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Teaching Meets Research

At a liberal arts college like Allegheny, teaching is research and conducting research is often a collaborative venture with our undergraduate students. As they develop core disciplinary strengths in their Major, students benefit from the interdisciplinary approach that faculty encourage in problem-solving. We facilitate connections between the classroom and experiential opportunities outside, at local, national and international levels.

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Co-taught with Dr. Caryl Waggett, Global Health

Despite the unforeseen challenges of the COVID-19 lockdown, my colleague Caryl Waggett from Global Health, and I co-taught three academic seminars across three semesters, to eighteen first year students registered for our cohort on "Empowering Women Worldwide." Tied to the U.N. Sustainable Development Goals, students from this cohort learned to do research, produced conference posters on topics related to a global exploration of the theme, and also delivered various artifacts from resource-finding websites, to anti-domestic violence materials for churches, and a children's book on recognizing and seeking help in fighting domestic violence. Read more here.

Whether it is the summer ACRoSS (Allegheny College Research Seminar Series) research projects, or papers/poster presentations at national undergraduate conferences such as the National Council for Undergraduate Research (NCUR), or regional ones such as the annual Penn State Behrend venue, every opportunity prepares our students to do strong independent research. This readies them for the culminating Senior Thesis Project they must complete to graduate. Students also practice communicating their ideas, using different presentation formats, to various professional audiences both within and outside their field.

Right: Binderiya and Bintou (Class of '23) with award certificates for their presentations at the Sigma XI Conference at Penn State Behrend, Spring 2023.

In working closely with various community businesses and non-profit partners, students learn about ethical considerations in undertaking a project, that impacts those who it attempts to serve. During the COVID-19 lockdown, for example, a small group of first year, Cohort IV Global Citizen Scholar students worked tirelessly with professional counselors from the local domestic violence shelter, consulting with volunteer survivors, and researching domestic abuse. The resulting discoveries led to the children's book, "You are Not Alone," a grant-funded, self-published children's resource on identifying and reporting different forms of abuse.

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