2 Week Summer Opportunity in Beijing

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The Global Education Center is pleased to share the attached information about an opportunity to teach in Beijing for two weeks. Please be in touch with one of our Global Center Faculty Fellows, Yvonne Liu-Constant or Joanne Szamreta, for further details. As noted in the attached, there is no stipend for the work, but all travel expenses, accommodations, and meals will be provided for the participants.

Lesley has been building collaborations with several organizations in China in recent years including the Daxing public schools. The attached is a follow-up to last year’s visit by Lesley faculty and a February visit by several Daxing principals and teachers.

We are pleased to support this developing relationship and invite your inquiry.

2015 Summer Technology Fellows Announced

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The Summer Technology Institute Fellows for 2015 have been selected!

The Summer Technology Institute, sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the Center for Teaching, Learning and Scholarship (CTLS), and the eLearning and Instructional Support (eLIS) department, is an opportunity for faculty to participate in a learning community of faculty across disciplines and schools engaged in an exploration of the effective uses of technology in teaching, learning, collaboration, and scholarship.

The program features a four-day institute in June, where faculty will engage in a rich mix of dialogue, hands-on practice, project-based learning, reflection, and application to explore innovative ways technology can be integrated into their teaching.

This year’s Fellows are:

College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (CLAS)

Lisa Fiore
Anne Pluto
Robin Roth
Eugene Slason
Joanne Szamreta
Kazuyo Kuyo
Daphne Strassmann

Graduate School of Arts and Social Sciences (GSASS)

Valerie Blanc
Meg Connor
Marion Nesbit
Donna Owens
Christine Routhier

Graduate School of Education (GSOE)

Maureen Creegan-Quinquis
Susan Davison
Cynthia Denmat
Lorraine Greenfield
Jim Keefe
Linda Lengyel
Yolanda Neville
Susan Rauchwerk
Maria Serpa
Stephanie Spadorcia

College of Liberal Arts & Sciences/Graduate School of Education

Nicholas Pietrowski
Amy Rutstein-Riley

Threshold

Leslie Macone

Collaborative Development of Alumni Ambassador Training

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The Office of Enrollment Management is collaborating with eLearning and Instructional Support on a new initiative to develop online training for their growing group of Alumni Ambassadors. Alumni Ambassadors serve as volunteer recruiters in their communities, helping to spread the word about Lesley University programs.  Liana Caffrey, Director of Alumni Volunteer Recruitment and Shirley Chin, Assistant Director are leading the effort in collaboration with eLearning and Instructional Support (eLIS) staff members Robyn Belair, John McCormick, and Bill Porter.

This project is driven by a rapidly growing need for training of Alumni Ambassadors who come from 15 states and cannot always attend the yearly face-to-face training. There are currently 250 Ambassadors and we continue to add ambassadors each week. The initial phase of the training development is expected to be completed this semester, and the project team plans to pilot both online components and in-the-field support aids, with an eye towards improving the training through real-world use at college fairs and other venues for recruitment. Here’s an example of a testimonial from one our Ambassador’s, Terry:

If you want to know more about our work with the Office of Enrollment Management and Liana’s team, please contact Liana at x 8201 or lcaffrey at lesley [dot] edu or John McCormick at 8261 or jmccormi at lesley [dot] edu.

Lesley Joins Generation Study Abroad

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Lesley has joined the nationwide Generation Study Abroad initiative that seeks to double the number of students (undergraduate and graduate) who engage in a study/research abroad program.  For Spring 2015, these experiences across the University have included trips to the Dominican Republic, Paris, London, South Andros, and Mexico.  Claire Carroll, Director of Study Abroad, forged new partnerships this year that helped bring students to Lesley this Spring from Sogang University in Seoul, Korea and Centennial College, Hong Kong.  Our first exchange students from new partner Waseda University in Tokyo, Japan will be sending us two students for the 2015-16 year.

Find us on Facebook: The Global Education Center at Lesley University

FERPA Compliance

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The following are observations and recommendations from Lesley’s General Counsel that faculty and staff should follow to remain in compliance with FERPA:

  1. The FERPA rules and guidelines prohibit universities from disclosing student education records like grades and evaluative comments to third parties without a student’s permission.
  2. Some email systems are vulnerable to interception.
  3. Because communications between faculty and students posted on the Blackboard learning management system remain with the Blackboard system, these communications are much more secure than non-Lesley email systems, and are somewhat more secure than the Lesley email system.
  4. Faculty are encouraged to use Blackboard Grade Center to post grades and evaluative comments:
    • This is the better practice, and should be particularly observed with respect to transmitting grades.
    • Posting feedback and grades to Blackboard Grade Center ensures that only the intended student can access his or her grades and evaluations within a secure Internet connection.
    • Blackboard does have a feature that permits annotations of written work.
  5. In the meantime, for those who are more comfortable using email messages to communicate evaluative comments to students:
    • Those email messages should be sent to and from lesley.edu addresses only.
    • If a student sends you a paper from a non-lesley.edu account, you should respond by using the student’s lesley.edu address only.
    • You should not forward emails from lesley.edu to your personal email accounts if the email messages contain personally identifiable information or student records.
    • If you have reason to believe that someone other than your student has access to your student’s email account, do not send anything to that email address
    • Do not allow anyone else to have access to your lesley.edu email account.
  6. GoogleDocs and other services are not secure, are not subject to contracts with the university, and we should not put student information on those sites or services (the attached FAQ addresses a few questions related to this).  Note also that anything placed on GoogleDocs and other services may be “data mined” by Google or the service company.

More information is available in this FERPA Questions and Answers March 2015