CPS Event: Literacy Lessons from Ireland on Tuesday, April 4

Left: Dr. Jenifer Jasinski Schneider, associate professor at the University of South Florida, Tampa, studied Irish children's literature and adult education as a Fulbright scholar.

Family and Community: 

Literacy Lessons from Ireland

  

Tuesday, April 4, at 7 p.m. 

in Fox Hall

A CPS event co-sponsored by PEL and ASPEC

Imagining Justice, this year’s College Program Series theme, challenges the Eckerd community to explore the underlying causes of injustice, one of which is the inability to read and write at a functional level. Barely literate adults are limited in how they support their children’s schooling, further contributing to generational poverty, are less able to access and understand healthcare information, and are more likely to become incarcerated.

Dr. Jenifer Jasinski Schneider, associate professor of Literacy Studies in the College of Education at the University of South Florida, Tampa, will speak what it means to be literate in today's technology-mediated world. As a Fulbright scholar, Dr. Schneider worked for several months at the Waterford Institute of Technology in Waterford City, Ireland. Her project, “Creating Life-Long Readers through Children's Literature: A Collaboration Between Adult Further Education and Literacy Studies,” took her across Ireland to observe adult education programs and to visit sites important in the field of children’s literature.

We tend to think of illiteracy as a problem only in developing countries. But Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development statistics indicate that 18% of Irish adults are at Level 1 literacy or below. Ireland ranks 17th of 24 European countries in terms of literacy, 19th in terms of numeracy. We in the Tampa Bay area share similar troubling statistics, and St. Petersburg is home to five of the worst-rated elementary schools in Florida.

Nor is literacy only about traditional constructions of reading and writing. In today’s highly visual, multimodal, and technologically mediated world, much of what people encounter is not formatted as standard written text. The ability to “read” websites, for example, with their very different structure, icons, terminology, and layers of information is as much a part of what it means to be functionally literate as is the ability to read a traditionally-printed instruction manual. OECD statistics also indicate that 42% of Irish adults lack basic problem-solving skills in these kinds of technology-rich environments – and, again, our numbers are not much better.

In bringing Dr. Schneider to Eckerd College, we seek to help students, faculty, and community leaders working in or planning careers in education, or who are addressing literacy and education concerns in other ways, to re-conceptualize literacy and to reimagine a literacy and education framework that thinks outside current practices.

Dr. Schneider is the author of USF’s first open-access, e-textbook The Inside, Outside, and Upside Downs of Children's Literature: From Poets and Pop-Ups to Princesses and Porridge (USF Scholar Commons), was editor for Casework in K-6 Writing Instruction: Connecting Composing Strategies, Digital Literacies, and Disciplinary Content to the Common Core (2014, Peter Lang), was co-editor for Process Drama and Multiple Literacies: Addressing Social, Cultural, Ethical Issues (2006, Heinemann), and her articles appear in many peer-refereed journals.

Dr. Schneider's lecture is co-sponsored by the Program for Experienced Learners (PEL) and by the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College (ASPEC). Refreshments will be served.

Schoeniger lecture "Redefining Entrepreneurship" caps a full day

Left: (l-r) Toriano Parker, Deuces Live, Inc.; Mike Jalazo, Pinellas Ex-Offender Reentry Coalition; Kelly Sims, St. Pete Greenhouse; and Gary Schoeniger, Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, participate in ASPEC's Panel on Entrepreneurial Initiatives in Community Development. Mr. Sims describes the Ice House Entrepreneurship training he leads through the St. Pete Greenhouse. Participants receive training, mentoring and advisory services, and start-up funds for new ventures.

by Amanda Hagood
photos by Donna Littell

On November 2nd, 2016, Gary Schoeniger, founder of the Kauffman Foundation's Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative, paid an action-packed visit to Eckerd. To a day that already included conversations with faculty, students, alumni, ASPEC members, and community leaders from around St. Petersburg, Schoeniger added a keynote address, "Redefining Entrepreneurship," and book signing attended by 120 campus and community members.

Right: Gary Schoeniger, center, chats with ASPEC Director Ken Wolfe, left, and Eckerd alumnus Fred Wells.

Schoeniger is an internationally recognized thought leader in the field of entrepreneurial mindset education, which seeks to understand not just how entrepreneurs create and sustain new ventures, but also what outlooks and habits of thought encourage entrepreneurial behavior, and how and under what conditions entrepreneurial learning occurs. Schoeniger lamented the prominence of what he calls the "Silicon Valley" narrative in our cultural perceptions about entrepreneurship.

"While elite Silicon Valley success stories may capture headlines, they do not accurately reflect the process that most entrepreneurs undertake," Schoeniger said.

The Ice House cometh! New entrepreneurial mindset course debuts in Fall 2016

 by Amanda Hagood
photo by Anne W. Anderson

Professor James Welch recently developed several new courses.

An exciting new course debuts in the PEL course schedule this fall: Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset, which will be taught by Professor James Welch. The course will explore, through multiple case studies, the role that entrepreneurial thinking plays in many aspects of life--not just in starting a business.

PEL Associate Dean of Faculty Margret Skaftadottir explained that this course also is part of a larger effort to develop a new, more socially-minded focus in entrepreneurship that seeks to address community needs. Welch and Frank Hamilton, Eckerd professor of management in the residential program, recently submitted several course proposals to the College Council. All, including Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset, were approved and will be phased in over the next few terms. 

Diana Fuguitt, professor of economics, and Heather Vincent, associate professor of classics, also worked with Skaftadottir and Hamilton over the past few months to explore the connections between social entrepreneurship and a liberal arts education. Designed to be an interdisciplinary program that fosters the vision, creativity, and practical business skills that lead to innovative social change, Entrepreneurship and Social Entrepreneurship is listed among the goals in the proposed five-year Strategic Plan that will be presented to the Board of Trustees in May.

"These courses give PEL students majoring in Business Management or Organizational Studies two new focus areas from which to choose -- Entrepreneurship or Social Entrepreneurship," Skaftadottir said.

Entrepreneurship, social entrepreneurship, and entrepreneurial thinking

Hamilton gave Habitat for Humanity as an example of social entrepreneurship that found innovative solutions to the problem of how to make owning a home affordable to people whose incomes weren't high enough to qualify them for most mortgages.

Additionally, students in any major who have room for an elective course might find courses like Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset useful. Welch, who brings experience from multiple arenas including non-profit and investment management as well as military leadership into his teaching, believes the course will be of value to students with a wide variety of experience and aims.

"We talk about developing traits like recognizing opportunities, being resourceful, and being tenacious," Welch said.

The Ice House concept

 

The course is inspired by the work of Clifton Taulbert, a Mississippi-born business consultant who chronicled his own rise to success in Who Owns the Ice House? Eight Life Lessons from an Unlikely Entrepreneur. In a world shaped and limited by legalized segregation, Taulbert absorbed the entrepreneurial spirit and wisdom of his Uncle Cleve, who owned the only ice house for miles around their home community. Students will use stories of everyday entrepreneurs like Uncle Cleve to envision and test entrepreneurial ideas that would benefit their own communities.

These “ice house” lessons became the basis for the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation’s Ice House Entrepreneurship Program, upon which the course is built.

Welch attended a three-day facilitator training program last month, which was sponsored and organized by the Entrepreneurial Learning Initiative in partnership with Hillsborough Community College (HCC) and the Entrepreneur Collaborative Center, a partner of HCC. Welch's attendance was supported by members of the Academy of Senior Professionals (ASPEC) at Eckerd College.

ASPEC member Ernie Mahaffey, who leads an entrepreneurial group within ASPEC working with the Urban League, the City of St. Petersburg, and other organizations and who also founded the Center for Business Education, Innovation, and Development in northern Illinois, said in a phone interview that Eckerd College's entrepreneurial programs will strengthen ASPEC's work in the community.

"It's the small companies that create new jobs a few at a time," Mahaffey said in a phone interview.

Still, Mahaffey noted that entrepreneurship should not be seen as a "quick fix" to social and economic problems.

"Entrepreneurial ideas take time to develop -- it's done one foot in front of the other," Mahaffey said.

Hamilton said the program is a good fit for Eckerd. "We create students who want to make a difference. Now we have a way to show people how to make change happen, " Hamilton explained. 

Hamilton also noted that insider understanding of business and government systems can be very helpful in finding innovative ways to effect change. "PEL students often come to Eckerd with that kind of understanding," he said. 

Everyone an entrepreneur

“In today’s world,” Welch reflected in an interview, “everyone has to be, in some sense, an entrepreneur.”

He explained that, while in past decades employees might reasonably have expected to stay with the same company for an entire career, today’s shifting labor market has pushed many to continually reinvent themselves across multiple positions at multiple organizations.

Similarly, more businesses have begun to think in an entrepreneurial way, looking at creative, community-focused ways of solving problems.

Hamilton also noted that artists, musicians, and scientists often use entrepreneurial thinking in creating their work and need entrepreneurial skills in promoting it.  

"One of our alumni is a biologist who wondered about the effect of sunscreen and other body products on marine life," Hamilton said. "Entrepreneurial thinking led her to have the idea for the research and to the practical development of a line of products that is not harmful to the marine environment."

The course will challenge common perceptions about entrepreneurship, illustrating that most entrepreneurs do not follow the meteoric path of a Mark Zuckerburg or a Bill Gates. The course also contests the myth that all entrepreneurs start young, as the majority of today’s entrepreneurs are 40 years and older.

With featured lessons on developing persistence, putting ideas into action, and taking manageable risks, the course could benefit students in many different disciplines, Welch said. Assignments such as pitching a business idea to 50 people in the space of one week, should push many students out of their comfort zones and develop their capacities for critical and creative thinking.

The courses in each focus area include:

Entrepreneurship: Principles of Entrepreneurship; Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset; Venture Creation; and Entrepreneurial Creativity and Innovation. 

Social Entrepreneurship: Social Entrepreneurship; Principles of Entrepreneurship OR Entrepreneurial Creativity and Innovation; Cultivating an Entrepreneurial Mindset; Grant Development

Professor James Welch holds advanced degrees in education, business, management, law, and theology. He also is an Army Reserve chaplain, holding the rank of colonel.  Amanda Hagood is PEL's executive director. 

Feb 28 2-4 p.m. FREE Event for current PEL Students: Leveraging your major into a career

Flyer courtesy of ASPEC.

Are you curious about the real- world applications of your major?

Sunday, February 28, from 2 to 4 p.m., current PEL students can explore how to leverage their Eckerd studies into a thriving career. Even better, they can do this with someone who has already been-there-and-done-that.

Hosted by the Academy of Senior Professionals at Eckerd College (ASPEC), the event will be held at Lewis House (see map below), which is on the West side of campus.

ASPEC members have national and international backgrounds in various fields and have committed themselves to helping Eckerd students understand what a particular career is really like. Particularly for those students who are considering a career transition, this uniquely Eckerd opportunity can provide insight into how to take the next step. 

Lewis House, on the West side of campus, is circled in the map above.

No appointment is needed. Just drop in between 2 and 4 p.m. Light snacks will be provided.

Come learn more about what a future in the following majors and specializations could look like:

Majors

• American Studies
• Business Management
• Communication
• Computer Science
• Environmental Humanities
• Film Studies
• History
• Human Development
• Literature
• Management
• Philosophy
• Political Science
• Religious Studies

When: Sunday February 28th, 2-4 p.m.

Where: Lewis House / Light snacks will be provided

Contact Chrissy Jackson at jacksoc@eckerd.edu for more information.