Kettering College Professors Present at Conference
April 16, 2024 —Three Kettering College professors shared their knowledge and collaborated with other college professors at a recent conference for educators. Vail McGuire, Humanities professor, Dr. Maria Rankin-Brown, Humanities professor, and Laura Miller, English associate professor, attended and presented at the Conference on College Composition & Communication (CCCC) earlier this month in Spokane, Washington. The CCCC was established in 1949 and is the premier conference for college writing professors. Presenting at the CCCC is a highly sought-after goal in the academic arena.
The professors’ presentation was titled: “Transactional to Transformational: The Role of Rhetoric in Teaching Writing to Healthcare Students,” which presented ideas, observations, and experiences pulled from their own classrooms in higher education. Professor Miller says, “I presented on some of my assignments that ask students to consider others’ digital work critically before creating their own; then, students are tasked with reflecting on their composing process and the rhetorical situation they are responding to.”
In addition to presenting, the faculty members were able to attend various sessions at the conference. One popular topic presented was artificial intelligence (AI). Dr. Rankin-Brown says, “As you can imagine, most of us have been grappling with what generative AI contributes, specifically, to our teaching, and generally, to society, as a whole…We want to prepare our students for this future that will obviously include AI, while also retaining the significant skills that we know develop the meta-cognition that comes with drafting, redrafting, and playing with ideas to form a conclusion about an idea.”
Professor McGuire also attended various AI sessions, and says, “I love it when a session that I attend offers concrete suggestions of classroom activities and assignments, and at this conference, I was able to glean several specific ideas that I want to try to implement next semester.”
All the professors had discussions with each other and instructors from around the country that invigorated, challenged, and sharpened their thinking, translating to Kettering College’s students reaping that same benefit in the classroom.
Photos Courtesy of Dr. Maria Rankin-Brown
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