[304] MTSU Commission Makes Curriculum Grant Money Available

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Feb. 7, 2011
EDITORIAL CONTACT: Gina Logue, 615-898-5081

MTSU COMMISSION MAKES CURRICULUM GRANT MONEY AVAILABLE
Professors Infuse Courses with Gender, Race, Class, Sexual Orientation Contexts

(MURFREESBORO) – The President’s Commission on the Status of Women has set Monday, Feb. 28, as the deadline for submission of proposals for its 2011 Curriculum Integration Grants.
Three summer grants of $1,800 each are available. The stipends may be used for the revision of a course, the revision of a general education course for study abroad, the creation of a new course, the reconceptualization of a current minor or the creation of a new minor.
Successful proposals have incorporated innovative teaching techniques and integrated women’s concerns with issues of race/ethnicity, class and sexual orientation. Priority will be given to courses that are developed or revised for the undergraduate curriculum and those that can be implemented within two years.
The 2010 PCSW grant winners are Dr. William H. Leggett, assistant professor, Department of Sociology and Anthropology; Dr. Leah Tolbert Lyons, associate professor, Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures; and Dr. Jennifer Woodard, assistant professor, Department of Electronic Media Communication.
Woodard created a proposal for a course titled “‘Black’ Feminisms/Womanism: Mediated Theories, Representations and Lives.” The course would focus on mediated images of African American women, as well as global images of marginalized women in other regions of the world.
“This is really a class on media literacy, and we will practice being literate citizens in our analysis of images of women, application of cultural theory and appreciation of media activism as we examine how women of color combat negative images and promote a more positive idea of who they are and who they can be through the media,” states Woodard in her submission.
Lyons’ entry was for the revision of “Topics in 20th Century French Literature,” an existing course. It would be titled “Femmes au Carrefour (Women at the Crossroads).”
“This course has traditionally been taught with emphasis on canonical male authors from hexagonal France,” writes Lyons. “My aim is to design a topic that shifts the focus to French-language texts written by women who represent a broader purview of the French-speaking world, including authors from Guadeloupe, Haiti, Iran and Senegal so that students may experience this diverse body of literature that is often overlooked in established curricula.”

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Leggett received his grant for a proposal to revise “Immigration and Globalization in the American South,” another existing course. He says his version of the class “examines, from an anthropological perspective, the specific effects of globalizing forces on the southern United States.
“My goal is to more fully address gender issues as they relate to immigration, particularly immigration to the southern United States,” writes Leggett.
This year’s proposals will be reviewed by selected members of the commission’s Academic Issues Subcommittee. Applicants should send seven completed grant proposals (the original and six copies) to Dr. Samantha Cantrell in the MTSU Office of Research Services. The guidelines for grant proposals have been revised this year and are available at http://www.mtsu.edu/pcsw/grants.shtml.
For more information, contact Cantrell at 615-494-8751 or scantrel@mtsu.edu.



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Founded in 1911, Middle Tennessee State University is a Tennessee Board of Regents institution located in Murfreesboro and is the state’s largest public undergraduate institution. MTSU now boasts one of the nation’s first master’s degree programs in horse science, and the Council of Graduate Schools in Washington, D.C., acclaims MTSU’s Master of Science in Professional Science degree—the only one in Tennessee—as a model program. Recently, MTSU unveiled three new doctoral degrees in the sciences.