Area of Focus: The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)
Dissertation: Talk About [Men's Perpetration of] Sexual Assault [Against Women]
Specializations: sexual assault, discourse analysis
Thesis: The CSI Effect: Examining CSI's Effects Upon Public Perceptions of Forensic Science
Specializations: criminology, media studies
Department of Justice Studies
The primary purpose of this position is to help stop sexual violence by consulting with, designing learning opportunities for, and building-capacity among faculty, staff, and students to promote safe and healthy spaces to learn and work in. Oriented around three primary areas (education development and implementation; consultation, assessment, and advising; and community-building, capacity-building, and collaboration), my work involves inviting people to unlearn and relearn what they know about sexualized violence to better equip them to identify, interrupt, and respond to that which is perpetrated by and against faculty, staff, patients, and students. I create and offer dynamic and interactive remote/online and live/in person learning opportunities for myriad groups including medical leadership across the province, undergraduate students, specialized, practicing physicians, medical facility directors and staff, among others. These learning opportunities are informed by experts from my multidisciplinary network of practitioners including but not limited to those drawn from sites such as urban and rural sexual assault centres, the Association of Alberta Sexual Assault Services (AASAS), local police and RCMP, specialized healthcare practitioners working with sexual violence, and members of campus and medical facilities. I also curate and develop transdisciplinary resources informed by and shared with people across various disciplines, sites, and geographic locations.
On the basis of research that explored sexual harassment, evidence-based best practices in teaching and learning (and in online settings), I developed, facilitate, and mentor others in facilitating, "Engagement Strategies Toward Ending Workplace Sexual Harassment" a comprehensive three-hour online education program that has supports the #MomentsMatter anti-harassment campaign led by AASAS. This program builds capacity and awareness by offering participants safe and supported interactive learning opportunities and myriad practical strategies for leaders, for bystanders, for people trusted with others' disclosures of sexual harassment, and for those who have been told they have done something that might amount to harassment.
In this role, my work involved scaffolding, designing, and delivering various courses for the Precision Health Program, working with experts and specialists in a new transdisciplinary program in the Cumming School of Medicine that was designed to meet the professional development needs of current and future healthcare practitioners across Canada and internationally, that brought together current and future healthcare leaders, entrepreneurs, and educators with the goal of improving patient care. The courses I designed reached healthcare professionals including those from medicine, veterinary medicine, nursing, pharmacy, psychology, optometry, and dentistry, among others, supporting role integration in areas such as advanced clinical skills, data science, entrepreneurship, research, and consultation to impact patient, provider, and health system outcomes.
Twenty percent of my time was also dedicated to working with the Faculty of Social Work to redesign their flagship course using cutting-edge pedagogical approaches and strategies, in an updated, online format involving instructor-customizable assessments and learning designs. I also worked with faculty members on communicating the reenvisioned designed of other degrees and programming.
In conjunction with CEO Danielle Aubry, and the Managers of the Education Team, I am working with CCASA's skilled educators on content development and delivery.
My work at the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning specialized in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and in Research and Ethics in Teaching and Learning. I maintained academic oversight of the Teaching and Learning Grants Program (that funds $500k to $1million in teaching and learning grants annually) and led an impact assessment of the grants program while mentoring graduate student assistants. I consulted with members of and across the campus community in support of their interests and pursuits in research and teaching and learning, collaborated with colleagues on various initiatives, and conducted independent research.
I designed and implemented a needs assessment that involved surveying and interviewing frontline professionals working in sexual violence across the province of Alberta. The final document, "Improving and Enhancing the Criminal Justice Response to Adult Survivors of Sexual Assault: A Needs Assessment" captured data reflecting the insights of 101 people across the province from seven different fields, working in dozens of largely frontline capacities. The assessment reflected what's working, what's needed, and tensions emergent in participants' observations.
I developed a short video aimed at debunking the misnomer that women can keep men from sexually assaulting them by being more direct and assertive when refusing sex (e.g., by saying "no").
This three-minute video is available here, or by cutting and pasting this into your browser: http://but.ly/AASASrefusals.
The accompanying poster is available here.
I taught a spring course, "Talk About Sexual Assault," that was aimed at critically analyzing and evaluating the ways in which we talk about sexual assault and the implications that follow. In our shared trust and risk-taking, this course proved utterly transformative for me and for many of my students. All of their work continues to inspire me to this day.
My course even made it into Maclean Magazine's "Cool Courses" mention in their 2017 University Rankings Issue (see it here).
The course trailer that I designed can be found here.
I have the permission of some of these incredible people to share their work here. Specifically, check out the student work of Felicia Guan, Ingrid Spelay and Ellen White, Harki Dhillon, Steeven Toor, and Gurleen Nijjar, and Kyla Vandersluis.
Coverage of the Case Review can be found by clicking on the text below.
Police reviewing 89 closed sexual assault cases under Philadelphia Model (July 2018)
Calgary's sexual assault 'unfounded' rate plummets under new police protocols (April 2019)
Calgary committee continues to review closed sex assault files under Philadelphia Model pilot (May 2019)
As a Keynote Speaker in 2018, I'm able to leverage both experience and community contacts to help support planning for the 2020 conference.
More information can be found by clicking on the text below.
More information on the SVPAC can be found by clicking on the text below.
Commitment to end sexual violence
I was originally part of the Communications sub-committee. The work of the sub-committees has wrapped up, and I remain part of the broader committee.
More information can be found by clicking on the text below.
Sexual violence and its prevention are issues that are understood and managed often very differently by the varied agencies and institutions that respond to it (Hamby and Grych, 2013). Differences between social work, police, healthcare, medical, and legal professionals — and the silos they often work in — become pronounced for people who have been sexually assaulted by other people. The disjunctures between these groups can worsen the already challenging plight of those having to navigate these complex systems (Murphy, Banyard, Maynard and Dufresne, 2011). In these ways, the harms of sexualized violence are compounded by a system that cannot or does not attend to the subtle ways in which it facilitates further experiences of violence. Our participatory research community aims to reduce this kind of systemic violence. I present preliminary outcomes of an ongoing study that works against these nuanced manifestations of violence by bringing together professionals from across the spectrum of sexual violence agencies and institutions to engage in cross-disciplinary conversation, community-building, and collaboration. I describe the unconventional learning activities and multi-level data generation methods this community of diverse and skilled professionals engages in, and the powerful and unanticipated discoveries that are emerging as our time together unfolds.
Presentation delivered at the 53rd Annual Conference of the Canadian Sociological Association. June 2019. Vancouver, BC.
What happens when disciplinary experience is perceived as an obstacle to collaborative, multidisciplinary learning? In this interactive session, we present unconventional SoTL research as a case study in which disciplinary experience was understood by participants as a hindrance to multidisciplinary collaboration. We discuss how these atypical learners unpacked their siloed disciplinary work and came to see cross-disciplinary commonalities where differences were once perceived. We will work with participants to explore and develop facilitation tools that enhance experiential learning possibilities in atypical learning communities. Specifically, we speak to how playful facilitation of “safe” space (Kisvalvi & Oliver, 2015), the deployment foundational ideas in teaching and learning (e.g., “threshold concepts” and “signature pedagogies”) as analytic instruments (Meyer & Land, 2003; Shulman, 2005), and creative, material tasks facilitate cross-disciplinary conversation, community-building, and collaboration. We describe how postsecondary students engaged in interdisciplinary studies (including social work, nursing, medicine, sociology, and education) and beyond might benefit from our study’s outcomes, and how it more broadly inform instructors’ decision-making around experiential learning practices in areas fraught with siloed work (Carey, 2007).
Presentation delivered with AnneMarie Dorland, PhD.
Presentation delivered at Exploring Experiential Learning: Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching. May 2019. Calgary, AB.
In recent years, sexual assault has received unprecedented attention and garnered widespread public interest. As a result, social awareness about sexual violence is ever increasing, as is public scrutiny of its sometimes problematic handling at institutional levels. One of the most widely cited reasons for institutions’ troubling responses to sexual violence are silos — institutions working on the same issue, but in isolation, detached from and uninformed by one another. Calls for response and remedy to this problem come have come from community, government, and academics alike. In this talk, I present preliminary outcomes of transformative research I lead with a group of professionals working in sexual violence across the agency and institutional spectrum (e.g., social work, policing, health care). In this participatory research group, professionals in working in different cultural and disciplinary capacities gather, and through a variety of facilitated exercises, engage in cross-disciplinary conversation, community building, and collaboration. One of our overarching objectives in this work is to collectively envision transdisciplinary training and education opportunities. I outline some of the unconventional activities and the multilevel data generation methods that our group engages in, and the insights and offerings we are collectively producing. In this powerful work in which we question the taken for granted, we enliven the sociological notion of making the familiar strange, yielding transformative discoveries as a result.
Alumni Presentation delivered at the Sociology Graduate Student Research Symposium. March 2019. Calgary, AB.
Sexual assault is a social issue that has generated mounting attention in recent years, in the general public and on post-secondary campuses where it is said to be perpetrated by people at epidemic rates. This attention has prompted increased social scrutiny upon institutions tasked with handling it such as law enforcement, nursing, and counselling, and between these institutions and campus management of sexual assault-related issues. This work reflects a preliminary exploration of ideas about how to bring these groups that have historically functioned in silos alongside one another into conversation and collaboration about sexual assault - a subject that all bear valuable knowledge about. The grounding framework for these exchanges is inspired by Palmer's (1998) "community of truth" whose subject or "connective core" - in this case, sexual assault - brings together various "knowers" into a "passionate and disciplined process of inquiry and dialogue" (pp. 103-104). Members of these groups, or knowers about sexual assault will be invited assemble regularly to engage in facilitated active learning exercises that encourage multi-, cross-, inter-, and transdisciplinary understandings of sexual assault. SoTL concepts such as "signature pedagogies" and "threshold concepts" will be introduced early, to invite participants to contemplate the foundational and essential concepts involved in how they describe sexual assault to others, and the central tools and approaches they use when 'doing' these descriptions. On the whole, the aims of this project are threefold: first to facilitate and promote cross-disciplinary and cross-experiential dialogue; second, to catalyze small-scale collaboration that builds into larger collaborative efforts; and third, to foster a collective imagining of transdisciplinary training and research objectives.
Poster presentation delivered at the 14th Annual Meeting of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. October 2017. Calgary, AB.
In my research that analyzes talk about men’s perpetration of sexual violence against women, I examine the discursive work that gets done in descriptions of sexual assault, victims, perpetrators, and who is to blame for it as well as how it should be prevented. I discuss how men who perpetrate sexual violence against women often escape blame or accountability for it, while the women against whom men perpetrate sexualized violence are instead positioned as partially or wholly responsible for failing to prevent it. How is this paradoxical practice - blaming women for the violence that men do to them - sustained? In this presentation, I provide an example of talk in which this practice is legitimated and offer an analysis of the nuanced discursive work that is involved in so doing. I argue that close readings of talk of this sort create significant opportunities to attend to the implications that flow from such constructions of sexual assault, and therefore also allow us to reconsider how we talk about men’s perpetration of sexualized violence against women.
Presentation delivered at the 50th Annual Conference of the Canadian Sociological Association. May 2016. Calgary, AB.
Acts of sexual violence are, and have historically been, crimes largely perpetrated by men, against women. Notably, however, sexual violence prevention strategies are, and have historically been, largely directed at women. As such, women are positioned as responsible for preventing sexual violence and as partially to blame for the sexual violence men perpetrate against them. This presentation critically engages with these contemporary sexual assault prevention/risk management discourses, and takes up how said prevention messages can serve to reify rape mythology, represent common forms of sexual violence as inevitable and deferrable, locate male perpetrators ‘beyond the pale,’ and, construct women against whom sexual violence is perpetrated as foolish, failed managers of obvious risk.
Presentation delivered at the Sociology Graduate Student Research Symposium.. March 2012. Calgary, AB.
This research is about the social implications of representing sexual assault in entertainment media. The purpose of this research is to develop in-depth understandings about the role that these media play in helping perpetuate and challenge the “social inevitability” of sexual assault. This research is informed by dialogue with frontline sexual assault response teams (including nurses, counselors, and police officers), analyses of select entertainment media examples, and by critical sexual assault and media research. This work takes up questions such as: What messages about male and female interaction, consent, and sexual assault do these media communicate? How is entertainment media implicated in victim, perpetrator, and social understandings of sexual assault? How can this research inform social and professional practice? Application of this work is therefore both broad and specific. It is broadly relevant to all those whose lives are directly or indirectly affected by sexual violence; and, specifically applicable to industry personnel, including, but not limited to: health care providers, social workers, criminal justice practitioners, media producers, and policy makers. Through the use of tangible examples and popular media references, this dynamic and informative evidence-based presentation will demonstrate how collaboratively built, multidisciplinary understandings about sexual assault in (and as) entertainment media can lead to increased critical awareness about this pervasive social issue.
Presentation delivered at the Alberta Graduate Council Conference. May 2011. Calgary, AB.
Law & Order: Special Victims Unit (SVU) is a fictional primetime crime drama that has received both popular and critical acclaim for its “avowed focus on sexual assault” (Cuklanz & Moorti, 2006). The series follows New York City Special Victims Unit detectives and district attorneys as they pursue, apprehend, and prosecute criminals involved in “sexually-based offenses.” Now airing its eleventh season, SVU is NBC’s most popular fictional crime drama, and it is more popular than the original Law & Order series, the longest running crime drama in television history. It is a series that is heralded for its “realistic” and “ripped from the headlines” anchoring in “real life events,” its research-substantiated storylines, and in the commendations it receives for its tackling of social issues. While its unique focus upon sexual assault indeed sets it apart from other primetime crime dramas, this study asks whose “realities,” what bodies of research, and whose commendations does the series and its success reflect when it comes to representing rape in/as primetime entertainment media? I argue that this popular, far-reaching, sexual offense-centered media platform is a rich research site that generates discussion and debate around representations of sexual assault in entertainment media.
Presentation delivered at the 62nd Annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology. November 2010. San Francisco, CA.
Click here to see a list of workshops I've delivered about sexual violence.
Ethical-mindedness is an approach to research design that explicitly incorporates ethical thinking into the process of SoTL project development. We will introduce the concept of ethical mindedness to those who are new to SoTL research, or those whose disciplinary expertise does not typically involve research with human subjects. By the end of the workshop participants should be able to describe at least two strategies for ethical practice that can be used by SoTL researchers and effectively apply ethical principles to the design of their own SoTL research projects.
Presentation delivered with Jenny Godley and Lisa Fedoruk.
Presentation delivered at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference (2019). October 2019. Atlanta, GA.
Scholarship relying on student research participants faces unique challenges when it comes ensuring that it reflects core research ethics principles of respect for persons and justice. While research ethics is most commonly understood to be about minimizing potential physical or psychological harm, in educational environments such things as privacy rights and freedom from undue influence can often be just as important. They are at the same time often difficult to accommodate but best practices have evolved and will be included in the discussion.
Presentation delivered with John Ellard, Chair of the Conjoint Faculties Research Ethics Board, Lauren McDougall, Senior Research Ethics Analyst, and Lisa Fedoruk, PhD and author of the "Ethics in SoTL: Key Principles and Strategies for Ethical Practice" Taylor Institute Guide.
Presentation delivered at Exploring Experiential Learning: Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching. May 2019. Calgary, AB.
Designing professional learning and development opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars has many logistical challenges as they often have competing demands on their time and less control over their schedules. One solution to this challenge focuses on flexibility of opportunities and the development of programming that allows participants to choose from a menu of options. The positive participation and feedback collected from our university’s teaching development workshops indicates this approach is successful. Since introducing cohort-based opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, however, we have seen both a marked increase in participation as well as clear signs of nascent communities of learning. We believe that a number of factors have contributed to the formation of collegial relationships among graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, leading to “significant conversations” and new learning networks. The academic experiences of both groups are often characterized by isolation and liminality, and cohorts provide opportunities for likeminded people to gather around SoTL literature and teaching and learning issues. Through establishing peer connections and engaging in collaborative work, participants begin to form clusters of influence both within and across their departmental borders. By developing trust and engaging in activities such as peer teaching, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars participate in making teaching and critical reflection public, shared activities. These collaborative and reciprocal learning communities can reduce isolation and enhance socialization, knowledge attainment, and skills development.
Presentation delivered with Lorelli Nowell, PhD, Kim Grant, PhD, & Carol Berenson, PhD. Presentation delivered at the 15th Annual International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference. October 2018. Bergen, Norway.
We discuss the importance of creating safe classroom communities to foster environments that positively engage students in learning about sensitive topics. We deconstruct our learning experiences in a Special Topics in Sociology course reflecting on how risk, vulnerability, and community interact to create authentic learning experiences.
Presentation delivered with M. Waldman, C. Mercado, and D. Barnes.
Presentation devilered at Students as Creators, Drivers, Innovators and Collaborators: Conference on Postsecondary Learning and Teaching. May 2018. University of Calgary.
Broadly speaking, postdoctoral scholars engage in mentored research and scholarly training for the purpose of developing their intellectual independence, academic excellence, and entrepreneurial skills (Jadavji et al., 2016). To support the University of Calgary’s goal of strengthening development opportunities for graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, the Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning recently took a bold step by investing in three new postdoctoral positions. In these roles, we — the three new postdoctoral scholars — lead initiatives, programs, and research related to educational development and scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) while helping to raise the profile and improve the quality of teaching and learning in the postsecondary sector (Kenny et al., 2017). As postdoctoral scholars in non-traditional fields, we find ourselves working on the edge of new territory – a space full of possibility, and sometimes, challenge. The novel positions that we occupy afford us a unique opportunity to reflect upon this liminal space in a collaborative approach to self-study. Self-study promotes reflective engagement, and our collaborative approach seeks insights and experiences relevant to other postdoctoral scholars (see, for example, the SoTL self-study by Foot, Crowe, Tollafield, & Allan, 2014), to educational developers, to SoTL practitioners, and to institutions interested in supporting postdocs and advancing collaborative research and inquiry in these areas. In this session, we will describe our collaborative self-study methods as well as what we are learning about our own formation at the intersections of educational development and SoTL (Felten & Chick, in press).
Presentation delivered with Kim Grant and Lorelli Nowell.
Presentation delivered at the Educational Developers Caucus. February 2018.
Click here to see a list of workshops I've delivered about teaching and learning.