Instructor: Brian Turano
Permanent URI for this collection
Browse
Recent Submissions
Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 18 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: Yes, as a matter of fact the local students are more rooted in the Hawaii perspective . . . I think it's true [that mainland students often achieve a more global perspective] . . . [At the same time] when discussing geothermal, mainland students might not realize that for some Native Hawaiians, when you're talking geothermal, you're messing with Pele.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 17 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: Yes, occasionally they do. One student is from Philadelphia, another from Oregon . . . So they do bring their own home-grown perspectives as well . . . the writing doesn't accentuate [comparing and contrasting with home] as much, but the class discussions do . . .Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 16 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: I developed it myself. After taking the workshop with you. Overall, it's ok. You always wanna re-tweak it. But students will say, 'I corrected all my grammatical mistakes, shouldn't I get 100?' And the answer is, 'No, I've set it up so that if it's exceptional, you get a 10. But I've also set it up so that if you hand it in and do a decent job, you're gonna get an 8. If you don't address a problem, you're gonna get a 7' . . .Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 15 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: This semester [the course filled]. Last semester it didn't. It's hard to get the word out. I put up posters, but students never see them. But when I sent out my query to the sustainability working group, it filled. As we know, there's no way of searching the catalog, there's no list of sustainability-related courses.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 14 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: Something that I bring up is that often the strongest opponents of renewable energy projects are environmentalists . . . It's a strange coming together of things . . . So I say to my class, how do we address this? You're trying to set up a wind farm so that we don't burn fossil fuels, or putting wells 3,000 or 5,000 miles in the ocean and risking spills, how do we come to terms with this, when you’re fighting environmentalists who are trying to stop renewable energy projects? I don't have any hard and fast answers, but it's good for discussion.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 13 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: I think it is. I don't think students are aware of the array of courses that have some relevance to sustainability. This course is also at a level where you don’t have a lot of prerequisite knowledge. It's a survey class; it gives them a flavor of all topics related to renewable energy, sustainability, and the environment. It's also Writing Intensive, which some have to get for their degree program. In many [STEM] courses, too, you have just volumes of information that you have to push at them, and little time for interaction.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 12 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: Maybe 20% local folks and the rest from probably the outside--students from across campus.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 11 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: The local students will usually bring up the local perspective in class—and I'll bring it up, too—some of the issues are contentious. Say, geothermal power. Some in the Hawaiian community are against it, some are for it. Siting wind farms is a problem, but that's also national and global . . . a 'not in my back yard' kind of thing . . . So in class, we have a local perspective, a national perspective, and international students bring the international perspective. Our island environment has some unique challenges that are brought to bear. And often we talk about importation of our food. Our food has to travel 2,000 miles to get here. And we get 90% of our food from the mainland. And most of our energy is imported in the form of petroleum. And that's an acute awareness that this class arrives at by the end of it.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 10 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: I think it does happen occasionally [that a student's participation influences writing stance]. I had one student who in his paper expressed skepticism about climate change, which in the class as a whole certainly none would voice that skepticism.Item Instructor interview for Place-Based WAC/WID writing instruction in Tropical Plant and Soil Sciences, clip 9 of 18(2015) Place-based WAC/WID Hui; Turano, Brian; Henry, Jim; Bost, DawneBrief excerpt from interview: When it relates back to their own lives and their own living situations, it does have a larger impact, because it's more tangible, more real for them, so they can write with even more passion. They have a buy-in, they have a stake in the game, an excitement about the topic, a willingness to go above and beyond what I assign them, a lot deeper research—these are one-week turnaround time, and the requirement is one page. I often get two to four pages, sometimes five, so these students are obviously excited and passionate about the topic.