 10th, students may directly contact Jordan Brown, Terri Thomas, or the EdD office’s account at rsoeedd@rossier.usc.edu with any questions.  Continue to make meaningful and impactful work in the field of education and as always….

 

Fight On!

 

 

Evan Williams, M.Ed.

Academic Advisor, EdD Program

University of Southern California
USC Rossier School of Education

Waite Phillips Hall 404D

 

Campus Supports in light of yesterday’s hearings

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Many of us followed yesterday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing and heard the testimony of Dr. Ford and Mr. Kavanaugh. For some of us, strong emotions were raised by what we heard. We want to let you know that there are resources at USC to help you process your responses.

If you were in the past or currently are affected by a situation related to gender and power-based harm, you can receive confidential on-call counseling from USC’s Relationship and Sexual Violence Prevention and Services (RSVP), which you can reach by calling (213) 740-4900.

If you are concerned for a fellow student or friend, and you would like advice on how to navigate this environment as you support that person, you can connect with USC’s Student Counseling Services by requesting an appointment at usc.edu/myshr.

As always, your student services team in your program office wants to know how you are doing and we welcome hearing from you.

Sincerely,

EdD Program Office Team

Free Computing Resources for USC Students

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Dear USC Student:

I sincerely hope that your semester is off to a great start. On behalf of USC’s Information Technology Services (ITS), I would like you to be aware of the many free resources that we provide to students, as well as the significant improvements that we made to USC’s network over the summer.

Free Resources:

To help you with your studies and other activities, you can:

 

Visit itservices.usc.edu/students to find additional resources.

 

Network Upgrade:

 

We are happy to announce that we have now upgraded the Wi-Fi in 98 buildings across campus, including the Tutor Campus Center and the Norris Medical Library.

 

  • For information about the upgrade status of a specific building, visit our network upgrade map.

       

Keep Up with ITS: 

 

  • Follow us on Twitter at twitter.com/USCITServices for timely notifications about service issues and helpful information about new services.
  • Check out the Information Security blog at it-security.usc.edu for up-to-date info on the latest email scams and other online safety tips.

 

The ITS Customer Support Center offers online, email, walk-up, and phone support. See itservices.usc.edu/contact for more details.

 

Best wishes for a successful term,

 

Doug

 

Douglas Shook, PhD

Chief Information Officer

Information Technology Services

University of Southern California

Los Angeles, California 90089-2812

Itservices.usc.edu

 

CRESST conference

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Conference schedule may be viewed at https://cresstcon.org/schedule-page/

Conference Overview:

 

Please join us for CRESSTCON’18, October 1-2 at UCLA’s Luskin Center for a conference unlike any other.  This year’s conference theme is Learning Together: Building Partnerships to Accelerate Excellence and Equity. CRESSTCON unites educators, researchers, and developers from around the world with a common vision of sharing our best practices and improving the academic outcomes of every student.

 

At CRESSTCON’18 you will engage with an unparalleled group of leaders in the fields of educational technology, policy, and economics and participate in discussions on the latest global trends and opportunities in education. Our keynote speakers this year are Bror Saxberg, Vice President, Learning Science at Chan Zuckerberg Initiative (CZI) and Marcelo M. Suárez-Orozco, the Wasserman Dean, UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Our renowned speakers will share their experiences of overcoming roadblocks, building bridges, and working with other practitioners to accelerate excellence and equity. Please see our schedule of events for more details.

 

Register today — use the promo code, cress18, to get $50 off the registration rate.

Fall Book Club at USC Rossier

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Dear USC Rossier Faculty, Staff and Students,

I’m happy to announce the next book in our USC Rossier Book Club: There There, by Tommy Orange.

Our school-wide discussion will take place in the Radisson Ballroom on Wednesday, Nov. 7, 2018, from noon until 2 pm. Lunch will be provided, so please RSVP by Oct. 12.

Books can be picked up in WPH 1100 beginning Tuesday, Sept. 25,  10 am–noon or 2 pm–4 pm, Tues–Fri, until Fri., Oct. 12. Please note that your acceptance of the book indicates your commitment to read it and participate in our discussion!

We also welcome remote participants to take part in the discussion. Please provide a mailing address if you will need the book shipped to you. A link to the virtual classroom will be provided closer to the date of the Book Club.


Part of the Rossier Way

We launched our book club last spring as part of a new initiative, “The Rossier Way,” which is designed to cultivate a culture of caring and support among faculty, staff and students. I am hosting the book clubs in partnership with Darline Robles, our Associate Dean of Equity and Inclusion.

Our goal is to select a work of fiction that helps us explore themes relevant to our mission to advance educational equity. This book was among the many thoughtful suggestions submitted by faculty and staff at our August Kick-Off.

There There is, according to its publisher, Knopf Doubleday, “a relentlessly paced multigenerational story about violence and recovery, memory and identity, and the beauty and despair woven into the history of a nation and its people. It tells the story of twelve characters, each of whom have private reasons for traveling to the Big Oakland Powwow.”

Tommy Orange is a recent graduate from the MFA program at the Institute of American Indian Arts. He is a 2014 MacDowell Fellow, and a 2016 Writing by Writers Fellow. He is an enrolled member of the Cheyenne and Arapaho Tribes of Oklahoma. He was born and raised in Oakland, Calif., and currently lives in Angels Camp, Calif.

We look forward to a lively discussion in November.

 

Sincerely,

Karen Symms Gallagher, Ph.D.

Emery Stoops and Joyce King Stoops Dean

USC Rossier School of Education

Waite Phillips Hall

Los Angeles, CA  90089-0031

Asst: hardison@usc.edu

213.740.5756 (office)

213.821.2158 (fax)

 

 

Can you help me recruit HS science teachers?

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Hi everyone who took Motivation with me recently,

Hope you’re semester is off to a great start. I really miss seeing you all regularly! Lucky for me, I have run into some of you once in a while in the halls or around campus. I look forward to running into more of you!

Anyway, I’m emailing to ask a favor that some of you might be able to help with.

I’ve got a new intervention I’m developing focused on enhancing physical science students agentic engagement in the high school classroom. The big idea I’m working on here is that if we can put students in a mindset to realize that their motivation as under their own control and they can use a few behavioral strategies/tricks to enhance it, they will assert their autonomy and engage more during class. In turn, their behaviors should elicit more support from their teachers (because teachers like engaged students!) and help them actually feel more interested, perform better, and persist in science.

You guys probably know or could guess that recruiting teachers in LA to participate in research is close to impossible. It’s especially tough when you don’t know a lot of people yet (that’s me!). So, I’m reaching out to those of you who are science teachers, work at high schools, have science teacher friends, or can otherwise connect me with a principals and teachers that might want to be involved in this research to give me any leads. I actually have permission from LAUSD and Montebello USD, and a positive, but tentative commitment from Compton USD and Green Dot schools to conduct this research in their schools. So connections within those districts/organizations are going to be particularly helpful. But, let me know of any ideas you might have as I try to find physical science teachers to be involved in this work.

We’re starting out small this year. I’m just trying to recruit 12 physical science teachers (e.g., physics, chemistry, engineering, computer science) and about 100 students to participate in focus groups to further refine the intervention, which I originally tested out on college students (FYI, it works). Next year we’ll actually test out this high school version of the intervention, but no need to worry about that yet.

Let me know if you’ve got any good connections or ideas for me!

 

Best wishes,

Erika

——

ERIKA A. PATALL, Ph.D.

Associate Professor of Education and Psychology
USC Rossier School of Education

3470 Trousdale Parkway

Waite Phillips Hall

Los Angeles, CA 90089-4036

Office: Waite Phillips Hall (WPH) 600H
Office Phone: 213.740.2371

Cell: 512.590.1974

Email: patall@rossier.usc.edu

Website: http://motivationlab.wordpress.com/

USC Rossier Strategic Plan Workgroup Announcement

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Dear Rossier Community:

We will revise and renew our strategic plan this academic year. The plan will emerge from our revised mission statement, and a number of recent reviews, including our academic program reviews, our school based climate report, and our Diversity Task Force plan.

While there will be a number of opportunities for Rossier faculty, students, and staff to share their thoughts on our work, it’s crucial that we put together an inclusive strategic plan writing team that can listen, synthesize, and create our plan. Kristan Venegas, Assistant Dean for Strategic Initiatives and Evaluation and Darline Robles, Associate Dean, Equity and Inclusion will lead this initiative.

The writing team should expect to work together until August 2019, with a required summary report due on December 1, 2018. The report will be shared with the Rossier Student Organization, Staff Advisory Council, Faculty Council, and finally, the Dean’s Executive Council to gain feedback.  Additional deadlines, a process for writing, and a process for gathering feedback will be developed once the taskforce has been selected.

All faculty, staff, and students are eligible to apply and be considered to participate on the writing team.  Interested community members should provide a 100-word statement to share their interest in participating in the Strategic Plan Writing Team and share how they see themselves contributing to Rossier as a member of this group. The deadline for submission is Friday, September 28, 2018. Please send your response to Rickie Carbajal at rcarbaja@rossier.usc.edu.

 If you have questions about participation, please contact Kristan Venegas at kristanv@usc.edu.

 

Thank you.

 

Research Info Sessions

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Greetings EdL students!

 Please see information below regarding upcoming library research info sessions and a call for participants from some of USC’S librarians.

  Library Crash Course 2.0: Midterm Edition

Do you have a research paper coming up? Don’t know how to print, borrow a laptop, or find a book in the library? Have no clue what librarians can help you with?

Come learn – as a refresher or for the first time – how the Libraries can support you in your midterm work. This workshop will have two stations: resources, and spaces and services. Come to one or both!

 

Meet in the Doheny Memorial Library lobby. Open to everyone!

 

Call for Participants – Perceptions of Reference Services (Focus Groups) 

Three librarians are recruiting participants for a research study on perceptions of reference services. This IRB approved study aims to gather feedback, in the form of qualitative data, about research help from current undergraduate and graduate students enrolled at USC in order to evaluate and possibly revise the current models used by USC Libraries’ to connect students with research help. Feedback data will be gathered via focus groups, and used to improve reference services. Each participant will receive a $25 Amazon gift card and the focus group sessions will be conducted in late October and early November.

 

We would like to speak with current undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in on-campus and online programs.
Interested students can fill out this form: bit.ly/RefServices

Contact us if you have any questions.

 

Thank you,

Elizabeth Galoozis

Melissa Miller

Melanee Vicedo