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College updates
SOAR4 launches first cohort
After a summer of faculty and staff
training at UDC, Scholars on a Roll,
or SOAR4, launched its first cohort
in the fall with eight instructors, 10
sections (reading improvement and
English fundamentals) and 42 students
taking at least four courses together.
A $100,000 grant from the Wal-Mart
Foundation in March 2009 made it
possible for the University to implement
a summer institute to train faculty
and staff in learning communities and
integrative assignments. The SOAR4
team worked closely with
the First-Year Experience, the Center for
Academic Advising and the Division
of Student Affairs to facilitate project
implementation.
SOAR4 is an initiative to raise the
retention and success of students taking
developmental English and mathematics
by linking these courses with
sociology and freshman orientation
and creating an effective learning community.
It was borne out of a proposal
by the Myrtilla Miner Professional
Development Academy (formerly,
UDC Building Engagement and
Attainment for Minority Students,
or BEAMS) after the team returned
from a 2007 summer institute
on learning communities at the
Washington Center for Improving the
Quality of Undergraduate Education.
In 2003, UDC BEAMS began with its
attendance at the Summer Academy
of the American Association of Higher
Education. At that time, the University
Scholar Series was established to present
workshops and other professional development
activities for faculty, staff and
students to learn more about the interconnections
of assessment, learning and
technology. BEAMS renamed the series
the Myrtilla Miner Pro fessional
Development Academy in 2003
to honor its founder, and the workshops
expanded to include activities
on retention.
Faculty publications
Shurron Farmer published Some
Results on the Analysis of a Climax
Population Model: A Single-Species Two-
Age Class Climax Population Model,
VDM Publishing House Ltd., 2009.
Stanley M. Einstein-Matthews and
Jeffery Fleming published “Continuity
and Differentiability Properties of
Parameter-Dependent Solutions of the
t-Equation” in African Diaspora Journal
of Mathematics, Volume 7, Number 1
(pages 79–91), 2008.
Stanley M. Einstein-Matthews and
Jeffery Fleming published “Weighted
Parameter Dependent Bergman Kernel,
Bergman Projection and Fourier
Integral Operators” in African Diaspora
Journal of Mathematics, Volume 7,
Number 2 (pages 107–118), 2009.
April Massey, Rachel M. Petty,
Jeffery Fleming, Matthew Petti and
Lena Walton published “Increasing
the Numbers: Aligning the Strength
of the Academic Core with Outcomes
for Student Retention,” Successful
Models for Effectively Retaining and
Graduating Students, Thurgood
Marshall College Fund, 2009.
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