College hosts first Coastal Scholars Showcase
By Lauren McDonald lmcdonald@thebrunswicknews.com Feb. 9, 2019
Dr. Jennifer Gray with the Department of Arts and Humanities at the College of Coastal Georgia presents during a reflective discussion on procrastination during the CCGA Coastal Scholars Showcase 2019 Friday at the Southeast Georgia Conference Center. (Bobby Haven/The Brunswick News)
Faculty and staff at the College of Coastal Georgia are constantly engaged in a wide variety of research. Often, though, they’re so busy in their own work that there’s not adequate time to share the scholarship with their colleagues.
The inaugural Coastal Scholars Showcase, held Friday at the college, aimed to change that and to create a collaborative environment for faculty and staff to share their work.
The event also served as a resource for community members and students to join in on the collaboration.
“Everybody on campus, all the various committees and offices on campus, if they all work together, we could create one event to share with each other and to share with the community, rather than everybody doing their own thing in their own department and each other not seeing it,” said Karen Lucas, an assistant professor in the Department of Education and Teacher Preparation. “This is important because it develops partnerships for future research and future scholarship.”
Lucas chairs the college’s faculty development committee, which organized the two-day event.
The showcase began Thursday evening with a keynote talk from Tyler Bagwell, an associate professor of speech communications at the college, along with a showing of his recent documentary, “The Wanderer.” The film tells the story of slave-owner Charlie Lamer’s attempt to bring enslaved Africans to Jekyll Island.
Faculty and staff came together again Friday morning to share their work through poster presentations, reflective discussions and talks.
“It creates points of connection between our work that we can expand and build on,” said Amy Sneed, an assistant professor of middle grades education, who gave a presentation with her colleague Carol Geiken. “We work in our own departments and units every single day.”
Sneed and Geiken’s presentation focused on an ongoing partnership the School of Education and Teacher Preparation has with Glynn County Schools, so that teacher candidates at the college can gain experience through clinical work at local schools.
“We did more of a practitioner model and took students out to Goodyear Elementary School,” Geiken said. “We were looking at the impact on student learning but also the impact we were making on teacher candidates.”
A diverse array of scholarship was presented at the showcase.
“It’s a huge, wide range,” Lucas said. “We define scholarship broadly.”
Artwork by college faculty hung on the walls, along with poster presentations about research projects.
“People have published books, people have published journal articles,” Lucas said.
She said she hopes to see the Coastal Scholars Showcase continue to grow next year.
“It’s just our first year, and I’m excited about the response we’ve gotten,” Lucas said. “The president of the college, Dr. Michelle Johnston, is very supportive and wants to see it continue to grow. So we’ll definitely work towards building it next year.”
Reprinted with the permission of The Brunswick News. Published online at The Brunswick News.