Alan Kalish
California State University, Sacramento
Center for Teaching & Learning &
Department of English
College of Arts & Letters

Classes	Papers and Publications
Research Projects	Professional Associations

	Alan Kalish, Ph.D.
	Director, Center for Teaching & Learning
	Lassen Hall 3004
	Office Hours: M &W 4:15 -- 5:00 & by appointment
	kalish@csus.edu
	Voice: 278-5945
	Fax: 278-7301
	6000 J Street Sacramento, California 95819-6084

 

Fall 1999 Classes

• ENGLISH 20, Section 19

  The topic of inquiry for this section of English 20 is "What are our images of college?" This course will include many writing opportunities -- several short assignments and two longer papers -- which will be based on reading and structured inquiry, including group research and class discussions and presentations. Your own writing and presentations and those of your classmates will be considered as significant sources in your inquiry.

  This class begins with several assumptions:

  • students' experience of higher education are both similar & unique,
  • colleges and universities share many goals and features, but differ in the focus of their missions, structures, and traditions,
  • the language used in the university and within each academic discipline is a specialized discourse which must be learned; academic English is nobody's native language.

  Building from these assumptions, the members of the class will develop a set of issues within the general question of the purposes and varieties of higher education which we wish to pursue. Students will be responsible for collecting and sharing relevant texts -- articles, books, stories, film, and electronic documents -- which illuminate these issues, deepen our shared knowledge, and provide evidence for possible answers. Many of topics which we will investigate will be generated by the class.

Papers and Publications

"Learning to Profess: The Enculturation of New Faculty Members in English." Unpublished Dissertation. Bloomington: Indiana University, 1997

Articles

"Searching and Moving: From Graduate Student to Faculty Member" Article and interactive forum. WORKPLACE: the journal for academic labor 2.1 (April 1999): 38 pars+. 14 April 1999 <http://www.workplace-gsc.com/workplace2-1/workplace.html>.

"Institutional Memory and Changing Membership: How Can We Learn From What We Don't Recall?" WORKPLACE: the journal for academic labor 1.1 (February 1998): 10 pars. 1 March 1998 <http://www.workplace-gsc.com>.

"Report on the 'Changing Graduate Education' Conference." WORKPLACE: the journal for academic labor 1.1 (February 1998): 21 pars. 1 March 1998 <http://www.workplace-gsc.com>.

"The 'Change-Up' in Lectures." National Teaching and Learning Forum 5.2 (1996): 1-5. With Joan Middendorf. also published at <www.ntlf.com/~greatesthits>.

Significant excerpts published as "You Have Twenty Minutes." The Label: Purdue Pesticide Programs (April 1997): 3. and "Teaching Pedagogy: Change-Up." Success 101: A Forum for the Sharing of Ideas (UCLA School of Engineering and Technology) 3 (Spring 1997): 7-8.

"'For Our Balls Were Sheathed in Inertron': Textual Variations in 'The Seminal Novel of Buck Rogers'." Extrapolation 29.4 (1988): 303-318. With Michael Fath, Chris Ehrman, John Gant, and Richard D. Erlich.

"The American Masonic Register." American Humor Magazines and Comic Periodicals. Ed. David E. E. Sloane. Historical Guides to the World's Periodicals and Newspapers. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987. 333.

Conference Papers

"Learning to Profess: How New Faculty Learn to Teach." Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching&emdash;West. Lake Arrowhead, CA. 5 March 1999.

"Encouraging the Scholarship of Teaching at Cal State Universities." Invited Panel. Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching&emdash;West. Lake Arrowhead, CA. 5 March 1999. With Laurie Richlin, Farah Fisher, and Cherie De Jong&endash;Hawely.

"Preparing for Graduate Student Teaching: The Pedagogy Seminar." Helping Students to Succeed: What's Working at IU. The 16th Annual Spring Symposium. Bloomington, IN. 13 May 1998. With Christine Reimers.

"First-year Faculty: Expectations and Realities." Department of English Preparing Future Faculty Workshop. Bloomington, IN. 28 March 1998.

"Teaching Professional School Teachers: The Graduate Pedagogy Seminar." Lilly Conference on College and University Teaching--South. Athens, GA. 24 May 1997.

"Learning to Profess: How New Faculty in English Learn to Teach." Means and Ends: Working in the Humanities. The Indiana University Conference in the Humanities. Bloomington, IN. 11 April 1997.

"Developing a College Pedagogy Program: Disciplinary and Transdisciplinary Preparation for a Career in College Teaching." Panel Presentation. The Fifth National Conference on the Training and Employment of Graduate Teaching Assistants. The Professional Apprenticeship: TAs in the 21st Century. Denver, CO. 10 November 1995. With Lyn Burkett, Cathi Eagan, David Pace, Bernice Pescosolido.

"Entering the Conversation: A Reading of the Socializing Effects of Two Introduction to Graduate School Courses." Roundtable Discussion. Engendering Conversations: An Interdisciplinary Forum. Bloomington, IN. 1 April 1995.

"Preparing for a College Teaching Career: Graduate Studies, Pedagogy and the Job Market." Special plenary session. National Association of Graduate and Professional Students, Midwest Regional Conference. Chicago, IL. 10 - 12 March 1995.

"Teaching Writing in the Computerized Classroom." Indiana Council of Teachers of English. Spring Workshop. Franklin, IN. 16 April 1994.

"Tutoring Across the Curriculum: The Challenge of Working in Disciplines Other Than English." Panel Workshop. East Central Writing Centers Association. 15th Annual Conference. Muncie, IN. 12-13 March 1993. With Michael Nelson, Laura Plummer, and Lisa Kurz.

Newsletters and Reports

Editor and contributor. The Teaching Newsletter. Center for Teaching & Learning. California State University, Sacramento. 10.3 (Fall 1998) -- present.

"Women Faculty Face Classroom Bias." Majority Report: Indiana University Office for Women's Affairs Newsletter 11.3 (February 1998): 2, 6. With Joan Middendorf.

Editor and contributor. TOPICS of conversation. (The newsletter of the TOPICS curriculum.) College of Arts and Sciences. Indiana University, Bloomington. 1.1 (1997) -- present.

"Proposal: Indiana University College Pedagogy Program." Office of Research and University Graduate School. Ed. by Eugene Kintgen. 1995.

Editor and contributor. Teaching Resources Center Newsletter. College of Arts and Sciences. Indiana University, Bloomington. 4.2 (1993) -- 9.4 (Spring 1998).

Editor. Handbook for Associate Instructors. College of Arts and Sciences and Office for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculties. Indiana University, Bloomington. 1993-1995 & 1996-1999.

"Associate Instructor Training in College of Arts and Sciences Departments: A Survey of AI Trainers and Department Chairs." Teaching Resources Center. Indiana University, Bloomington. 1993. With Joan Middendorf, Michael Heinz, and Peter Mohn.

Research Projects/Interests

My academic background is in English. I earned a Bachelor of Philosophy degree from the Western College of Miami University in Interdisciplinary Studies--Folklore, Mythology, and Fantasy Literature in 1981 and began graduate studies the following year in Twentieth Century Fiction. I completed an M. A. at another CSU--Cleveland State University.

Beginning in 1985, I attended Indiana University--Bloomington, studying English and teaching writing. By 1993, I had come to realize that the part of my work which I found most interesting was teaching and talking to my peers about teaching. I was lucky enough to get the chance to move into teaching support work full-time at IU's Teaching Resource Center.

I have enjoyed the chance to talk with many college teachers about their courses and their ideas about their teaching and look forward to meeting a whole new group of teachers here at CSUS. One of the great benefits of my work is that I get to be an "expert student" in many fields of study, continuing to stretch myself to learn.

My research interest is in how new members of a profession are brought into the culture of the field. My current work is on the profession of academic English studies. English studies, like all professions, functions in many ways as a culture with an established system for the socialization of new members. In recently completed research, I surveyed new professors, collected accounts of their graduate school, job search, and initial year faculty experiences which allowed me to analyze how English performs professional socialization of its new members. I am especially interested in how new university faculty learn to teach.

I have also published and presented on teaching methods, particularly on the use of "Change-ups" in lectures to control student attention breaks and to include active learning in situations which are usually passive.

Professional Associations

American Association for Higher Education

Association for Integrative Studies

California Faculty Association

International Alliance of Teacher Scholars

Modern Language Association of America

National Council of Teachers of English

Professional Organizational Development Network in Higher Education (POD)

Send problems/comments/suggestions to: kalish@csus.edu