Information for SAGES Faculty and Fellows
Announcements
Information for Prospective Visiting Fellows
Case Western Reserve University has created two programs for visiting fellows wishing to teach SAGES seminars.
Presidential Fellows are distinguished professionals, scientists, and humanists, mostly from the Cleveland area, who design and lead seminars in their areas of expertise. Presidential Fellows teach one seminar in the fall or the spring term of a given academic year.
SAGES Fellows will usually be visiting faculty from other universities, though we also welcome applications from postdoctoral candidates with teaching experience and from distinguished professionals in diverse fields. Appointed by the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, SAGES Fellows will be recruited primarily from institutions outside the Cleveland area; international scholars are especially encouraged to apply.
Resources for Leading a Seminar
Leading a SAGES Seminar: An Instructor's Guide
The SAGES Learning Research Team, led by Dr. Alice Kolb in the Weatherhead School of Management, has prepared a guide for SAGES instructors, drawing on interviews, classroom observations, and program assessments conducted during the SAGES pilot. Introductory material and modules from Leading a SAGES Seminar: An Instructor's Guide are now available at the following links:
SAGES Learning Outcomes
Mission: The SAGES program is a seminar-based, writing-intensive learning experience that emphasizes collaboration, transformative thinking, and scholarly inquiry. Students and faculty work together to explore the ideas, individuals, and innovations that have shaped human inquiry in a variety of fields. Each SAGES course invokes the power of seminar discussion and foregrounds writing and public speaking to promote the learning of all participants. The program’s developmental sequence deliberately moves from general forms of inquiry, writing, and oral presentation to those practiced in individual scholarly disciplines. Because oral and written presentation skills are fundamental to the SAGES curriculum, the following Learning Outcomes serve as the critical “common thread” throughout the program.
I. First Seminar introduces students to the Case academic community, including the unique opportunities for collaboration with the University Circle Institutions and the city of Cleveland, and emphasizes modes of inquiry, writing, and speaking used throughout the University.
At the end of First Seminar, students should be able to:
- - Engage in thoughtful, productive discussion with peers, faculty, and other professionals
- - Give and receive criticism respectfully and constructively
- - Establish a personal voice in oral and written expression
- - Present concepts and beliefs in clear, precise, and graceful language
- - Frame substantial arguments, first by making interesting claims and then by marshaling and interpreting relevant evidence
- - Assess whether an argument (including their own) is properly supported according to basic academic standards
- - Demonstrate awareness and engagement with different perspectives or positions in their own writing (opposing positions, alternative proposals, etc.)
- - Recognize their responsibilities—as writers and speakers, readers and listeners—in promoting scholarly dialogue, and then meet those responsibilities
- - Analyze and assess different kinds of writing from a variety of sources
- - Refine their phrasing, analyses, and arguments through a rigorous process of revision
II. University Seminars build on the common experiences in the First Seminar and focus on academic modes of thinking and writing specific to scholarly discourse about the natural and technological world, the social world, and the symbolic world. These topical courses offer cross-disciplinary insight and attention to effective inquiry and presentation.
Students in University Seminars continue to develop the skills and dispositions emphasized in First Seminar. In addition, they should be acquiring the ability to:
- - Pose a relevant, narrowly focused research question
- - Construct extended arguments that incorporate quotations and ideas from multiple sources
- - Analyze and evaluate a variety of sources and forms of evidence
- - Demonstrate thorough familiarity with one method of citation and follow its conventions—not mechanically, but with full appreciation of their ethical significance
III. Departmental Seminars introduce students to disciplinary modes of inquiry and presentation.
Students in Departmental Seminars continue to develop the skills and dispositions emphasized in First and University Seminars. In addition, they should be acquiring the ability to:
- - Articulate a question or problem of interest to the discipline
- - Skillfully employ research methods to address that question or problem
- - Produce clear, precise academic prose in appropriate modes (e.g., lab report, close reading, analytical argument, persuasive argument, quantitative analysis)
- - Provide useful, relevant criticism to others—and respond constructively to criticism—within a disciplinary context
IV. Senior Capstone Projects encourage students to pursue independent research and scholarship, with the guidance of faculty from their chosen major or discipline.
In their Senior Capstone Projects, students demonstrate their ability to:
- - Articulate a problem or question that is both interesting and relevant to their chosen field(s) of study
- - Identify an appropriate research method or analytical response to the question or problem, and present the method/approach in discipline-specific modes of writing (such as a project proposal)
- - Conduct sustained research—designing and conducting experiments, exploring an archive, analyzing data, reading publications in their field—sufficient to draw conclusions significant to their discipline
- - Produce a substantial presentation in response to the question or problem
Resources for Teaching Writing
English Department Recommended Writing Outcomes
By the end of First Seminar, students should be able to:
- - Engage critically and considerately with the written ideas of peers.
- - Identify and summarize the main points of a published piece of writing supplied by the instructor.
- - Respond critically in writing to scholarly ideas from a variety of perspectives or positions.
- - Craft a specific question that can form the basis for sustained inquiry on a topic.
- - Identify representative University and University Circle resources to support writing projects.
- - Write in a consistent, clear, and grammatical personal voice.
- - Reflect critically on their own ideas.
- - Describe Case's Academic Integrity Policy.
- - Explain the role of and significance of differences among various citation formats (MLA, APA, Chicago, etc.).
- - Refine phrasing and ideas through directed revision.
By the end of a University Seminar, students should be able to:
- - Identify, summarize, and respond critically to an array of scholarly ideas and texts gathered through independent research.
- - Develop a focused, informed, and specific research question (appropriate to the topic of the course and to the context of a scholarly problem).
- - Define a scholarly position in a clear, grammatical voice that is characteristic of an academic community.
- - Draft persuasive and/or analytical arguments of appropriately delimited scope for a 10-12 page paper. These arguments should include strong and clear claims, appropriate presentation and interpretation of evidence, and substantial exploration of the warrants/backings that authorize them.
- - Cite consistently and comprehensively a variety of print and electronic resources using a citation format appropriate to the area of inquiry.
- - Demonstrate a facility with the sentence structures and rhetorical moves most common to academic writing.
- - Demonstrate a capacity for self-directed revision of writing for effective argumentation and for stylistic clarity.
Writing Resource Wiki
The new Writing Resources website offers practical guidance on the teaching of academic writing, especially (but not exclusively) within the context of the SAGES seminar. Created by Kim Emmons, director of composition, the site draws on the accumulated research and wisdom of professionals in the field of composition and rhetoric, as well as on recent experiences of SAGES faculty from across the disciplines. It includes sample assignments from SAGES' first three years, strategies for motivating and challenging student writers, and advice on assessment. It also includes a SAGES vision statement on writing instruction, which we urge you to share with your students early in the term.
Please visit the Writing Resource Wiki at:
http://artsci.cwru.edu/wiki/writing/index.php?title=About_the_Wiki
The vision statement is posted at:
http://www.case.edu/artsci/engl/writing/pedagogy/learning.html#vision
Like all such productions, the Writing Resource Wiki is a work in progress. We hope to continue collecting ideas, assignments, and success stories for distribution to the SAGES community. Please send yours to writing@case.edu.
SAGES Peer Writing Crew
The SAGES Peer Writing Crew offer tutorial assistance to their fellow undergraduates— fostering habits of reflection, cultivating awareness of audience, and modeling strategies for composition and revision. The ten members of the Crew are all SAGES veterans who were recommended for the program by their seminar instructors. Your students can make appointments with the Crew by logging in at http://www.casewconline.com.
Collaboration in the Teaching of Writing
A committee of faculty members and graduate students has developed a statement of roles and responsibilities for faculty seminar leaders and writing instructors. (The latter category includes co-instructors, writing liaisons, and tutors from the Writing Resource Center and the SAGES Peer Writing Crew.) Click here to read their notes on collaboration in the teaching of writing.
Recommended Readings
Mano Singham, director of the University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE), has written a brief guide to help students read scholarly works perceptively and critically. Click here for a pdf version.
On a related topic, Mano recommends an article titled "Teaching Critical Thinking: Some Lessons from Cognitive Science" (College Teaching, Winter 2005, vol. 53, No. 1, p. 41-46). The article can be found online at
http://www.philosophy.unimelb.edu.au/reason/papers/Teaching_CT_Lessons.pdf
Mano has also published his thoughts on this article:
Why Religious and Other Ideas are So Persistent
Finally: in April 2006, Mano published a three-part series on the genesis and purposes of SAGES:
The Genesis of the Program
Implementation Issues
The Difficult Task of Changing Education
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