Points of Continuity
By Susy Frisch

As General College becomes the Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning in the College of Education and Human Development next year, three GC professors share their visions of the future for students, staff, and faculty in their new home.

Incoming Department Chair HEIDI BARAJAS pictures many possibilities when General College becomes part of the College of Education and Human Development: a new major in disability studies, bringing service learning to a wider audience, and a focus on interdisciplinary teaching and research, to name just a few.

“I’m excited about the transition on multiple levels,” says Barajas, an associate professor of sociology. “I see many of the issues on students’ success and access that we do in General College being discussed and spilling out across the University. It was always there, but I don’t know that our voice was listened to—it was considered a highly specialized area with a unique population. But everything we do in General College is something that would be beneficial for the whole University.”

Barajas predicts that the work of General College faculty on developmental education will have a bigger platform now that they will be part of a highly regarded College of Education and Human Development. She is thrilled that there will be more opportunities for collaboration between faculty and that these alliances will happen more easily and organically with everyone housed in the same college.

Collaboration has been important to Barajas throughout her career. After earning bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Utah, she came to the University to get a Ph.D. in sociology. In 1999, Barajas joined the General College faculty at the behest of Interim Dean Terry Collins (then director of academic affairs), who called to see if she wanted to teach a course in General College. That way, the college and the future professor could check each other out.

Barajas fell in love with GC and found her home at the University. “I didn’t think I would find a fit anywhere. I am a critical sociologist who also does considerable outreach to communities, and I do service-learning in the classroom. I am a woman of color doing research on race. I thought all those things together wouldn’t work,” she says. “But they wanted everything I did and thought it was a good thing, not a drawback.”

These days, Barajas teaches a course called People and Problems and a class on images of women in literature. She focuses her research on race, class, and gender issues in public schools. Recently, she was part of a team from the Center for Applied Research and Educational Improvement in the College of Education and Human Development that did a five-year project to transform school counselors into academic advocates for students.

Barajas finds a lot to look forward to when General College lands in its new home. “We are in a time of really exciting change for us because we can decide how that change can happen,” she says. “We will be a department and we will have opportunities to do things in collaboration with the college that we might not have allowed ourselves to do before. That comes from both sides.”

RASHNÉ JEHANGIR may be a new assistant professor in General College, but she’s no stranger to the GC community. She spent 10 years as a counselor advocate in the TRIO program for low-income, first-generation college students, worked as an instructor, and coordinated some of the college’s learning communities, where students take the same cluster of classes as a cohort.

Jehangir also has roots in the College of Education and Human Development, where she earned a master’s degree in counseling and student personnel psychology in 1995 and, more recently, a Ph.D. in educational psychology. Having one foot in each academic world is a major reason why Jehangir looks forward to becoming part of the larger college next year.

“For me, the transition is a pretty exciting, one that holds a lot of opportunity for collaboration with people in other departments where I’ve been before,” says Jehangir, an assistant professor of social science and humanities. “It presents opportunities for people in General College to link to other faculty and staff in the College of Education and Human Development, where there are great complementary linkages between our work.”

One area where Jehangir plans to focus her teaching and research is learning communities. For the past five years she has taught a course in multicultural relations as part of a TRIO learning community concentrating on themes of identity, community, and social agency. The goal of these learning communities is to help first-generation, lowincome students succeed in college by fostering strong links between other students, faculty and staff, and their home worlds.

During that time, Jehangir collected quantitative data from online surveys and qualitative data through students’ journals and papers. While others have researched the impact of learning communities on students’ engagement and retention, she wants to investigate how learning communities help students develop a sense of identity and community. Jehangir thinks the new Department of Postsecondary Teaching and Learning within the College of Education and Human Development will be the perfect place to do that.

“Examining the college students’ experience is deeply embedded in this. That’s a nice fit with the College of Education and Human Development,” says Jehangir. “A lot of this is also based on an inquiry around teaching and learning, and the experience of teachers and faculty members teaching in a learning community. How does it shape their teaching philosophy and their engagement with the process of teaching and the development of new pedagogy? That’s also a good fit for the new college.”

As a graduate student in the College of Education and Human Development studying school psychology, NA’IM MADYUN was required to spend some time as a teaching assistant. He chose to head over to General College so he could work with low-income, first-generation college students and students of color—a population he’s most interested in teaching and researching. That was in 1999, and Madyun still hasn’t left GC.

He’s found his home as an assistant professor of psychology in the college, where he can make a difference in the lives of students who are much like him. A native of Arkansas, Madyun was a low-income student of color when he started his higher education at Morehouse College in Atlanta. He recently earned his Ph.D. in educational psychology from the University of Minnesota.

Two main areas of interest for Madyun are the transition of African-American students to college and the achievement gap between students of color and low-income students and their white and economically advantaged peers. He sees the College of Education and Human Development as a great place to delve further into these issues.

The move to the College of Education and Human Development “is increasing our network,” Madyun explains. “In doing some networking for us, the college administration is actually building the bridges of our network instead of us having to construct the bridges. That’s really beneficial. If the college is going to construct the bridges, we can concentrate on building the connections with other professors. It’s going to increase the opportunity to be creative and efficient.”

In General College’s new location, Madyun envisions more conversations developing about different ways teachers can deliver content. He’d like to examine how teaching styles change depending on the audience and how that subsequently influences the outcome.

“A big contribution we will bring from General College will be looking at teaching,” he says. “A lot of the work we do is in higher education but it can be applied to elementary and secondary education once we find those universal components. And then it will increase the pipeline of students to college.” Next year, Madyun will teach an introduction to psychology course as part of a learning community on the psychology of the American experience. He also will continue leading the African-American Networking Group with Assistant Professor Tabitha Grier, which seeks to support African-American students in their transition to college.

All in all, he thinks the move is positive for students and faculty. “We have the potential to develop some really great research mentors and become internationally known for the study of teaching and learning,” says Madyun. “We can become a training center for new teachers and new professors.”