Four CLA Faculty Awarded Lift Funding
We are pleased to recognize a distinguished faculty member from our Geography Department. The following article was originally prepared by the CLA Monday Memo team and highlights their accomplishment contributions to our university community.
Four CLA Faculty Awarded Lift Funding
Four CLA faculty members were among those selected for the inaugural cohort of the CSU Learning Innovation for Future-Forward Teaching (LIFT) initiative, a competitive one-year funding opportunity supporting teaching innovations that prepare students to learn, adapt and thrive in 21st-century work and life.
Jonathan Ocón, Aparna Nayak, Richard Marcus and Guido Urizar join 45 project teams systemwide embedding durable skills into undergraduate coursework, and helping students recognize and articulate them.
"Geography at Work", led by Ocón, assistant professor of Geography, is building a department-wide framework to help students name the career-relevant skills already in their coursework: GIS analysis, fieldwork, planning reports and community-engaged research. Ocón says students won't notice much difference in the classroom, but that's intentional.
"We are not replacing the kinds of projects our students already complete," he said. "Instead, we will add structured opportunities for students to reflect on what they learned through those projects and practice translating that experience into language they can use outside the classroom."
After a GIS analysis or field assignment, students might be asked to identify the skills they practiced and how they would explain that experience to an employer or graduate program. Ocón is working with co-principal investigators Mystyn Mills, Christine Jocoy and Suzanne Perlitsh, along with an advisory group of Career Development Center staff and geography alumni.
"This project is not about adding another requirement to the major," he said. "It is about making visible something that is already happening."
Nayak’s project, "Assessing Global Competence through Linguistic Proficiency and Cultural Literacy in World Language Classes,” addresses a gap in how students articulate certain intangible skills they gain from language study: the goal is to help students make their global competencies and cultural literacy more visible, measurable, and professionally meaningful.
"Learning another language involves a lot more than vocabulary and grammar," Nayak said. "It prepares students to communicate across cultures, understand diverse perspectives, and
thrive in an interconnected world. "
The department teaches six languages: Arabic, French, German, Italian, Russian and Spanish. The RGRLL LIFT team will build thematic modules shared across all of them, on topics such as media literacy, climate change and the social significance of food, to name a few. Students practice critical thinking by comparing how different cultures approach the same challenge, Nayak said, and adaptability by applying classroom language to unpredictable scenarios.
Nayak is working with Alex Bakke, RGRLL Teaching Assistant coordinator, and María Sánchez-Reyes, Assistant Professor of French, who will coordinate the testing, which will be at no cost to the first 250 students. All three awardees will spend the year in a community of practice with LIFT teams across the CSU, sharing progress and building resources other campuses can adapt.
