Category / Ireland & EU

by shannonchance

Around Aveiro

Modernist architecture abounds in Portugal.  This is particularly true on college campuses, since most were built after the mid 1970s.

Although the population is just 10.6 million, there are 24 schools of architecture!

I’ve included a few photos of buildings at the University of Aviero campus below.

Here’s a view of downtown Aveiro.
Jose gave a me a grand tour of the campus of the University of Aveiro.
It has many modernist buildings….
arranged around a central courtyard.
All with tropical modernist flair.
Our drive to Agueda was also full of sites, because bird nesting is encouraged along the highway here.
by shannonchance

Officially Launched

William and Mary’s School of Education published a press release about last night’s photo launch.  The event was such fun.

What an honor it was to have so many friends and colleagues attend!

Here are a few photos of the start of events… I got too swept away to take more photos myself.  I hope others will send me some to share.

Colleen’s daughters welcomed people as they arrived.
Entry Hall with the labels installed.
Chatting with firmer Fulbright, Jimmy O’Brien-Moran.
Dave and Mom arriving at the opening.
by shannonchance

Student-Centered and Urban: Architectural Education at IST

The second stop of my Fulbright Inter-Country Lecturing visit was to the Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). One of the organizers of the day, José Figueiredo, explained to me that IST “is the biggest and oldest engineering school in Portugal.”

Professor Teresa Heitor lined up all kinds of fascinating events for me.  The 60 first year architecture students presented their work to me (in English!).  Then, they came along as their professors gave me a tour of all the architecture studios.  We got a glimpse of what these particular students will encounter in the coming years, as they progress through the five-year architecture program at IST.

Their architectural education will be structured very, very much like ours in the USA.

Their design assignments will be quite similar as well, although the projects students encounter here do tend to have more of an urban focus than most programs I’ve visited in the US.  (I serve on architectural accrediting teams and have visited many different schools in the US through conferences as well as accreditation visits.  I have to say, however, that my home institution–Hampton University–has done a noteworthy job over the past decade of integrating urbanism into the curriculum.  Of that, I have been proud.)

At IST, I was particularly impressed with what I learned from the first year professors.  They’re doing a great job overcoming what I see as a big weakness in architectural education today.  So many teachers around the globe focus on teaching students to make “signature buildings” and “modernist masterpieces” that other architects will love.

These teachers, instead, endeavor to draw out their students’ unique interests and abilities.  Unlike the many teachers who seemingly want to “wipe the slate clean”, these professors seek to help students draw from the wealth of experience and knowledge they bring to the first year design studio.

They do lots of collaborative design at IST…
…every year they have a week-long design event where teams of students work together to create a design like this…
…teams for that include one student from each year (1-5).
The first year architecture instructors here…
…do a great job implementing “student-centered” approaches to teaching…
…they try hard to avoid instilling their own aesthetic values in students.
On the other hand, they do instill values regarding urbanism…
…and urban design problems happen in each year of this architecture program.
The second year includes some classic assignments of analysis…
…and more intimately (i.e., smaller) scaled design problems.
In fifith year, students can do either an individual thesis, or an organized design studio (as shown here).
Here’s a project for third year where students analyzed famous buildings.
I also had the chance to meet with the many architecture PhD students at IST.
And learn about the research projects they are doing.
This student was fascinated by the beehive roofs in the town she spent holidays as a child…
…and today she is studying this topic for her dissertation.
At the end of the day, I delivered a lecture/workshop on research paradigms and group learning…
…to architecture and engineering teachers and doctoral-level students.
by shannonchance

A Weekend by the River Shannon

Mom and I are just leaving County Kerry. We enjoyed a lovely weekend at the home of Con and Eilish O’Hanlon. Eilish is mom’s second cousin.

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by shannonchance

A Warm Welcome to Lisbon at the Casa do Alentejo

One of the very best things about the Fulbright program is meeting knowledgable, energetic, and talented people like Bill Williams. He is a teacher at the Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Barreiro – Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal who is clearly dedicated to his students and to the craft of teaching.  He’s the kind of guy who works at the university all day then goes home and works on his research.

He’s even completing a PhD — for fun.  Can you believe anyone would do a thing like that?   😉

Nearly as soon as I hit the ground in Portugal, Bill provided me a short orientation complete with dinner at Casa do Alentejo — a place that epitomizes Lisbon. This restaurant is where Bill and his wife invited all their friends to celebrate their marriage.

The night Bill and I went there, a group of men was wandering through the halls singing traditional Portuguese songs.

So to give you a taste of my time in Lisbon, I’ve uploaded photos from that night… including the area around the Casa do Alentejo, some rooms of  the Casa itself, and others of the singing group that made it shine for our visit.

by shannonchance

International Lecture Tour

In less than two days, I fly out of Dublin for a two-week “lecture tour”.  I’m being sponsored though Fulbright Portugal next week and Fulbright Belgium the week after.  This is part of the larger Fulbright Inter-Country Lecturing program.

We have an exciting, action-packed schedule outlined.

In addition to speaking and learning about how other people teach architecture, engineering, and education, I’ve also got a heavy load of homework to carry along.

While I’m away, I’ll hopefully find time to write three conference abstracts, finalize and submit a funding proposal, and prepare for the class I’m co-teaching in May.

Wish me luck!

Lisbon

Lisbon (photo downloaded from Cunard Cruise line)

PORTUGAL 

Wednesday, April 10

Visit to Escola Superior de Tecnologia do Barreiro of the Instituto Politécnico de Setúbal.

Thursday, April 11

Round-table talk at Setubal Polytechnic Institute (IPS).

Friday, April 12

Presentation on Tools for Assessing Design Students’ Cognitive Development to Architecture PhD students at Instituto Superior Técnico (IST). 

Monday, April 15

Presentation on The Use of Staff Learning Groups to Transform Engineering Education at the Dublin Institute of Technology to the Department of Education at the University of Aveiro and engineers from the Polytechnic School of Águeda.  I’ll also meet some of the students and teachers using Problem-Based Learning at the Polytechnic School in Aveiro and/or Águeda (25km away).

Tuesday, April 16

Meet with engineering teachers at the Universidade do Minho engineering campus in Guimarães.

Leuven

Leuven (photo downloaded from KU-Leuven website)

BELGIUM

Wednesday, April 17

Meet with the president of the European Society of Engineering Educators (SEFI), an engineering professor at Katholic University of Leuven who also directs KU-Leuven’s Teaching and Learning Department.

Thursday, April 18

Deliver a presentation 7-9 PM on Research Paradigms: Filtering What We See and Know to the architecture school (I will discuss major research paradigms and then provide examples of studies I’ve done that used methods aligned with positivism, interpretivism, constructivism, and critical realism.  Presentation includes examples of work I’ve done in Africa).

Monday, April 22

Presentation on Tools for Assessing Design Students’ Cognitive Development to members of the LESEC (the Teaching and Learning Department) at KU-Leuven.

Tuesday, April 23

Interview with Fulbright Belgium for use on their websites.

by shannonchance

Group-Based Learning in Action

I’m becoming a bigger and bigger believer in collaborative learning!  Last semester I did lot of research about how engineering professors (i.e., lecturers) here at Dublin Institute of Technology worked together to develop new ways of teaching electrical engineers.  I was amazed to discover how incredibly much they learned by working together.

Such impressive knowledge gain is the premise behind Project-Based Learning and other group-based learning formats.

Orla and Shannon in the throws of course planning.

Orla and Shannon in the throws of course planning.

My day today was filled with meetings about collaborative research and teaching projects.

With the help of five different tech guys, I got SPSS up and running so that I will be able to help analyze data on that Mike Murphy and I collected from engineering and engineering technology students. We asked them what they saw themselves doing in the future, how well prepared they feel to start work, and what kinds of things they’ve focused their efforts on over the past few years.

After lunch I met with Orla Hanratty of DIT’s Learning, Teaching and Technology Centre (LTTC) and introduced her to Brian Bowe. She’ll be co-teaching a course (i.e., module) with us in May.  We aim to increase the usage and visibility of Problem-Based Learning at DIT by teaching more teachers to use Problem-Based Learning in their own classrooms.

And now, tonight, I’ve been working on a proposal for funding with Ted Burke and Damon Berry.  It’s an opportunity that the college’s head of research, Marek Rebow, told me about yesterday and it has to be completed immediately.

I rallied the troops. Ted drafted some text. Then Damon and I were adding our own contributions to it using Google Docs.  It was so strange… Damon and me editing the same document at the same time.  It turned into a bit of an academic chat session.  We tossed ideas back and forth, discussing budget, objectives, and ways to improve what we’ve already got in place.

We’ll do more of that tomorrow, when the three of us meet to hash this out… and have some fun learning in the process.

RoboSlam website that we hope to tweak.
Ted Burke advising me on robot design at the recent RoboSlam.
Damon Berry and John McGrory learning together.
by shannonchance

Here’s to Sunny Days

Thanks to my former student, Kristina Iverson Crawley for posting this gem on Facebook today:

Keep your thoughts positive because your thoughts become your words. Keep your words positive because your words become your behavior. Keep your behavior positive because your behavior becomes your habits. Keep your habits positive because your habits become your values. Keep your values positive because your values become your destiny. – Mahatma Gandhi

The sun is out in Dublin today, bringing good cheer....

The sun is out in Dublin today, bringing good cheer….

by shannonchance

Fulbright Positions in Architecture

I received email notification about exciting Fulbright opportunities in Architecture.

I am writing to inform you of exciting U.S. Fulbright Scholar grant opportunities in Europe and Eurasia in the field of architecture. Applications for the 2014-15 academic year are currently being accepted from all levels of faculty and professionals, including early career.

We are soliciting applications for a broad range of awards in your field, including but not limited to:

Finland #4197 Fulbright-Aalto University Distinguished Chair (Finland)
United Kingdom #4368 Fulbright-Scotland Visiting Professorship at the Glasgow Urban Lab
Kosovo #4266 Theory and Practice of Restoration of Cultural Heritage Monuments
Turkey #4388 Social Sciences and Humanities
Bulgaria #4169 Pure and Applied Sciences

Applicants must be U.S. citizens and hold a Ph.D. or appropriate professional/terminal degree at the time of application. The application deadline is August 1, 2013.

In addition, All Disciplines awards are available in all countries in Europe and Eurasia and can be a good option if no discipline-focused award matches your expertise. Please visit the 2014-15 Catalog of Awards at http://catalog.cies.org/index.aspx to learn more about the opportunities available in this year’s competition. For most awards, English is sufficient for teaching and foreign language proficiency is only needed to the extent required by the proposed research project, if applicable.
For eligibility factors, detailed application guidelines and review criteria, please follow the link http://www.cies.org/us_scholars/us_awards. You may also wish to register for one of our webinars at http://www.cies.org/Webinar/ or join our online community, My Fulbright, a resource center for applicants interested in the program.

Please feel free to share this message with members of your listservs, newsletters or social media. For further information about specific awards, please contact the program staff listed in the award description.

Best wishes,

Europe/Eurasia Staff
EuropeEurasia@iie.org
202-686-4000
Fulbright Scholar Program
1400 K Street NW, Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005
If you wish to be removed from this group’s mailing list, click here

by shannonchance

Curiosities of “Good to Great”

Good to Great 1I really enjoy the book Good to Great by Jim Collins.  It’s a book about business. I found it compelling but, even after having read 2/3 of it some years ago, I still often wonder: what does it all mean?

Perhaps I will never fully know.

An M.D. friend of mine told me about the book.  He found that it applied to multiple contexts. Another colleague of mine has been reading it, and I’ve flipped through it several times lately while visiting in his office.

As for myself, I think I’m better at achieving greatness in some contexts than others. In business I’ve little idea of how greatness looks or feels. In work and in life, I’ve achieved things that seem pretty great to me.

Beryl Markham provided the opening quote Collins used in his book: “That’s what makes death so hard — unsatisfied curiosity.”  Of course, we have all heard that curiosity is also what killed the cat.  Striking the right balance isn’t easy.

Defining new goals has always been the biggest challenge for me.  And I see I’m not alone. Defining appropriate goals for achieving greatness requires curiosity and experience.  So many companies are limited by their own success, Collins asserts, that they don’t flourish because they limit themselves to tried and tested approaches that they don’t realize are outdated.  If they do realize it, they usually are unable to shift to new approaches anyway.

Achieving those goals requires skill, perseverance, and steadfast determination.

Good to Great 2