- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock

- University News Archive - ��Vlog��ý Little Rock /news-archive/tag/heidi-skurat-harris/ ��Vlog��ý Little Rock Wed, 15 Apr 2020 18:26:08 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Skurat Harris selected as Faculty Excellence in Research and Creative Endeavors winner for College of Social Sciences and Communication /news-archive/2020/04/15/skurat-harris-faculty-excellence-cssc/ Wed, 15 Apr 2020 18:26:08 +0000 /news/?p=76698 ...]]> Dr. Heidi Skurat Harris, associate professor of rhetoric and writing, has been selected as the 2020 Faculty Excellence in Research and Creative Endeavors award winner for the ��Vlog��ý Little Rock College of Social Sciences and Communication.�� Vlog��ý Little Rock will reveal the university-wide winners of the 2020 Faculty Excellence Awards at 2 p.m. Thursday, April 23, on the Faculty Excellence website��and the.�� “Dr. Skurat Harris’ research, which is integrated throughout her teaching, is nationally recognized, and she is one of the top authorities on online writing instruction and program development in the country,” said Dr. Joyce Carter, chair of the Department of Rhetoric and Writing. Skurat Harris is the editor of the “Bedford Bibliography of Research in Online Writing Instruction.” In its second edition, it features annotations of 540 sources in online writing instruction and is the only comprehensive bibliography of research in this area.�� Her research areas of online instruction and online writing program development allow her to use her research data to improve her teaching and advising, while Skurat Harris’ experiences in teaching and advising online students drive her research agenda. “As a colleague and co-author, I can also comment on the remarkable way in which Dr. Harris connects her research to her work as a teacher and curriculum designer,” said Michael Greer, lecturer in the Department of Rhetoric and Writing. “Out of our work to develop courses to teach instructors how to design and deliver effective online courses, we have developed a series of publications. For many scholars, research and teaching are separate projects. For Dr. Harris, teaching practice drives her research projects, and her research, in turn, informs her continuous drive to improve her already impressive skills as a teacher.” Skurat Harris and Dr. Rebecca Glazier, associate professor of public affairs, have studied how rapport with the instructor impacts retention in online classes across the curriculum based on a decade of data. Predictive analysis models showed that moving the average student from the least-positive instructor to the most-positive instructor increases retention by 30 points. “I have worked with Heidi to improve retention in online classes here at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock for the past 3 years,” Glazier said. “The results of our findings are currently under review at the ‘Online Learning Journal,’ and we are preparing an additional manuscript and a grant application. This research matters to the university and our student body more than ever. Heidi and I are conducting workshops to bring the research findings into the teaching and learning experience in practical ways that can improve student retention. Heidi cares deeply about her students, and, as a researcher, I have been impressed by her ability to always see the real people behind the statistics and the surveys.” In 2019, she and four colleagues published two research articles using national student survey data, which showed that students in online writing classes need more instructor presence and more carefully sequenced assignments to be successful. This research led the team to develop a paradigm called “purposeful pedagogy-driven design” to help students become better writers. A forthcoming article in the “Journal of Technical Writing and Communication” connects purposeful pedagogy-driven design and the use of multimedia in online technical writing courses.�� Skurat Harris earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the College of the Ozarks, a master’s degree in writing from Missouri State University, as well as a master’s degree and Ph.D. in English, both from Ball State University.]]> Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series to feature Pulitzer Prize winner Matthew Desmond /news-archive/2018/09/06/matthew-desmond/ Thu, 06 Sep 2018 20:30:40 +0000 /news/?p=71779 ...]]> Pulitzer Prize-winning author Matthew Desmond will be the featured speaker this fall during the University of Arkansas at Little Rock’s Winthrop Rockefeller Distinguished Lecture Series. Desmond’s visit on Tuesday, Nov. 13, will include a lecture and question-and-answer session beginning at 4:30 p.m. in the University Theatre. A reception and book signing will follow in the Fine Arts building. The lecture is free and open to the public.�� Desmond, a social scientist and professor at Princeton University, wrote “Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City,” which examines the impact of eviction on the lives of the urban poor and its role in perpetuating racial and economic inequality. The book chronicles the stories of eight families living in Milwaukee’s poorest neighborhoods. As part of his research, he lived in tenement houses and a trailer park, spending time with residents and landlords. Desmond concludes that eviction is a cause, rather than merely a symptom, of poverty. “Desmond’s ethnographic research and nationwide eviction database give us tools to better understand the wide-ranging impact evictions have on other community health indicators such as poverty and homelessness,” said Sarah Beth Estes, also a sociologist and associate provost at ��Vlog��ý Little Rock. “This topic may be of special importance in Arkansas, where tenants have fewer rights than in other states.” ��

For his work, Desmond was awarded the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction. He also received a in 2015. His latest project is at Princeton University, where researchers and students have built the nation’s first database of evictions. They have collected more than 83 million records from 48 states and the District of Columbia. Several ��Vlog��ý Little Rock faculty are using “Evicted” in their fall courses. Dr. Heidi Skurat Harris, associate professor of rhetoric and writing and coordinator of the is incorporating Desmond’s book into her rhetoric course ��“Research in Nonfiction Writing.” “Students are reading the book to learn about how to write about ethnographic research for a more general audience,” she said. “Students will be analyzing his writing and applying his writing style to their own nonfiction work.” Dr. Jess Porter, a geographer who chairs the history department, is using “Evicted” in his course “History, Geography and the News,” a current-events based course that helps students understand the broader historical and geographical contexts of what’s happening in the world right now. “We will tackle a dozen contemporary issues this semester, one of which is poverty and housing,” Porter said. “We’ll read an excerpt from Desmond’s book, then explore and discuss the Eviction Lab to get a better spatial sense of the problem.” The History Department will also be giving away a number of hardback copies of “Evicted” via its social media platforms, he said. Students in Dr. Rebecca Glazier’s survey research methods class are discussing Demond’s research in class and plan to attend the public talk on Nov. 13. “In this class we are mostly focusing on quantitative survey research methods, but Desmond’s work uses both qualitative participant observation as well as data-driven survey research,” Glazier said. “This balance is really interesting for answering important questions like those about how and why evictions happen. My class is also doing community-based research this semester into how congregations and nonprofits partner to provide services in the community. Desmond’s methods provide great discussion fodder about how to answer these tough community problems.” Desmond’s work has been in the national spotlight recently. He has been interviewed by , the , and by . Desmond is a former associate professor of social sciences at Harvard University, where he was co-director of the Justice and Poverty Project. He’s a former member of the Harvard Society of Fellows, the author of the award-winning book, “On the Fireline,” co-author of two books on race, and editor of a collection of studies on severe deprivation in America. ]]>