Annual Report of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences 2021-2022
A Note from Dean Drake
As the college emerged from the relative isolation of the first year of the pandemic, we embarked on a year of deep conversations about our future.
CLAS Vision and Commitments
CLAS strives to be an inclusive and equitable community of inquiry where students, staff and faculty collaborate to pursue and create knowledge, to enact global citizenship, and to engage and support our many communities.
Getting Real and Confident on the Radio with Len OʹKelly
Len O'Kelly of Multimedia Journalism estimates that in his previous career in broadcasting he'd make 5,000 decisions during the course of a radio show.
A Smelly Sensation: Watch time-lapse video of our corpse flower opening and closing
The blooming of GVSU's corpse flower, Amorphophallus titanum, in the Barbara Kindschi Greenhouse attracted about 3,500 visitors who wanted to experience the rotting-flesh stench of the flower.
Celebrating the Arts
After 25 years as the Fall Arts Celebration, CLAS was invited to take the reins and reimagine this premier celebration of the arts at Grand Valley.
Revelation of the Complex with a Little Help from Multidisciplinary Teams
Sometime around 2016 or 2017, then Associate Dean Galbraith introduced Bradford Dykes (Statistics) and Tammy Shreiner (History) as part of the digital humanities conversations going on within the college. The rest is history—oh, and statistics.
Teaching in a Year of Evolving Quickly
The logistics of the pandemic coincided with the need for adaptive support for student success, making this academic year a time for mindful selection of teaching modalities and Universal Design for Learning principles.
Finding Better Ways and Seizing Opportunities with Adeline Borti
Adeline Borti, assistant professor of English education, completed her dissertation in 2019 using quantitative methods to examine preservice teachers’ reading and writing instruction knowledge in six colleges of education in Ghana.
Lake Huron Hall Renovation
Lake Huron Hall is one of the earliest GVSU buildings and was originally constructed as a library. The building received a full interior renovation as well as new HVAC.
Intergenerational Adventures and SAGE Wisdom
The literature is rife with examples from myriad studies around the world about the benefits of intergenerational interaction, despite our cultural tendency away from it.