Projects
Cultural Differences in the Effect of Counterfeit Exposure on Perceptions of Luxury Brands Dr. Lei Song, Assistant Professor of Business Studies, Marketing.
Developing Students’ Cultural and Linguistic Competence for a Global Workplace Dr. Elaine Bukowski, Professor Emerita of Physical Therapy; Dr. Arnaldo Cordero-Román, Associate Professor of Spanish; Dr. Linda Feeney, Director of E-Learning, and Dr. JY Zhou, Internationalization Specialist
Description: A team of passionate academics -- Dr. Elaine Bukowski, Professor of Physical Therapy; Dr. Arnaldo Cordero-Román, Associate Professor of Spanish; Dr. Linda Feeney, Director of E-Learning, and Dr. JY Zhou, Internationalization Specialist -- joined together to establish a pilot program for developing students’ cultural and linguistic competence to prepare them for a global workplace. The objective was to promote and sustain a real life communicative approach via social interaction, multidisciplinary, cross-curricular endeavors with contributions by students, faculty, staff, administrators, and community.
In this program, faculty, staff, language students, and physical therapy (PT) students contributed to a database of workplace-specific terms, instructions, responses, and feedback. The Office of E-Learning built on this database to develop online tests and drill and practice resources to reinforce language skills. By using the learning management system, it is possible to track student progress and to assess the effectiveness of these resources. The instructor integrated these resources into the curriculum. Additionally, to practice their language skills, opportunities were provided for interactions between the language and PT students. Tucker Rowlinson and Anne Pushkal of the Office of E-learning played an integral role in the project.
Future plans include expansion of these efforts to other academic programs. Our goal is to infuse this type of global awareness throughout the institution.
Faculty Perspectives on Globalizing the Curriculum Dr. JY Zhou, Internationalization Specialist
"Global Challenges: Promise and Perils in the 21st Century": An all-in-one digital textbook and adaptive online course Dr. Tina Zappile, Associate Professor of Political Science
Psychosocial Factors Affecting Perception of Foreign-Accented Speech Dr. Amee Shah, Associate Professor of Health Science
Description: In our globally-interconnected present era, we are constantly encountering people who speak with accents different from ours. In order to successfully communicate with people with different types of accents, it becomes important to understand the factors that play a role in the perception, processing, and decoding of accented speech. Both, speaker-related and listener-related variables, as well as the nature of the accented speech itself, influence the perception and ultimately, the understanding of accented speech. Hence, my research also strives to systematically address the types of speaker-, listener-, and accent-related variables that come into play, and the nature of their interactive roles in processing and understanding foreign-accented speech. We are interested in understanding and providing solutions to real-life cross-cultural communication breakdowns. Specific projects deal with 1) helping students and faculty from diverse cultural backgrounds communicate effectively with each other for effective student learning and faculty teaching, 2) helping culturally-diverse doctors and nurses effectively communicate with their patients, and 3) helping the local police community become aware, educated, and culturally competent to reduce bias and linguistic profiling.
Please see Cross-Cultural Speech, Language & Acoustics Lab (CrSLA) for more information.
ÒùÐÔÊÓƵ Pre-service Mathematics Teachers Project Dr. Chia-Lin Wu, Professor of Mathematics
