Seven PEL students recognized for writing excellence

 Left: (l-r) Writing Excellence Award nominees Trace Taylor, Troy Ippolito, Chrissy Jackson, Matt DiPalma, and Writing Excellence Award winner Jasmine Rothgeb with PEL Director of Writing Services Alaina Tackitt. 

by Craig Anderson

photos by Anne W. Anderson

PEL senior Jasmine Rothgeb was presented with one of Eckerd College's 2016 Writing Excellence Awards at the PEL Celebration Reception held Saturday, May 21, in Cobb Gallery on the Eckerd main campus. Rothgeb, majoring in American Studies with a core discipline in Environmental Humanities, also received a cash award and a notation on her diploma.
 

But, with a newborn baby at home, she almost didn't attend the celebration.

“When I emailed Jasmine to see if she would be at the reception," Tackitt said, "she wasn’t sure she could attend because she has a one-month old daughter. I pressured her to come, because I knew her family would be excited to know that she is no longer a nominee, she is a winner!”

Six other PEL seniors, nominated for Writing Excellence Awards, received certificates of achievement from PEL Director of Writing Services Alaina Tackitt.

Alaina Tackitt (l) with Writing Award nominee Chris Fort.

In addition to Rothgeb, PEL nominees, who came from many disciplines, included:

• R. Matthew DiPalma, majoring in Humanities with a core discipline in History,
• J. Christian Fort, completing a Concentration in American Culture and Society,
• Heather M. Hollister, completing a Concentration in Business Management,
• Troy Anthony Ippolito, majoring in Organizational Studies with a corporate focus,
• Christine A. Jackson, majoring in Organizational Studies with a corporate focus, and
• Trace Carol Taylor, completing a Concentration in Creative Non-Fiction with a minor in Anthropology.

PEL graduates take pride in knowing they have acquired and demonstrated writing competency that sets them apart professionally and prepares them to succeed in graduate and professional advanced degree programs. One way Eckerd College students demonstrate proficiency in writing is through the Writing Exhibit, a selection of papers that show competency in four academic genres of writing: narrative/descriptive, argumentative/persuasive, interpretive/analytic, and an extemporaneous (timed) writing.

While all students -- residential and PEL -- must successfully pass the Writing Exhibit in order to graduate, a small number of students each year are recognized for having submitted outstanding work by being nominated for a Writing Excellence Award.

“I was so proud to have so many PEL seniors nominated this year,” Tackitt said. “And it was great that most were able to be at the reception, so they could be recognized by family, friends, and peers.”

Craig Anderson is the Tampa campus Office Manager and the PEL Academic Writing Coach.

 

PEL ENACTUS team headed to national conference

by Anne W. Anderson
Photos by Anne W. Anderson
or courtesy of Yolanda Carter

The Enactus team of (l-r) Yolanda Carter '17, Dorie Michalik '16, Professor Naveen Malhotra (advisor), Tonya Zalick '18, and Andi Gordon '16 celebrate their regional victory.

They wrote grants, developed marketing plans and tools, provided innovative programs at a number of local non-profit organizations, produced reports, and created a video presentation which they entered in the regional level of a nationwide competition judged by business representatives from major corporations. Now, having been named regional champions, Carter, Zalick, and Gordon are headed to the Enactus United States National Competition in St. Louis, Mo., on May 16-18. Dorie Michalik is unable to attend.

Dorie Michalik and Yolanda Carter work on the Powerpoint presentation.

They are Yolanda Carter, Andrea "Andi" Gordon, Dorice "Dorie" Michalik, and Tonya Zalick, students in Students in a Free Enterprise (SIFE), one of Professor Naveen Malhotra's senior seminar business management courses. As part of the course, they and other classmates each proposed a short-term project working with a local non-profit organization and then worked in teams of two to complete the projects and to give progress reports in class.

"We assisted our partner with making contact with potential audience members, looking for locations to present, and so on," Tonya Zalick wrote in an email interview. Zalick will be the Eckerd Enactus chapter president for the 2016-2017 academic year.

After the course ended, Malhotra offered interested students the opportunity to be part of an extra-curricular activity that involved putting together a presentation about the projects and presenting it, virtually, at the Enactus Regional Competition in April.

One of many planning sessions involved in preparing the entry.

"Most adult undergraduate programs don't have extra-curricular activities, but I feel it is an important part of the college experience," explained Malhotra, who has advised teams since 1995.

Trophies and other awards--including the key to the City of St. Petersburg--line his office, but the excitement in his voice as he talks about the projects students have completed suggests Malhotra's motivation for encouraging his students to participate is not winning trophies but watching PEL students discover ways they can use the business skills they are honing to help the larger community.

"And they do the work in eight weeks, then prepare their presentations during the next eight weeks," Malhotra said. "Other teams work all year on their projects and presentations."

Carter, Gordon, Michalik, and Zalick volunteered. They reviewed the eight projects that had been completed in the course, selected four to showcase in an annual report, and then began preparing their entry.

Materials Andi Gordon created for Pinellas Hope.

Enactus--Entrepreneurial Action Us--is an international organization involving more than 48,000 undergraduate and graduate students who "create community development projects that put people's own ingenuity and talents at the center of improving their lives," according to the 2016 Team Handbook.

Volunteer judges are professionals working for major corporations. They assess each team's effectiveness in seeing opportunity (including conducting a needs assessment), taking entrepreneurial action, and enabling progress by measuring direct and indirect outcomes that empower people and improve livelihoods in a sustainable way. Teams also receive feedback on their ability to communicate their projects and the results.

This year, communicating took a virtual turn. Recognizing that travel costs prohibited some teams from participating, the organization created a virtual regional in addition to regionals held in six cities across the continental United States. But it meant that, in addition to creating a Powerpoint presentation, the team also had to find a way to film the presentation.

Andi Gordon said it was a challenge. "Preparing a presentation with multiple content areas/speakers is almost always a major undertaking," Gordon wrote in an email interview. "But when you add the element of filming, editing, synchronizing with Powerpoint, and the expanded technology needs, the focus can shift from the content of your presentation to just delivering a usable "package.'"

Dorie Michalik noted she is used to moving around as she presents to a live audience. "Having to stand in one place as the team's presentation was videotaped was a challenge for me personally," she wrote in an email interview. 

The team met most Wednesday evenings during Spring 2 to work on the project. Towards the end, however, other meetings were added. The night before the filming, the group worked until midnight then were back on campus for an early-morning camera date.

"It was a lot of hours," Gordon wrote.

PEL Enactus projects

Yolanda Carter helps install a community garden at CASA.

The projects included in this year's showcase were:

CASA (Community Action Stops Abuse): Yolanda Carter obtained a $1,500 Partnership Workforce Development grant from WalMart's Women's Economic Empowerment Project to create materials for two workshops (employment readiness training and money management skills), which she termed EMPOWER (Encourage, Motivate, Prepare & Organize Women's Economic Readiness) workshops, presented to CASA clients. She also used funds to create a community garden that CASA clients will maintain to provide fresh produce to the residents.

Community Leveraged Learning (CLL): Dorie Michalik presented fellow SIFE student Lori Pinkerton's project, as Lori was not able to commit to the extra hours involved. Lori built a website for Community Leveraged Learning, an organization that provides writing workshops for children and for teachers. In addition to teaching writing skills, CLL also publishes finished work, validating children's creativity and helping teachers produce thematic units they can use in their classrooms. 

Pinellas Hope: A project of the Diocese of St. Petersburg and Catholic Charities, Pinellas Hope is replacing the "tent city" created to shelter people without homes with modular units made of shipping crates. Andi Gordon created marketing materials, including a multi-page case statement for the organization's funding initiative, for the dedication of Phase 2 of the project. She created the materials using templates that Pinellas Hope can reuse for future events and developed a media engagement plan including press release guidelines and timelines.

Re-emerge at Westminster Palms: Ten residents at Westminster Palms, a St. Petersburg retirement community, had been taking art classes from an instructor who came to the center each week and some were displaying their work in the lobbies of the buildings. Tonya Zalick, who works at Westminster Palms, felt the community was missing out on seeing the residents' works, and she knew residents were equally isolated from the larger art community in the area. Ekcerd Enactus coordinated with organizers of the Saturday Art Walk in Gulfport to allow the senior artists to re-emerge by showing their art at the public event. They also created a network of restaurant and shop owners interested in having individual artists display their work.

Takeaways, Tips, and Testimonials

 

All four team members agreed the project took a lot of time and stretched their skills.

"This is not something you can do well with little effort," Michalik cautioned. "Make sure you have the time and ability to give the project and the competition your all."

But each member also said the time was well spent.

"The best experience was the responses from the women who appreciated the information we provided during the workshops as well as the residents' reactions to the garden boxes being finished," Carter wrote.

Zalick agreed. "The best moment was seeing the faces of the [Re-emerge artists] when complete and total strangers offered to buy their artwork," she wrote. "They did not think that their paintings were of any value to anyone, and for them to see that they touched other people was eye-opening to them."

Zalick also said she is more aware now of the needs in the community and also of "the many, many organizations, people and groups who are doing what they can to make a difference in the lives of others."

Representatives of some of the communities helped said the short-term projects left a lasting impact.

Louis Ricardo, Catholic Charities' marketing and development manager, noted that Gordon did more than just provide detailed marketing materials.

"She was simply an excellent sounding board for me in general as I am new to both Pinellas County and the non-profit industry," Ricardo wrote, adding that he looked forward to working with her in the future.

Westminster Palms resident David Dumin said in a telephone interview that he didn't plan to pursue marketing his artwork. "But it was nice to watch the people enjoying our work," he said of the Art Walk event. "And I know others in the group are interested in being more involved."

Trace Taylor, founder and CEO of Community Leveraged Learning, said the website built by Enactus has helped CLL to present itself more professionally, which is important as they begin to provide teacher training to local schools and to apply for grants.

"They saved us, is what they did," Taylor said.

 
In addition to being PEL students and participating in Enactus, the team members each work full time. Yolanda Carter recently accepted a position in the Center for Conflict Dynamics and Mediation Training Institute at Eckerd College; Andi Gordon is the St. Petersburg Retail Advertising Manager for the Tampa Bay Times; Dorie Michalick is the Assistant Director of Product Management for the Center for Conflict Dynamics and Mediation Training Institute at Eckerd College; and Tonya Zalick works at Westminster Palms, a Continued Care Retirement Community in St. Petersburg. 

Anne W. Anderson is PEL's director of blended and online learning.

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. 

Writing services for all PEL students

by Anne W. Anderson

Left: Kathleen Winterberg (r) at the Phi Alpha Theta induction ceremony. Photo by Catherine Griggs

Kathleen Winterberg, an American Studies senior who plans to graduate in May, had plenty of college experience when she started taking courses at Eckerd College. She already had earned a bachelor's degree in organizational management from a college in New York. But then she moved to Florida, began working at Eckerd, and discovered that a couple of her co-workers were taking PEL classes.

When she started taking some of Professor Catherine Griggs' American Studies courses, she found the history she had hated before came alive.

"Dr. Griggs is phenomenal," she said in a phone interview. "The way she presents the material is incredible. My goal now is to tutor homeless children and to help them like history -- not to resent it, like I did."

But Winterberg found the writing a challenge. It wasn't that she didn't know how to write. For her previous degree, she had even written a 35-40 page thesis paper.


"But none of it prepared me for what I found at Eckerd," Winterberg said in a phone interview. She explained that her previous major required a different kind of writing that included lots of charts and graphs and other visuals. She felt lost when it came to integrating multiple academic articles into a research paper.

"I didn't know how to write about reading," Winterberg said.

Above: Alaina Tackitt, PEL academic advisor and director of writing services, and Craig Anderson, Tampa campus office manager and PEL academic writing coach, meet at the Tampa campus office. Photo by Kathy McDonald.

Tracy Bohannon, who also plans to graduate later this month, said she also thought she was a good writer when she came to Eckerd.

"I had written grants, had done technical writing such as writing policies and procedures manuals, and had done some creative writing," Bohannon said in a telephone interview. But, she said, the thought of submitting a writing exhibit "paralyzed me. I was really nervous."

Like Winterberg, Bohannon said she had never encountered this kind of analytic writing before. "I had never outlined anything before," Bohannon said. 

That's not unusual, according to Margret Skaftadottir, Associate Dean of Faculty for PEL, explaining that Eckerd College's approach to teaching college-level writing has always been different from most other colleges and universities.

A selection of books on writing pulled from Patti Cooksey's and Anne Anderson's office shelves.

"Instead of having students take one or maybe two freshman composition courses and then never having any more writing instruction, Eckerd has always intended that writing be an important part of every major," Skaftadottir said. "By the end of their college experience, students are expected to be proficient in several different types of writing."

Because Winterberg and Bohannon were being asked to write in ways different from what they were used to, it was not easy.

Winterberg said she had been embarrassed to ask for help. "But you can't be," she emphasized. "You have to reach out and ask." 

At Professor Griggs' suggestion, Winterberg contacted Alaina Tackitt, PEL's director of writing services, and Tackitt, whose in-process dissertation focuses on adult composition, showed her a step-by-step method that Winterberg said, "took the fear out of writing an essay."

Writing services for PEL students at every stage of writing

PEL students use Diana Hacker's style manual.

Tackitt said she and Craig Anderson, Tampa campus office manager and PEL academic writing coach, help students at all stages of writing.

"Writing support for students isn't just about helping them fix their papers after they've gotten a bad grade," Tackitt explained. "We also help students get started and think about how to organize their information."

Anderson '15, who earned his Human Development degree through PEL and who minored in Creative Writing, said many students wait until the last minute to ask for writing help, whether it is a paper for a class or a paper for the Writing Competency Exhibit.

"I usually can respond within 24 hours to a student who emails me a paper or who shares one on Google Docs," Anderson said. But, he noted, that doesn't allow the time the student needs to reflect on the comments he makes, to decide on what action to take, and to revise the paper accordingly.

"It also helps if they send us the instructions so we can be sure what they have written fulfills the assignment," Anderson added.

Bohannon said she was concerned because she didn't feel she had written an argumentative paper, one of the four required genres. But when she met with Anderson, he looked through all the papers she had written and helped her see how they could be tweaked to meet the requirements.

Bohannon attended the workshop Tackitt and Anderson offer each term, and she also met with Anderson three or four times. "He helped me develop the papers more fully, made suggestions about references and mechanics, and helped me understand the purpose of the annotations," she said.

The Tampa campus is located at 1300 Westshore Blvd.

While writing support can be provided via email, Winterberg found she needed to sit down with Tackitt and work more extensively. So she drove to the Tampa campus on Westshore Blvd. and found not just writing help but also a quiet place in which to work.

There, Tackitt showed Winterberg how to start by writing out the citations for each article she was using then writing one sentence about each article.

"It didn't even have to be a whole sentence," Winterberg explained. "But I also wrote down the page number of where I found the information so I could go back and find it again later."

After repeating this process a few times, Winterberg said Tackitt showed her how to frame the sentences and then to organize and combine them into the basis of a paper.

"I had been ready to give up," Winterberg said. "But Alaina gave me the tools I needed to go forward with my writing."

Next Writing Workshop and Writing Exhibit Due Dates

 The next writing exhibit workshop will be held Thursday, May 26, from 6:00 - 7:30 p.m. on the main campus in FT210. Writing exhibit submissions are due June 20. 

Tackitt and Anderson can be contacted at 813-282-0002 or by emailing tackitad@eckerd.edu. Anne W. Anderson is PEL's director of blended and online learning.