Fresno State Faculty Members Present Panel on Ukraine War
Several Fresno State faculty members with ties to Ukraine will present “The War Up Close: A Conversation with Ukrainian Faculty,” scheduled for 6 to 7:15 p.m. on Thursday, May 5. This will be a hybrid event, taking place in the Leon S. Peters Ellipse Gallery on the second floor of the library and via Zoom.
Dr. Everett Vieira, a professor of political science, will moderate the panel, which will include Drs. Nataliia Kasianenko (Political Science), Victoria Malko (History) and Mariya Yukhymenko (curriculum and instruction).
For more information, please contact Dr. Nataliia Kasianenko at natkas@csufresno.edu.
Image by Yura Khomitskyi.
How One Prof’s Innovative Virtual Coursework Became Part of Ongoing Curriculum
When the COVID-19 pandemic stalled in-person classes in 2020 and students were forced to adjust to remote instruction and course work, professors also had to adjust by being responsive to the virtual world and implementing virtual assignments. For some, that innovation led to assignments that became part of the ongoing curriculum.
Dr. Luis Fernando Macias.
Chicano and Latin American Studies professor Dr. Luis Fernando Macias replaced in-person presentations with coursework that integrated the use of social media while students synthesized the material they learned to show they understood it. For one assignment Macias created, students had to watch a documentary or listen to a podcast for “CLAS 3: an Introduction to Chicano/Latino Studies,” then make a one- to three-minute video highlighting the main points of the assignment.
Image by Ewa Urban.
“What I have found is that students are absolutely creative, they’re absolutely engaged when they are given the opportunity to try something new,” Dr. Macias said. He expected students to have fun and demonstrate their content knowledge but it was also a way for him to get to know his students, a difficult task during a virtual class where students can choose to have their cameras and microphones off.
Many students said the opportunity to incorporate social media into their assignments piqued their interest. “With our generation mainly revolving around technology and mostly getting their news from social media through tweets, reposts or other people’s posts, an assignment like the one I did in Dr. Macias’s course can be very beneficial to a larger audience,” said Fresno State student Danna Martinez.
Dr. Macias said these types of assignments have the most potential to help students demonstrate their content knowledge and synthesize material in a way that is engaging while demonstrating what they do in an ethnic studies class. “They connect all sorts of different disciplines and understand history, understand policy and understand culture through more than one lens,” Dr. Macias said.
Students used social media platforms such as TikTok to explain their understanding of historic events such as the UFW movement, the 1980s Sanctuary Movement, migrant education, and high school walkouts. Students shot videos in their bedroom, in their backyards or outside in agriculture fields – depending on the topic – and got hundreds of views. “I’m reminded of just how brilliant and creative our students are, and if you facilitate the assignment to have fun and to have a connection with their lives, then nothing but good things happen,” Dr. Macias said.
Danna Martinez said the assignment gave her a different experience in which she was left with a sense of comfort for being able to teach others a little about Chicano and Latin American historical events through the use of social media.
Smart Lockers Make Campus Library Materials Accessible 24/7
The Henry Madden Library announces the launch of its smart locker service, providing flexible pick up and drop off of materials from circulating collections for busy students and the Fresno State community. Materials reserved via the library website can be picked up 24 hours a day, seven days a week, from the library lockers located on the east side of the University Center by the Memorial Court Fountain.
With a few simple steps, library users can handle the pick-up process themselves at whatever time is convenient for them. The library locker station works similarly to Amazon Hub lockers, in that users identify themselves by entering or scanning the unique code for their order at the station, and only the relevant doors open to them. The materials are then checked out through the automated library system.
Library summer operating hours are 8 a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays through Fridays, so making materials accessible for weekend and after-hours pick-up and drop-off will support the success of all Fresno State library users, particularly summer students and students with demanding schedules or family obligations.
More information and instructions for use can be found at https://library.fresnostate.edu/service/lockers.
