July 22, 2011
Architecture professor conducts workshop at international teaching conference
Mick Charney, associate professor of architecture, conducted the workshop "Call Me Ishmael: Confronting Irreligiosity in the College Classroom through Collaborative Exercises" at the 36th International Conference on Improving University Teaching at the University of Bielefeld, July 19-22, Bielefeld, Germany.
His workshop articulated reasons as to why students seem to know so little about world religions and how that religious illiteracy, in turn, might ignite classroom confrontations. In accordance with the conference theme, "The Collaborative Classroom," classroom readiness techniques and collaborative exercises were shared by workshop participants.
The topic of collaboration was especially appropriate as a conference theme this year because it was in Germany that one of the first and most fruitful examples of student-faculty collaboration -- the seminar -- was pioneered two centuries ago.