The Intercultural Communication Institute

This institute is held annually to increase intercultural understanding, and reduce conflict among different cultures. The most significant workshops related to cultural competence, film, conflict styles, and social justice relating to intercultural communication and relations. These particular sessions highlighted the need to consider intercultural concepts and models of instructional design to enhance cultural learning across disciplines. One workshop I attended related to intercultural conflict styles, which introduced participants to the Intercultural Conflict Styles Inventory (ICS). The workshop discussed various intercultural styles of dealing with conflict and explained the inventory. This instrument is designed to focus on how we communicate during conflict circumstances. Participants took the inventory and identified their cultural prototype. The session also offered strategies for successfully managing intercultural conflict.
Another important workshop linked social justice, intercultural relations, and intercultural communication in the global context. The session allowed participants to apply a theoretical approach to the complexities of globalizations across various disciplines and for community organizers.The next workshop I attended highlighted the Developmental Model of Intercultural Sensitivity (DMIS). It focuses on the stages that people move through in their acquisition of intercultural competence. This workshop focused on intercultural theory and its applications for educators, trainers, consultants, and non-profit employees. It provided a theoretical underpinning for many of the workshops presented during the institute. The presenter then discussed the development through the ethnocentric stage (denial, defense, minimization) and through ethnorelative stages (acceptance, adaptation, integration). And finally, I attended a session on film-based approaches for intercultural education. With a variety of film clips, this interactive session explored sequencing films and facilitating discussions in a manner most likely to improve multicultural understanding and intercultural competence. The facilitators applied the (DMIS) model to film selection and analysis. They explained how the power of film can transform attitudes and the way people view the world. Facilitators encouraged participants to consider the following when selecting films: (1) Do I show the entire film? (2) How do I deconstruct the film so it is not taken out of context? (3) How do I set the film up? (4)What type of pre-context assignment should I give to students to help them be prepared to move more quickly along the various levels of the model? (5) What films take students across a great divide culturally? (6) What films explore deeper cultural context and does not perpetuate stereotypes? (7) What films challenges their belief systems yet help them develop interculturally? (8) Did I leave enough time to the process the film with my students? (9) Which stage in the DMIS model are my students currently experiencing? (10) Does this film help them progress to a higher stage in the (DMIS) model?

*Listed below are just a few of the suggested films for cross-cultural learning developed by the workshop presenters and the class:

Classics Old And New

• Chairy Tale
• Not In Our Town
• A Class Divided/The Essential
• Cold Water
• The Way Home
• True Colors
• Tale of/Land of O's (Update)
• Guess Whose Coming to Dinner
• Blue Eyed
• Ethnic Notions
• Skin Deep
• Powers of Ten

International

• Kandahar (Afghanstan)
• Himalya (Nepal)
• Heaven and Earth (Vietnam)
• Heart of the Dragon (China 12-part)
• Ghandi (India)
• Frida (Mexico
• Dersu Uzala (Russia)
• Search for the Afghan Girl (National Geographic)
• Schindler's List (Germany)
• Skyline (Spain)
• Tompopo (Japan)
• Three Seasons (Vietnam)
• The Way Home (Korea)
• Whale Rider (New Zealand)
• Crying Game (Ireland)
• Cry Freedom (South Africa)
• City of Joy (India)
• Heaven (Iran)
• Chariots of Fire (England)

Domestic USA - African American

• Amistad
• A Raisin In The Sun
• Boyz N The Hood
• Color Purple
• Do The Right Thing
• Eyes On The Prize I and II
• White Man's Burden
• Crash (highlights several ethnic groups)
• Fried Green Tomatoes
• Glory
• Ghosts Of Mississippi
• Grand Canyon
• Hoop Dreams

Domestic USA - Asian

• Come See The Paradise
• Daughter from Danag (PBS)
• Dim Sum
• Dragon: The Bruce Lee Story
• Double Happiness (Canada)
• Eat a Bowl of Tea
• American Game Japanese Rules
• Becoming American
• Blue Collar Buddha
• Carved in Silence
• Great Wall
• Green Dragon
• Joy Luck Club
• Karate Kid
• Picture Bride

Domestic USA - Latino/Hispanic

• Real Women Have Curves
• Selena
• Spanglish
• Stand and Deliver
• Tortilla Shop
• West Side Story
• Chicano! (4 part)
• El Norte
• Fools Rush In
• La Bamba
• Lone Star
• Mi Familia/My Family

Domestic USA - Native American

• Black Robe (Canada)
• Dance Me Outside (Canada)
• Dances With Wolves
• Fast Runner

* I invite each of you to add films for cross-cultural learning.

2009 Aging In America Conference

The Aging in America Conference is sponsored by the American Society on Aging and the National Council on Aging. This conference is held annually to demonstrate the best practices in education, professional development, research and businesses in the field of aging. The conference this year emphasized some best practices in a variety of areas; however I was most interested in information related to intergenerational exchange, the life course, health & wellness and women.

I attended health related workshops on training professionals and maintaining health & wellness. These workshops highlighted the need to appropriately train professionals and students working with older adults. There were concrete exercises and illustrations to demonstrated and provide an understanding of the significance of healthy living on the life course and older adults' choices. Some of these exercises could easily be incorporated into the classroom. For example in one workshop, one exercise illustrated the difficulty of decision making for older adults by providing a list of essential items for daily living and then giving specific circumstances by which items might be crossed off the list. For instance, the list may be a budget including prescriptions, produce, gas, co-pay for doctor's visits, etc. As an exercise, you would need to under specified circumstances that limited income or related to health prioritize the items on your list. In many instances, items may need to be removed from the list. This type of exercise could easily be altered and adapted to aging courses at all levels.

Another workshop attended related to incorporating technology and women's issues by accessing websites and agencies housing aging statistics and linking that to both in-class and online course materials. This would provide learning materials that are not only up-to-date but it would also allow students to concretely see how to link credible online source material with text and lecture information. Additionally, this workshop provided some ideas on classroom blogs and discussion board materials to enhance learning of age related concepts at all levels.

There were other workshops that demonstrated the best practices in business and clinical settings. These provided some useful information on how to help better train students for the field of aging. Health professionals and business owners discussed the need to train and educate a more compotent aging service provider. There were illustrations of program training that demonstrate where the field is going and what students will need to know. For instance, there were policy discussions in relation to health care reform and long term care that provided concrete examples of how to help professionals and students better understand the application in real world scenarios. This discussion also demonstrated the need to seek out internship and practicum opportunities with agencies and businesses representing the best in the field and local area.

While at the conference, I also gave a presentation on a collaborative senior level learning assessment that would require gerontology and music majors to work together to create a music learning program for older adults. The interactive audience provided valuable feedback on what types of activities might be most useful for both students and older adults. Additionally, suggestions for implementation and curriculum development were provided. The presentation undoubtedly will lead to the develpment of a better learning experience for students and will enhance the potential partnership between the music and gerontology programs.

Overall, this conference was really beneficial. Unlike more academically focused conferences, this conference brought together professionals, educators and business owners in a venue that allowed for useful exchange. In order to succesfully educate students to succeed in the field of aging, it is important to keep up with what is going on in all sectors of the field. Therefore, this conference by demonstrating the best practices in health, education, business and research provides numerous teaching and learning opportunities and other vital information.

Teaching and Learning at SECOLAS

Thanks to the generous support of CETL, supplemented by personal funds, I was able to attend and present at the 56th Annual Meeting of the Southeastern Council of Latin American Studies (SECOLAS) in New Orleans, Louisiana, on April 16-18, 2009. For a long time, I have been active in this organization, which brings together a wonderfully collegial group of scholars from the Southeast, provides a venue for a broad range of presentations, and is notable for nurturing both graduate and undergraduate student professional development. In the past, there have been one or two panels in which established and senior faculty share their best practices and materials for teaching Latin American and Caribbean Studies. There are also usually professional development panels on, for example, managing study abroad. This year, whereas there were panels on study abroad and publishing (which I attended), there was no pedagogical session as such. The panel on which I was placed and was asked to chair was titled “Teaching and Learning about Race in Latin America.” The panel presentations were three: “The Construction of Racial Categories in Latin America,” by Ivan Valverde, PhD candidate at the University of Florida; “The True Color of Crisis: Representations of Race in Veja Magazine, 1976 – 2000,” by Nicolette Wilhide, PhD candidate at Vanderbilt University; and my own, “Sharing the Riches of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture at HBCUs and Beyond.”

Mr. Valverde’s presentation was a very useful synthesis of the outcomes of “race” formation and racial projects in Spanish America, and his Power Point show would be usable and accessible in an undergraduate course. Ms. Wilhide’s presentation was from her promising work on representations of Brazilians of African descent in Brazil’s most widely read news weekly. This is difficult ground to tread because, in the last two decades, media representation and presence of Afro-Brazilians has received excellent attention from Brazilian and some non-Brazilian scholars. Yet, Ms. Wilhide stands to make useful contributions to the debate. For one student and, I think, for both, this was the first conference presentation, so this actually turned into a mentoring experience for me. Both were professional in every way, and it was a privilege to assist in their “maiden voyage.”

My presentation drew on my experience over about seventeen years, including here at WSSU in the teaching of Afro-Brazilian studies. My goal is to update the 2002 work of my colleague John D. French, whose “Sharing the Riches of Afro-Brazilian History and Culture: Undergraduate and Graduate Teaching Syllabi and Handouts” responded to growing curricular demands that paralleled, though lagged behind, the explosion of scholarship on Afro-Brazilian studies published in English since about 1993. That year, there were two crucial conferences on the topic in the United States at the University of Florida and the University of Texas. Then, in 1997, the V Congresso Afro-Brasileiro took place in Salvador, Brazil. The international scope of these meetings helped set the transnational terms of debate and the research agendas for the coming years. My presentation recapped the fruit of this scholarship up to the present, showed how one can map that content onto several sorts of Brazilian and Diasporic studies courses (on course mapping, see http://academics.georgiasouthern.edu/cet/workshops/mapping/index.htm), demonstrated how to align those courses with institutional goals, and, finally, ended with some perspectives on where the field is headed: There is ongoing binational federal support for program development. We hope that the FIPSE/CAPES US-Brazil Higher Education Consortia Program continues with US Department of Education funding. There is also a new initiative taking shape, with is the Joint Action Plan between the Government of the Federative Republic of Brazil and the Government of the United States of America to Eliminate Racial and Ethnic Discrimination and Promote Equality (JAPER). The plan’s MOU was signed in March 2008 between the US State Department and SEPPIR, the Brazilian federal antidiscrimination secretariat. By creating a civil society committee operating parallel to the government agency committee, the plan seeks to foster academic and NGO activity. We will see if (a) autonomy of the civil society committee can be maintained, (b) what the nature of collaboration among academic and activist/service organizations will look like, and (c) what scholarly and training activity, among other outcomes, grows out of the plan.

My presentation also discussed my Web-based project to build a community of and for teachers of Afro-Brazilian Studies. I had delayed posting this blog entry because I had hoped to populate and publicize this online community, and announce details here. However, I am only now having time to meet with Dr. Galvis at CETL for how to make the best use of Ning as an academic networking site. Soon, I expect to post all of my materials on Afro-Brazilian studies not published elsewhere and invite colleagues in the filed to so the same. I will announce the launch on this blog later.

A lively discussion with the audience ensued, including definitions and references of terms. Parenthetically, the term “Afro-Brazilian” is used in this field as a translation of the Portuguese afro-brasileiro for a range of reasons. “African Brazilian” does not resonate and is not used by either scholars or activists. Indeed, africano brasileiro or brasileiro africano would have other denotations in Portuguese. Alternate terms used by academics, activists, and the press include "African-descended / African descendent" (afrodescendente) or "Black" (negro).

From the other sessions that I attended, I got some good activity ideas from a short-term art history course in Mexico (“Study Abroad and Service Learning: Christopher Newport University and Mexico City,” Dr Elizabeth Morán, CNU). The ideas, which included basically a scavenger hunt and scrap book, are well suited for culture courses or academically-oriented tours in-country. This is an idea that can be incorporated into the Brazil exchange if we are fortunate enough to get another cycle of FIPSE funding. Since the theme of the conference was “Crisis and Recovery in the Americas,” so it was appropriate that there was a panel on post-Katrina recovery. The whole panel was excellent, but the pedagogical “take-away” from the panel was information about service-learning opportunities coordinated by Tulane but open to students everywhere. Information is available at Tulane’s Center for Public Service, http://tulane.edu/cps/ (“Post-Katrina Migration to New Orleans and Service-Learning Initiatives at Tulane,” Dr. Jimmy Huck, Tulane University).

Finally, I always feel that the local arrangements chair and staff deserve thanks for putting on any conference that I attend because it is exceedingly hard work. In this case, Dr. Jimmy Huck of Tulane and his team of staff and students deserve hearty praise. The SECOLAS Web site is http://www.southalabama.edu/secolas/.

Understanding how speakers use language

I attended the Annual African Conference on African Linguistics (ACAL) between April 8th and 12th. This is a conference that brings together scholars who focus on African linguistics including the teaching and the acquisition of African languages. I presented two papers: the first paper which was co-presented with colleagues from the University of Illinois, Urbana Champaign was on phonological borrowing from the English language into Logooli, an African language spoken in East Africa and the other paper was on the languages that the youths use in the rural and urban centers of Kenya. In my first paper I sought to find out what phonological rules the borrowed lexical items follow. Do they adapt to the target language phonological roles or do they impose their rules on the recipient language? The findings show that for the most part the tonal pattern rules of the receiving language takes over. However, there are still other cases which show opposite results.
In my second paper I examined language use among the youths in both urban and rural areas of Kenya arguing that language use among the youths is very dynamic. I showed that speakers’ perceptions on language use do not necessarily mirror the true language use. However, in order to fully understand the discrepancies one needs to examine other variables such as the topic, relationship between the speakers and other extra linguistic factors through a mixed methods approach.
I also attended several other sessions which focused on how students in American classes learn foreign languages. One paper by a participant from Michigan State University discussed how students whose first language uses the grammatical gender system have a problem learning foreign languages which use the noun class system. This was an important paper for me because it focused on Swahili which I teach at WSSU.

Increasing Student Engagement

Notes from The International Conference on College Teaching and Learning in Jacksonville, Florida, April 13-17, 2009, by Joanne Chesley, Ed.D., CETL.

I attended several sessions related to student engagement/ student retention. Here is a summary of what I learned from the studies presented (which I will cite/detail upon request):

• Student satisfaction impacts retention, even if it does not impact grades.
• Students need deep integrative learning that they can apply to many situations. They need learning that helps them see the world differently.
• To get a good picture of what high student engagement should look like, we should study 'educationally effective institutions' to discern the 7 best practices; 1) student faculty interaction 2) active learning 3)immediate feedback 4) time on task 5) high expectations 6) respect for diversity 7)enforced cooperation (can be achieved via team based /problem based learning).
• The university should participate in one of the major satisfaction survey processes such as NSSE, National Survey of Student Engagement. These will let you know how engaged your students are in the academic life of the university as well as the social life. Only 13% of college students report participation in extracurricular activities. The more engaged, the better the student's grades. The more satisfied generally, the more they stay to graduation.
• Students persist to graduation when they have: 1) excellent 1st year experience courses 2) common intellectual experiences 3)learning communities 4) writing intensive courses and 5) effective relationships with faculty/mentors. These are called high impact practices. These practices force interaction with peers and faculty, ensure more feedback from professors, encourage appreciation for diversity, encourage cooperation, and ensure the opportunity to have concrete experiences (vs. theoretical, nebulous, extraneous). These practices have an even greater effect on students who are considered to have high risk factors (for dropout).
• At many universities, 10-15% of the enrolled students drop between registration and census date (10days into the semester). We should try to find out what this is all about. This may indicate something about the environment or the red tape they have been through, or the fear they are beginning to feel. Some of these same feelings will remain among those who choose to stay, but may continue to impact them negatively. Focus groups held with students who did quit prematurely report that relationships /rapport is the biggest factor missing in their early experiences on campus.
• Successful completion (C or better) of well-structured developmental courses contributes to greater college success than that experienced by those who did not even take developmental courses.
• Universities must experiment with a wide range of initiatives based on varying retention factors, in an effort to find what works. Some say that anything else equals malpractice. Refusing to change our teaching habits, curriculum assessments, and resources should not be an option.
• The teaching practice most connected to student persistence is immediate and meaningful feedback to student work.

I also attended sessions on Team Based Learning, Client Based Learning, the Pedagogy to Androgogy continuum, and Using I-clickers for engagement, feedback and assessment.
I have tape recordings of most of these sessions, and will loan them at your request. I also have the compendium of selected conference papers that you may borrow as well.

US Youth Soccer Association Conference

I recently attended and presented at the United States Youth Soccer Association (USYSA) Conference in San Jose, California. At this conference there are two types of presentations, one deals with new coaching techniques, and the other sessions deal with marketing and management issues about the sport industry in general.

I attended several coaching sessions out of curiosity, but did attend several administrative sessions as well. Yet, the most beneficial sessions I attended dealt with new marketing strategies that could help me improve my teaching and knowledge of that field, and bring it back to the classroom and to my students.

One of the sessions covered the importance of catchy phrases or slogans in order to create a marketing campaign. During the session the value of Nike’s “Just do it” campaign was analyzed and explained as to why it has been successful. After it was analyzed, it was compared to the different slogans and campaigns used by one of its competitors - Reebok - over the years, and why it has not succeeded as expected. This is important when students ask in the classroom for more concrete and practical examples, rather than just theoretical answers.

Another session I found interesting dealt with information technology and how it can be used in order to provide a better product or service to a consumer, it dealt mostly with what the presenter called “operational excellence”, and how organizations as well as teachers must be willing to change and adapt in order to create/develop a competitive advantage, or to simply stay ahead of the competition.

I attended several presentations, but overall the most important issues I learned that I can bring to the classroom are:

· Make learning fun and enjoyable
· Develop self esteem in each student
· Motivate the student to attain and achieve excellence
· Develop a desire for lifetime curiosity and learning
· Develop leadership skills
· Instill self-responsibility

My presentation itself deal with how important it is to integrate different target markets, in particular Hispanics, and how their culture and background is important to know when trying to reach and to educate them.

In short, this conference was indeed a worthwhile event for me to attend, and was grateful to have learned many aspects of the sport industry that can be brought to the classroom, and at the same time be put to practical use.

Southern Organization for Human Services

I had the opportunity to attend the Southern Organization for Human Services (SOHS) 34th annual conference from March 25-28, 2009 in Tampa, Fl. SOHS is an organization devoted to helping educators and students in human service related fields increase visibility and hone their professional skills. This year's conference theme, New and Emerging Issues in Human Services, seemed very timely given the changes our Nation is going through currently. As president of this organization, I also had an opportunity to learn first hand some lessons in leadership. In addition, 7 students from WSSU attended, and 5 were able to present.

I have always viewed conferences as such an unique opportunity for students to learn about their field, network, and learn professionalism that cannot be taught in the classroom. As such, since I knew I would be attending the conference, I encouraged several students to consider attending. They went one step further and decided they wanted to present. I was thrilled, as this presented another teachable opportunity: what is a call for proposals; how to submit one; researching your idea; working collaboratively on your presentation; and finally, presenting in front of your professional peers. We had two proposals accepted. One on Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) (faculty lead of Dr. David Dawson), and one on the use of technology in teaching and learning (faculty lead-Shawn Ricks).

We spent several months preparing our research and fundraising for the conference. Both presentations were very well attended and well received. All of the students representing WSSU attended all breakouts and general sessions. They even had the opportunity to go to the University of South Florida to discuss Graduate school options.

The TBI presentation covered the longterm ramifications of Traumatice Brain Injury on veterans of war. The two student co-presenters presented their research along with Dr. David Dawson from WSSU. At the end of their presentation, they were encouraged to submit an abstract to the National Organization for Human Services' journal for publication!

The students and I also participated in a service learning project with a local head-start agency. The project tied in conference themes of pre-K education and community service. As an organizaton, we went to a headstart agency with a donated book for each child. While some students read to the children, others painted and planted flowers out back. The children were thrilled to have company and asked many questions during the stories and while working alongside the students and faculty that attended. For those of us who participated, it reminded us that we typically know very little about a community when we visit it for a conference. We were in the field actually doing what we were talking about in the field. It was the ultimate service learning project in my opinion. The feedback was unanimous--this was a pivotal experience for those that attended and everyone requested that we duplicate this experience at next year's conference.

Our recent conference experience reminded us of the many avenues in which transformational educational experiences occur. I am grateful for CETL's support and look forward to future chances to learn alongside my students.

GeographyConference - Las Vegas

Last week I had the opportunity to attend the 2009 American Association of Geographers (AAG) Annual Conference in Las Vegas, NV. The conference included more than 6,000 geographers from around the world and is a mix of presentations on cutting edge academic research and sessions on best practices for teaching and learning.

I was able to participate in both aspects of the conference by organizing a session/presenting some of my research on local government boundary change and attending several session dedicated to teaching and learning. My session on boundary change was well received and included an opportunity for questions and answers that generate a lot of interesting discussion. Additionally, I was approached by a representative from the Planners Press to discuss publishing my work. This unique opportunity would not have presented itself if I didn't attend the conference. The funding that I received though CETL made this possibility and reality.

The teaching and learning sessions that I attended focused on a variety of topics. The one session that I took the most away from was focused on making geography come alive for students. The session highlight many new technologies that are available for use in the classroom and also discussed the use of relevant DVD's. Today's students are so interactive we can not just lecture and expect them to learn all they need to know. Students want to see, hear and feel the topics. So incorporating DVD's, the internet, and assignments that take the student outside the classroom are all important. Geography is all around us and part of our everyday life (whether we realize it or not) so it is important to provide real-world examples that students can connect with.

TLC San Antonio

I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at the Teaching and Learning conference in San Antonio, Texas. This conference is actually two events in one: One strand is for higher education and the other for business. Although these two disciplinary areas seem different, I found sessions in both areas that were beneficial to my academic practice. For example, use of the Socratic method in teaching the problem-solving and decision-making process was presented in the business strand, but I found it useful for one of the courses that I currently teach.

Essentially, that presentation proposed that students can be taught how to use the Socratic method to stimulate critical thinking and better decision-making in group situations. Students could use questions to:

• Ask an individual to provide instances or justifications for the position advocated
• Interject a counter-example in response to an individual’s position or point
• Ask whether anyone in the group agrees with the position advocated
• Suggest a parallel example
• Illuminate a specific concept or position using an analogy
• Play the role of devil’s advocate to an articulated position

In my own teaching experience, I have found that students sometimes feel frustrated when I (as the instructor) respond to their questions with more questions. I believe this is because students often want "just the answers" rather than having to think critically beyond the facts. Perhaps teaching them hows and whys of the Socratic method and actually having them implement it would motivate them to think more and be less resistant to questioning. I am looking forward to trying this out next semester.

Another session that I found useful was on Collaborative Learning. Specifically, it addressed the problems involved with group projects. The presenters offered the following suggestions for improving the group process:

• Give students specific group management role and responsibilities, such as manager, encourager, cheerleader, coach, question commander, checker, or taskmaster.
• Give each member of the team a different, interdependent research and problem-solving role. This can ensure that students work together rather than in parallel.
• The instructor needs to have input into how the groups are formed; sometimes best friends make poor group members.
• Low-ability students often benefit most when paired with medium-ability students rather than those of highest ability.
• Train students in interpersonal communication skills ahead of time so that they know what behavior is expected of the group and require discussion of group functioning, focusing on how students should talk and listen to each other.
• Consider assessment strategies carefully, looking for ways to reward the group while also emphasizing individual accountability. Avoid giving the entire group one grade.

Each semester, I teach a senior level research methods course that has a group project as a significant component. Effectiveness of the group process varies widely, as you can imagine. Some semesters, I have groups that function extremely well. Others can be experiences in great frustration. I have constantly looked for ways to improve the group process, and have resisted the temptation to eliminate the group aspect of the project. I sincerely believe that students should possess good groupwork skills by the time they graduate from a university. I have already implemented some of the techniques that were presented. For example, I have all group members submit a peer evaluation that helps me to find out who did what (and who did not do what). Part of a student's grade is based on her/his individual performance in the group. I found the concept of pairing low-ability students with medium-ability students (rather than high-ability) intriguing, and I now understand the rationale. Low-ability students often get lost when working with high-ability students, whereas medium-ability students motivate them to function at a higher level. Up to this point, I have let students choose their own groups, so I have had no control over how well the individuals are matched up. I will try to assign groups in the future based on the suggestions given and see what happens.

I attended several other sessions that provided useful information and tools for my teaching. Some, such as one on using PowerPoint games to develop vocabulary skills helped me to think of different ways to utilize familiar technology. Others, such as ones on leadership models and skills were useful for updating content in some of my courses.

I did make a presentation at the conference: "Knowledge about HIV/AIDS and resulting student behavior among students at an Historically Black College/University". It was well received, and fortunately, I was not asked any questions that I could not answer. The study looked at the level of of knowledge about HIV/AIDS among students, the differences in the accuracy of that knowledge by gener, and the relationship between knowledge and behavior. What we (myself and three other authors) found was that although students had a high level of knowledge (more accurate for women than for men), their behviors did not reflect that. Students practice high risk behaviors in spite of the fact that they know better. Our suggestions were to focus more on teaching about the consequences of high-risk behavior rather than just the factual information about the disease. We also felt that the role of the campus environment in encouraging high-risk behaviors needs to be investigated. We recommended that qualitative studies through focus goups be the preferred inquiry method for these investigations. I do not wish to delve further into the content of the study here, but if anyone is interested, you can contact me for more information.

Overall, this conference was a very worthwhile event, and I came back with much to think about and put into practice.

Himanshu

TL Conference

I attended the TL Conference in Greensboro, NC and had the opportunity to present. The conference was very worth my time. I have already implemented some of the teaching strategies presented in one of the presentations. It came off as a blast! This was a wonderful opportunity.

Wanda Lawrence
WSSU, Division of Nursing

Reflections on Lilly Conference Presentation

It was Friday afternoon at the Lilly Conference, which was held adjacent to a major mall. I thought that several of would-be conference attendees would take a long lunch or early dinner over in the mall. Each session time had about twelve or more presenters. So I was pretty blown away to see thirty-five faces staring back at me during my presentation in Greensboro last month. My subject dealt with preparing faculty to stay abreast with technology and how we "baby-boomers" are struggling to keep pace with our millennial college students, who use technology as easily as we used to use typewriters. Now theres a word you don't see often any more. As I looked out into the audience, I determined that most of the attendees in my session were boomers with a few youngsters (early thirties) sprinkled in. The sheer number of attendees was an indicator to me that a significant portion of our post-secondary faculty still struggle to keep pace with the technological developments that are now beginning to "wag the dog."

It has always been my contention that technology should be used to enhance our instructional delivery. Now-a-days, it appears that technology is driving the instruction. How do we prepare faculty to adequately navigate the latest technologies for instruction? The plethora of ancillary duties our faculty are strapped with beside their teaching load, committee work, advising and keeping up with the research in their content areas; finds the faculty member hard-pressed to do more.

There should be technology-on-demand sessions; where faculty sitting at their office desks can link to to teach themselves the latest technology and have guided and independent practice sessions. Help should be readily available from the technology staff, not just during normal business hours because most faculty work is done after hours on research and tinkering with the latest tech. tools. Adequate infrastructure is a necessity. Have all faculty been equipped with the soft and hardware to accomplish higher-level functioning with techno-platforms? What is the commitment of institutions of higher learning to prepare faculty; and also to monitor and then acknowledge in meaningful ways their progress and competency in learning new technologies? I had great interraction with the audience as I posed basic questions to them about how they are prepared to navigate technology waters at their institutions. It was good to know that many faculty are trying to get onboard with technology. Now the universities must do their part! Griff

Lilly Conference 2009 and the LERN Assessment Conference

I am very grateful to both Dr. Cynthia Bell and my colleagues Drs. Coco-Ripp, Bradford, and Lawrence for including me in their panel on Action Research, as well as to the CETL office for financing our participation in the 2009 Lilly Conference. Since my degree is not in education, I have been trying to take advantage of the opportunities I've had for professional development, and I feel I have benefitted a great deal from my experiences with LERN, GOAL, the Action Research project, the OK Fellows, and the new write-to-learn project. I am particularly grateful to my colleagues in this case, as I have had a pair of unusually hectic and demanding semesters, and I was not able to contribute a great deal to the panel's preparatory work, or even see much of the conference.

While my Action Research project was personally very enlightening, I was a little anxious to see how it would hold up at the conference, as the attendees were sure to have broader experience in the field and a more sophisticated understanding of the process I had studied than I did myself. Our panel was well-received, however, and my personal feedback was generally positive. I was especially happy for the opportunity to "talk shop" with my colleague in theory and aural skills at Appalachian State. She has been involved in a very interesting study using Tablet PC's for dictation tasks, and I look forward to her presentation at the end of the week at the College Music Society's Mid-Atlantic Chapter Meeting, which I'll be attending.

I had hoped also to participate in the LERN online conference on multiple assessments during the first week of March, particularly since that has been the focus of my work in the current semester. I was informed, however, the institutional membership had lapsed, and, while I tried to see about to renewing it in time for the conference, this did not turn out to be feasible. I have enjoyed the LERN conferences in the past, but I understand that financial restrictions are becoming very tight, and it would certainly not be reasonable to renew the institutional membership for just one faculty member. I hope that in better times we can not only renew the membership, but also get more faculty involved in the LERN activities. I am particularly attracted to them since they're online and asynchronous. This allows me to listen to the lectures and participate in the discussions according to my schedule, as well as to pause and replay lectures to make sure I have understood all the important points. While many of the topics are intended for distance learning programs, there is a weatlh of useful material for face-to-face classes as well.

Once again I am grateful to my colleagues and coaches for the opportunity to participate in the many professional development programs here at WSSU, and particularly for my involvement in the 2009 Lilly Conference. I was impressed by the conference, and having had a positive experience, I'll certainly be interested in attending next year.

Lilly Conference 2009

My presentation (Improving the Critical Thinking Skills of Psychology Students) was on Friday night at 5:45p. I think it was a decent crowd for a Friday night! The presentation went well, and there was some really good discussion afterwards about ways to help facilitate these skills with students in various disciplines. There were a number of faculty members present who indicated that critical thinking and writing skills are the two biggest barriers within their classrooms. I shared some of my techniques ("Dear Doc," Small group discussions, media integration) and those in attendance did the same.

On Satuday, two sessions that were particularly engaging were the "Hip-Hop as Critical Pedagogy" and "Service-Learning in the Social Sciences." The first session was interesting because it was very hands-on and exciting. Although I feel as if I already use hip-hop as a way to connect certain concepts together in psychology, it was good to discuss new ways to do that. The second session was very interesting because it was a step-by-step instructional session on how to develop, implement, and evaluate service learning projects. I am familiar with how to do them from the organizational standpoint, but wasn't as comfortable coming at it from the academic side.

Overall, I had a great time at Lilly (as usual). The food is always great!

Language and Culture for International Business Workshop

I participated in a three day workshop on Language and Culture for International Business. The goal of the workshop was to help participants to understand the relationship that exists between foreign languages and international business. This was a very informative workshop where foreign language teachers from different institutions in the United States gathered to learn on how to create business language curricula that are geared toward making business students interested in international business degrees succeed in their internships and later careers.

The importance of structuring our syllabi to accommodate business and for business departments to collaborate with foreign language departments was particularly made clear in the two key presentations by Dr. Keida of the University of Memphis and Dr. Doyle of the University of North Carolina at Charlotte. In his presentation titled “International Business and Developing a Global Mindset.” Dr. Keida underscored the importance of understanding how the world is changing and the need for the USA to find ways to make their economic presence felt in other parts of the world. He noted that there are emerging economies such as China and India that are already playing a major role in the current global economy. Because countries such as China and other Asian countries are able to produce quality products in large quantities, it is important for the USA to consider not only quality but how affordable such products will be for the consumer. In his presentation Michael Doyle observed that knowing the language of your potential consumer is an important asset.

Within language specific workshops, we were challenged to focus constructing syllabi and programs that can prepare business majors to know how to deal with investors by introducing cultural as well as the language of the clients which is not always English. In fact, it was very clear from this workshop, that it is erroneous to presume that English is spoken and used everywhere in the world. Knowledge of a foreign language allows individuals to communicate effectively.

Finally, I also enjoyed the financial opportunities for foreign language instructors that the workshop availed to me. Such funding opportunities can be realized if foreign language departments work in collaboration with business departments. One classic example of this collaboration is the Wang ciber center at the University of Memphis which collaborates with the foreign language department to prepare students to go for internship to countries such as Germany, France, Japan, and Mexico where the speaking of the local language is critical. The experiences that those who had gone through the program shared with the participants made it a really worthy endeavor.
Leonard

2009 Lilly Conference

I will share some of what we did in the PreConference.
Drs. Scott Simpkins and Karen Hornsby (NC A&T faculty) facilitated a session designed to introduce participants to the concept of SoTL. While most know that it is the process of inquiry into the teaching and learning that take place in the classroom (or virtual classroom), they may not know how to get started with that process. Essentially, we should think of it as conducting a study of our own teaching (or someone else's) without all the same scientific rigor of a more indepth quantitative investigation. There are a few requirements however. There is the research question, or we could refer to this as the ethic of inquiry, since this initial phase often is about more than the pragmatic--the question itself. it often entails asking "Why?", or "How useful...?", or "Who is being served?". There is actually a taxonomy of questions that helps the teacher to ask the right question (Carnegie Academy for SoTL). The right question is the first step toward change or improvement.
Following the question, the investigator (the professor) needs to consider methods. What procedures or processes will allow me to discover what I need to know? Mixed methods (methodological pluralism) are strongly recommended over a single approach, since teaching and learning are both extremely complex functions, requiring wide and multifaceted windows into the queries associated with them.
Participants worked in small groups to formulate a T/L question and to suggest appropriate methods. We also were asked to suggest what evidences would indicate a positive hypothesis vs a negative hypothesis. We then engaged in a Gallery Walk. In this activity, we were able to engage each other's groupwork that had been posted around the room. We used post it notes to add suggestions to any of the posted research plans. This kind of collaboration is encouraged in the SoTL process, and this particular learner engagement strategy worked quite well.

jc

Lilly Conference 2009

Recently I had the opportunity to attend the Lilly Conference in Greensboro. Given the locality of the conference it was a great opportunity to socialize with WSSU faculty and learn more about their learning styles and interest. Attendees were readily available to discuss the sessions that they attended and the impact of the knowledge at WSSU. This gave me the opportunity to assess interest and knowledge levels for future programming at CETL. Although this is not always the intent of a conference it was a tremendous learning experience. Often faculty would come out excited about what they had been seen and in the back of my mind I would think that we are doing that at WSSU or that is in the works! Often individuals are more open to new ideas when they come from peer sources and this was the opportunity at Lilly. It was also great to see how many of our faculty was participating in the delivery of the conference.
My most enjoyable moment was the Explosive Pedagogy! When you have tried everything else the Explosive Pedagogy would be the option. The student (George) keeps acting out in class and you have had enough so you take a pile of books and slam them on the desk. Then you say…”OK, everyone out except GEORGE”. Of course everyone will leave but George will stay because he finally has his time to get the final say. Once everyone has left you pull up a chair in front of George and calmly sit down facing him. You say the following (calmly, gently), “George, I just do not understand. You are the smartest guy in class and why are you giving me such a hard time? Have I done something to offend you or how can I change what I am doing to make this work for you?” This will give George the opportunity to express his concerns and give you the opportunity to “fix” the problem. Then George can walk out of the room and when student ask what happened he can say…”
I cannot say that I have ever had the opportunity to use the Explosive Pedagogy but I will 

Highlights of Lilly 2009

I presented a summary of my Action Research Project as part of a panel of faculty from WSSU at the recent Lilly Conference on College & University Teaching in Greensboro, NC. The title of the conference, Millennial Learning: Teaching in the 21^st Century, was truly reflected in the variety of sessions available to attend. After my presentation, I attended several sessions on Friday and Saturday.

Two sessions that I attended were presented by faculty in Criminal Justice programs at two different universities. Both also used role play as the main learning activity. One faculty used role play to help future police officers adhere to required legal procedures in responding to citizen complaints. The attendees at the session actually participated in the role plays as students might do. Discussion of the entire experience was extremely helpful to gain insight into the participants’ perspectives. Applying this type of role play for activities in some of the courses I teach will enhance the learning outcomes. The framework within which the role play was used in the law enforcement class can be adapted for such techniques as activity modifications or communication strategies in the WSSU Therapeutic Recreation classes.

The other session led by a faculty who teaches hostage negotiation used role play as a culminating activity for the semester. This eight hour role play activity involved outside participants as well as the students. It was carried out beyond the regular class meeting time and incorporated intense planning along with careful scripting and organization. The role play was presented through video and still photos with description by the presenter. Each attendee shared ways that this type of role play could be used in various classes such as nursing or sociology. Aspects of this activity that I found especially helpful are the intentional application of theory and knowledge. Another positive benefit to the activity presented is the reflective components. Students have several hours to debrief, process the entire experience, and receive feedback. Even though I may not be teaching hostage negotiation and have this much time for role play in one class, this session provided many ways for me to include experiential learning in classroom learning strategies.

There were other sessions I attended on use of blogs, flip video and peer feedback techniques. The final element that I want to share is the poster session. A new technique for the posters involved use of flip cameras. Volunteers were solicited to use the flip cameras available to record short interviews with designated poster presenters. This is an interesting strategy. It helps to share the session with persons who did not get to attend the poster session as the clips are to be posted on the Lilly conference site. This interviewing activity also focused the interaction with the poster presenter. As the chair of a poster session for my professional organization’s upcoming conference, I will consider using this technique. All in all, I think the Lilly Conference has the potential to be a very rich source of learning for instructor and the support team for college educators. I recommend participating if given the opportunity.

National Council of Rehabilitation Education (NCRE) Annual Conference

I recently attended the NCRE annual conference, held once again in beautiful San Antonio, TX. I found this experience to be valuable for several reasons. This is the "academic" conference for rehabilitation counseling, meaning that all of the attendees are faculty members from all of the programs nationwide, including select international programs (this year, representatives were present from Puerto Rico, South Korea, and Mauritius). This is a great change of pace from the typical rehabilitation counseling conferences, which are more clinical in nature. Discussions are focused on rehabilitation counseling education trends, counselor training, program accreditation issues, and rehabilitation research initiatives. So, although I am always refining my counseling techniques and current understanding of the disability perspective by attending clinical conferences, NCRE truly is useful for becoming a better educator.

I attended several great discussions, including one addressing the pros and cons of implementing a spirituality course into rehabilitation counseling; the utilization of the EEOC disability discrimination data into current psychosocial aspects of disability curriculum; the value of using distance learning supervision models for praticum and internship students; the development and utility of asynchronous and synchronous modalities for collective research networking, and several more. As you can see, the content was vast and touched on multiple areas of rehabilitation counselor education. I feel that I walked away from the conference with many ideas to consider here at WSSU, both involving my instructional design and delivery.

I also presented my own research at this conference. My presentation was titled, "Work Comp and Weight Gain: A Growing Problem in the Workers' Compensation Rehabilitation System." Although my research was more clinical in nature, I had a great turn out for an audience. Most of the individuals informed me that they find it difficult to train their counselors in areas of private rehabilitation, as there are not many researchers out there focusing on the current trends of this specialization. I shared my clinical findings, and then opened the floor for a free discussion regarding how we as educators can keep our counselors-in-training informed on such a critical concern. The conversation was very insightful, and even I walked away with great ideas on how to deliver my own research to my students.

Overall, NCRE was and always is a success. It's always great to reconnect with colleagues across the country and, let's face it, I was in San Antonio on the riverwalk. But NCRE is a "must do" conference for rehabilitation counselor educators. I appreciated CETL's involvement in my attendance of this valuable experience.

Millenials

My very favorite session from the 2009 Lilly Conference in Greensboro was titled: Active Learning, Constructivism and the Millennial Student: A Comfortable Marriage. The presenter began by handing out a worksheet for each participant to self-reflect on the classroom strategies they used. Mine indicated I use a mix of constructivist as well as more traditional methods. I found the parallels between this presentation, my own teaching philosophy, and my profession of occupational therapy are all pretty much in alignment with constructivism. What I had not anticipated (nor experienced) was that there were similar parallels to the Millennial Learners. On paper, I can follow the discussion that Millenial Leraners exhibit simiarities with constructivist tendancies , but in my practice I have not experienced the synchrony. This has, however, sparked an interest that I will begin journaling my beliefs and experiences in the classroom.

The Planary session during lunch on Friday presented "Student Issues" at local campuses. For the most part, I concurred with the various panelists that my experience here at WSSU was similar. One thing is clear: our students today have a tremendous amount going on in their lives. As our program deals with graduate students and adult learners it is very important to remember the context of our students learning and "living" and to approach them as individuals. One of the panelists presented more from a legal standpoint which I found very interesting and feel as faculty we need to know more about.

SoTL

The 2009 Lilly Greensboro conference presented a wealth of information about the Millenial Learners, as the conference title suggested it would (Millennial Learning: Teaching in the 21st Century). On Thursday Feb 19th I attended a pre-conference institute on Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The workshop confirmed the process I had followed during my "action research" project last fall. When one of my WSSU colleagues asked to describe the difference between Action Research and SoTL, the presenters replied that SoTL includes the "dissemination" aspect and often times AR does not....... We were given a copy of a book titled "Inquiry into the College Classroom: A Journey Toward Scholarly Teaching" by Savory, Burnett, Goodburn. From glancing through the book it gives goes through a very structured 9-Step process to classroom inquiry and then provides a checklist as well as wealth of samples (over a 100 pages of actual exhibits of all kinds from sample inquiry questions, to sample survey items etc). It also provides "commentary" throughout for the classroom research to compare their experience to. I am looking forward to using this as a guide for my next AR/SoTL project. The workshop also allowed for each participant to write up their own inqiry question/project and then we did a "gallery walk" and posted feedback to one-another's. This part was less helpful to me as the feedback was very "surface" and not as deep as I would have liked. Overall I felt is was a good session to confirm where I want to go next and how to proceed with a bit more rigor and efficiency.

ASTE in Hartfort, CT

I attended the ASTE (Association for Science Teacher Education) Annual Meeting in frosty Hartford, Connecticut, January 7th- 10th, 2009. You can find the conference program at: http://theaste.org/meetings/2009conference/ASTE%20Program%20Final.pdf
ASTE Mission Statement
The Association for Science Teacher Education (ASTE) promotes leadership and support for professionals involved in the education and development of teachers of science at all levels. ASTE advances practice and policy through scholarship, collaboration and innovation in science teacher education across the world.
I have served this organization in various capacities for well over a decade and presently serve on its board of directors. One of my responsibilities as a board member is to attend as many presentations as possible, to ensure that a broad range of science education pedagogy and practice is being equitably represented at the conference.
Unlike the larger education organizations like AERA (American Education Research Association), which boast a ten thousand-member attendance rate at its annual meeting, ASTE has only several hundred members attend its meetings. This serves to make the conference much more intimate and allows for a great deal of collegial interaction. In addition to the fare you would typically expect from a professional conference, ASTE holds a number of pre-conference, hands-on workshops for science teacher educators. This year, science teacher educators were engaged in learning about such topics as responsible chemical management in K-12 schools, integrating environmental education in preservice science courses, the use of geometric principles in teaching and understanding scientific phenomena, developing leadership abilities and translating student questions into student-designed investigations.
One of the features that I most enjoy about this conference is the emphasis placed on collegial interaction. Interactive sessions are included throughout the program. At these sessions, several presenters provide a brief overview of their work around a particular theme. Then, the audience is asked to speak for the remainder of the session with the presenters directly and informally about their work. This allows for rich conversation and development of professional collaborations. Many graduate students attend and present these sessions and they are mentored by senior researchers and practitioners in science education. This helps to prepare them for the more formal presentations expected at NARST (National Association for Research in Science Teaching).
I also had the opportunity to meet with the other members of WISE (Women in Science Education). WISE is a group of female science educators who began their own organization in support of ASTE. At the annual dinner, WISE members shared their stories and celebrated their accomplishments since the founding of the organization. I was particularly gratified to see the increase of women of color represented. As you might suspect, the number of female science educators of color is extremely small but is steadily growing.
Of particular interest to HBCU faculty is the ASTE’s interest in the inclusion of scholarly research and practice emanating from HBCUs and Tribal Colleges and Universities. This conference attracts a broad range of people associated with science education. I had the opportunity to speak extensively with NSF (National Science Foundation) officers about securing funds for HBCU science education research. They seemed genuinely interested in making funding more accessible to HBCUs and in assisting faculty in seeking that funding. If you are interested in studying either your students or your own K-16 science teaching practice, I invite you to attend this conference. The strategies, tips and collegial spirit are invaluable in furthering your own professional practice.

IDI Qualifying Seminar

I attended a three-day seminar (10/23/08-10/25/08) in Minneapolis, MN to prepare me to administer and interpret the Intercultural Development Inventory (IDI). This 50-question inventory is the most widely used quantitative instrument for measuring cultural competence. The IDI is a scientifically valid and reliable psychometric instrument. It measures how a person feels and thinks about, and thus reacts to, cultural difference. Unlike many other instruments, it does not compare a person to typical behaviors and it does not analyze behavioral reactions. The IDI operates at the worldview level of how a person feels and thinks about cultural difference. This deeper level of one’s cognitive experience is what guides and limits behavior. As an IDI Qualified Administrator, I plan to use the IDI as a research instrument to measure the cultural competence of students who participate in the Global Understanding Program.

American Educational Studies Association (AESA) Conference

I presented at the AESA conference held from October 29- November 2, 2008 in Savannah, GA. The name of my presentations were: "Graduate student experiences in a Majority "Minority" Classroom at a Predominately White University" and "Telling it true: The Rhizomatic Experiences of African American Women". This conference was outstanding in several ways: I felt re-energized by the company of so many passionate educators sharing their work; I learned several new and innovative ways of thinking about teaching and learning; and I heard from several students and faculty their strategies for academic success.

AESA was established in 1968 as an international society for students, teachers, research scholars, and administrators who are interested in the foundations of education. As such, the workshops covered a large amount of area including ethics, the globalization of education, addressing hegemonic systems within institutions of education, activism, and queer theory. I attended several workshops, mostly set up as panels discussions, that really enlightened my worldview as a teacher and provided me with more passion and energy to share with my students.

One of the keynote addresses was done by Gloria Ladson Billings, and she discussed educating students in a post-Brown era. This was one of the most riveting addresses I have been to, as she shared insights on how to creat passion and enthusiasm about social justice and education in an era that sometimes believes that racism is over. I had the opportunity to take a photo and chat with Dr. Ladson Billings and my time spent with her reminds me why I choose higher education as my profession.

I learned a lot from my brief time with the AESA group, and I highly recommed this conference for those interested in social justice. I am looking foward to attending next year's conference in Pittsburgh, PA.

2008 AACE eLearn Conference, Las Vegas

The best two sessions in the entire conference were: 1) Instructional Design of Authentic E-Learning Environments and Use of Technology as Faculty Assessement. The former session specifically focused on authentic learning on the collegiate level,sharing that authentic tasks involve a problem, physical and social context, results, and criteria for evaluation. Although this was not new to me, it helped me solidify how to more effectively design the learning experience. The best part of this session was learning how to creatively incorporate technology in simulated task environments. Many of my colleagues could benefit from this workshop.
2)Use of Technology as Faculty Assessment focused on video taping teaching sessions, self critique, peer-review, and administrator assessment of teaching performance. The idea of the professor, a peer, and administrator integrating feedback for the teaching professor was novel. I could see that the narratives gathered from each source would be very helpful for refining, exploring, and acquiring new teaching skills. Also emphasized was the reflective part of the assessment. Using the video, the instructor could review for behavioral patterns that either enhanced learning or impeded it. The video could also serve as a baseline to be compared to a future recording delivering the same lesson using more effective strategies and teaching techniques. The whole university system would benefit from the exposure of the session's content.

CLA conference Iessons learned

Last April 2008, I had the opportunity to attend the College Language Assosciation Conference (CLA) in Charleston, South Carolina.
One session particularly attracted my attention. It focused on:
THE WEST AFRICAN INFLUENCE ON LIFE , LANGUAGE, AND CULTURE OF THE NATIVES OF THE SOUTH CAROLINA LOW COUNTRY AND NEIGHBORING SEA ISLANDS (HISTORICAL ORIGINS OF THE GULLAH-GEECHEE IN THE USA).
The following is a synopsis of this interesting session.

The Gullah-Geechee can be considered as a group of Black people or a language. Both of them have strong African roots predominantly found in West and Central Africa. Because of the geographical isolations of the barrier Sea Islands, the Gullah people have been able to retain much of their African culture, Creole language, spiritual beliefs, ontology and cosmogony.

THE GULLAH -GEECHEE AS A GROUP OF BLACK PEOPLE
The Gullah are Blacks who live in the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia, that is: the coastal plain and the Sea Islands. Historically, the Gullah area once extended from the North to the Cape Fear area on the coast of North Carolina and the south to the vicinity of Jacksonville on the coast of Florida. However, today, the Gullah area is confined to South Carolina and Georgia Low Country. The Gullah, as a Black community, distinguish themselves in terms of preserving more of their African linguistic and cultural heritage than any other Black community living in the United States. The first majority of Gullah's ancestors were brought to South Carolina, and Georgia Low Country through the ports of Charleston and Savannah as slaves circa the seventeen-century. They were from West Africa and especially from countries that are currently called: Senegal, Gambia, Mali, Guinea,Liberia, Sierra Leone, Guinea-Bissau, and Ghana. The second majority of Gullah's ancestors were brought from modern Angola, Congo and West Indies. They were very good African farmers and especially excelled in the art of cultivating rice. Accordingly, they brought the skills that made rice one of the most successful industries in early America. For instance, South Carolina and Georgia were covered by a cornucopia of acres of magnificent rice fields. The Gullahs were also cultivating the "gumbo", that is: "okra". The word "gumbo" stems from the Umbundu language of Angola meaning "okra". It is noteworthy that African influences are found in every aspect of the Gullahs' traditional life style and predominantly in agriculture and cooking. Gullah rice dishes called "red rice" and "okra" soup are similar to West African "ouolof rice" and "okra soup". Actually, Ouolof rice was brought by the Ouolof and the Malinke peoples (Mande) from West Africa. African influences are also linguistic.

THE GULLAH-GEECHEE AS A LANGUAGE ENDOWED WITH AFRICAN ROOTS

The Gullah-Geechee language goes as far back as circa the end of the 16th century-the beginning of the seventeenth-century. African slaves brought to America felt the necessity to comunicate, exchanged messages without their master's knowing it. Thus, they created a unique language based on African languages from West and Central Africa: Ouolof (modern Senegal), Malinke (modern Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, and Senegal) and a modicum of Bantou languages (Bakongo, Umbundu) and English. This language evolved diachronically and over time became the Gullah-Geechee. It was created and effectively used by African slaves in the coastal region of South Carolina. However, when these slaves were moved in the hinterland, the Gullah underwent modifications and became the Geechee. Therefore, it is important to dichomize the Geechie from the Gullah semantically, morphologically and lexically. The Geechie was spoken in the hinterland whereas the Gullah was spoken in the coastal areas. Nevertheless, from a semantic, morphological and lexical standpoint, both of them stem from African languages: Ouolof (spoken in Senegal), Malinke/Mande (spoken in modern Mali, Guinea, Ivory Coast, Burkina-Faso), Bakongo, Umbundu (spoken in the two modern Congos and Angola).
I was amazed to find words very similar (morphologically and lexically) to those of my own language Fang-Beti which is spoken in modern Cameroon.

Therefore, through this session, I realized the important African, historical, and cultural legacy found through the Gullah-Geechee. The Gullah-Geechee has proven to be a powerful linguistic and cultural tool. Researchers, politicians, and decision makers should endeavor to preserve this powerful language and the culture subsuming it. It does subsume special connections between African and the USA. Nowadays, most social groups that had lost their roots are interested in decrypting them to assert themselves. It follows that revisiting the Gullah-Geechee legacy can prove to be a significant step towards such a heuristic undertaking. A number of Gullah scholars have worked in this direction by writing insightful books. Let us mention but a few:
-Creel, Margaret Washington. "A peculiar People: Slave Religion and Community Culture among the Gullahs", New york: New York University Press, 1988.
-Joyner, Charles. "Down by the Riverside: A South Carolina Slave Community", Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984.
-Kiser, Clyde Vernon "Sea Island to City: A Study of St Helena Islanders in Harlem and Other Urban Centers", New York: Atheneum, 1969.