Fiction Writers Review: Interview with Challenge Instructor, Paul Martone
June 8, 2012  

Fiction Writers Review currently features an interview with Paul Martone, our Challenge Program English and Writing instructor about his non-profit organization Late Night Library. Late Night Library is dedicated to promoting talented writers early in their careers. Their programs include a series of podcasts about debut titles, podcast conversations with cultural innovators, events that connect diverse literary communities, and a virtual network of writers and readers. They are based in Brooklyn, New York, and Portland, Oregon.

PAUL MARTONE has taught in middle schools, high schools, and colleges and universities for the past eleven years. He is a published writer of fiction with a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Writing from the University of Oregon, a Master of Arts degree in English (Distinction) from the State University of New York at Albany, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English from the State University of New York at Buffalo. His stories appear in The Saranac Review, The Fiddlehead, Water~Stone Review, The Stickman Review, and Reed Magazine (2010 John Steinbeck Award Finalist). For five years, Paul taught courses in Creative Writing, Literature, and Rhetoric & Composition in Oregon universities. 

In 2005, he was awarded the Walter and Nancy Kidd Fellowship from the University Oregon, a position offered to one Graduate Teaching Fellow each year. In 2007, Paul was hired as a full-time instructor at Oregon State University where he taught a variety of undergraduate courses. Paul joined Northwest Academy in 2008 and spearheaded the school’s Challenge Program through which juniors and seniors earn 200-level college credit in English and Writing at Portland State University.

[Photo by Karma Smallback]

Challenge Program in the News: Portland Tribune article 
June 7, 2012  

New Grant magazine hits hard and prospers:

Controversial stories yield national prize for publication
BY JENNIFER ANDERSON
The Portland Tribune, May 24, 2012

David Austin, Challenge Program instructor and faculty advisor teaches News Writing at Grant High School. Austin is a Portland State University adjunct professor and the Grant Magazine volunteer coordinator.

Austin brings his expertise as a former Oregonian reporter and member of the news team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the Oregonian in 2007.

Read the full article HERE.

Making More Students College And Career Ready: What It Means to be Ready and How to Get the Right Information to Determine Readiness
June 5, 2012  

Dr. Conley, Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Oregon presented at a Portland State University symposium co-sponsored by the PSU Challenge and LINK High School Programs and the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC).

.PDF Slides from the presentation: "Making More Students College And Career Ready"  

Making More Students College And Career Ready: What It Means to be Ready and How to Get the Right Information to Determine Readiness

May 15, 2012  

Date and Time Tuesday, May 22, 2012 4:30pm-6:00pm Location Portland State University Smith Memorial Student Union Room 298 1825 SW Broadway  Portland, OR 97201    Refreshments will be served Sponsored by the U.S. Department of Education's Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance: Seminar Series on Access and Success

Seminar Overview Most students enter postsecondary education not fully ready or prepared to succeed in entry-level courses. A college-ready student is able to prepare for, engage with, and process challenging course content and intellectual tasks associated with success in the course, and do so with a high degree of independence. To get to college in the first place, high school students need specialized information to be able to select the right postsecondary environment, secure financial aid, and make a successful transition to what for most is a new cultural environment. All of this requires high schools to provide all students with much more specific and specialized knowledge, challenging intellectual experiences, and specialized learning skills, along with targeted information regarding postsecondary education opportunities, requirements, and expectations, particularly for those who would be first in family to attend college. This seminar identifies, defines, and explains four “keys" to college and career readiness which include: key cognitive strategies, key content knowledge, key learning skills and techniques, and key transition knowledge and skills. The seminar offers a model for creating a system of assessments and ancillary measures that can be used to gather multidimensional information in each of the four keys in order to help students prepare better and to enable colleges to make better determinations of student readiness for postsecondary education. This symposium is co-sponsored by the PSU Challenge and LINK High School Programs and the Educational Policy Improvement Center (EPIC). Speaker Biography Dr. Conley is Professor of Educational Policy and Leadership in the College of Education at the University of Oregon. He is the founder and director of the Center for Educational Policy Research (CEPR) at the University of Oregon, and founder and chief executive officer of the Educational Policy Improvement Center, a nonprofit educational research organization. Before joining the faculty of the University of Oregon in 1989, he spent 20 years in Colorado and California as a school-level and central office administrator in several districts, an executive in a state education department, and as a teacher in two public, multicultural, alternative schools. His areas of teaching and research include the high school-to-college transition, standards-based education, systemic school reform, educational governance, and adequacy funding models. His recent publications include "College and Career Readiness: Same or Different?" (2012), College and Career Ready: Helping All Students Succeed Beyond High School (2010), and Rethinking College Readiness (2008). Dr. Conley received a BA with honors in Social Sciences from the University of California, Berkeley. He earned his master's degree in Social, Multicultural, and Bilingual Foundations of Education and his doctoral degree in Curriculum, Administration, and Supervision at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Register online today! Click to register  for this event. Please direct questions to  Brandi Kujala  at  (541) 246-2663. The Advisory Committee on Student Financial Assistance has organized a seminar series highlighting the latest research on college access, persistence, and success. The goal of the each seminar is to highlight recent research or policy issues related to five areas of the access and success spectrum: early information and awareness, college preparation and readiness, access and choice, transfer and persistence, and success and completion. Each seminar will be held on the researcher's campus or in Washington, DC. The proceedings of the seminars will be used to prepare a primer on access and success for federal policymakers.

When Students Cover The School: The Role of the Student Press in Reporting Campus Controversies
March 23, 2012  

Using the recent magazine coverage by Grant High School students of their own school's  hazing incident, as well as examples of campus controversies at Portland State University, "When Students Cover the School" is a OPEN FORUM panel discussion on students reporting on their own institutions  — and all the free expression, privacy, and freedom of information issues that come along with that.

Presented by the Portland State University Challenge Program, "When Students Cover the School" will feature past and present editors and writers of Grant Magazine, The Vanguard, and The Rearguard.

Joining them will be Grant faculty advisor David Austin — a member of the news team that won a Pulitzer Prize for the Oregonian in 2007 — and Paul Collins, who teaches nonfiction in the Creative Writing MFA at Portland State. 

Participants:

David Austin
Advisor to Grant Magazine, Communications Director 
for Multnomah County, and former Oregonian reporter

Christian Gaston
Managing Editor of the Forest Grove News-Times, 
former editor of The Vanguard.

Tracy Mattner
Portland State University student,
Campus News reporter for the The Rearguard.

Ryan Yambra (editor), Ruby Sutton and Hanna Olson (writers):
Grant High School students, staff members of Grant Magazine.  

Moderator: Paul Collins
Associate Professor of English, Portland State University; contributor at Slate and NPR.

Arthur Benjamin's Formula for Changing Math Education

March 6, 2012  

From the Eductechalogy.org article "Ten Videos Every Educator Should Watch (and Reflect on)"

Someone always asks the math teacher, "Am I going to use calculus in real life?" And for most of us, says Arthur Benjamin, the answer is no. He offers a bold proposal on how to make math education relevant in the digital age.

Teaching College Courses in High Schools - Letters to the Editor - The Chronicle of Higher Education
February 29, 2012  

In "Stop Letting High-School Courses Count for College Credit" (The Chronicle, January 1), Michael Mendillo presents an indictment not so much of Advanced Placement but of those who misuse it. He suggests that the original intent of AP was legitimate; true to its name, AP once provided a means for academically talented students to be placed in more advanced courses after matriculating to college. Over the years, AP has metamorphosed into a résumé-builder for high-school students who can manage to get a 4 or 5 on the tests, for which they prepare while sitting in high-school courses labeled "AP English," "AP Biology," "AP Physics," etc. Parents, guidance counselors, administrators, and politicians push students to get as many AP courses as they can on their high-school transcripts. 

Read the rest of the article . . . 

Open Lecture - The College Research Paper: A Captivity Narrative with Bruce Ballenger
February 20, 2012  

The PSU English Department and the Challenge Program are pleased to welcome Bruce Ballenger, Professor of English at Boise State, to campus, and invite you to an open lecture: 

The College Research Paper:  A Captivity Narrative

For a hundred years, the research paper has been a fixture in courses across the curriculum, and no genre of student writing has generated more despair.  There are many reasons for this.  One that rarely gets much attention is the research paper's history, and especially the assumptions about the purposes of the assignment that were rarely challenged or theorized.  The story of the research paper assignment, which begins just after the turn of the last century, is a narrative that reveals not only the history of a troubled genre and our struggles to teach it.  It's a story that leads us to a different way of thinking about student research writing altogether.  How can we make the assignment more meaningful?  In an age of information overload, what might the contemporary research paper look like if freed from its own history? 

March 15 
3:00pm-4:30pm
Smith Memorial Student Union (SMSU) 294

Reception to follow 

Please RSVP to cplink@pdx.edu or 503.725.3430 by March 1.

:::::

About Bruce Ballenger. Dr. Bruce Ballenger is one of a small cadre of nationally known truly inspiring teachers. Ballenger is a Professor of English and former department Chair at Boise State University specializing in composition theory and creative nonfiction. He is the author of seven books, including best-selling textbooks, The Curious Writer, The Curious Researcher, and his most recent, Crafting Truth: Short Studies in Creative Nonfiction. Ballenger is brilliant at devising techniques like "the butcher block paper" exercise, with others appearing as staples in writing programs across the country.  PSU uses his book for its WR 222 course in both the English department and in writing courses taught at area high schools through PSU's dual credit program, Challenge. Teachers and mentors in University Studies are also familiar with his work. Ballenger's workshops and lectures leave teachers reinvigorated and ready to return to their classrooms with fresh insights and new strategies. 

Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) Carnegie Conversation
and reception with Maryellen Weimer — February 23, 2012
February 6, 2012 

Save the date!

Join the Center for Academic Excellence (CAE) for a Carnegie Conversation and reception with Maryellen Weimer

Thursday, Feb. 23, 2012
SMSU 236

3:00 — Assumptions that Foster Instructional Growth
Most college teachers begin their careers full of enthusiasm for teaching.  But their idealistic goals and the realities of academic careers often collide, leaving teachers with tarnished goals and sometimes cynical perspectives.  Beliefs about teaching directly impact practice in the classroom.  Some increase instructional effectiveness and contribute to long term growth.  What are those assumptions on which solid instructional practice can be set and what beliefs foster the growth and development of teachers?  The goal of the session:  propose ways of thinking about growth and change that can increase both the motivation to teach and effectiveness in the classroom.

4:30 — Wine reception with Dr. Weimer

RSVPs requested and appreciated: caestaff@pdx.edu, or 503-725-5642

Dr. Maryellen Weimer is professor emeritus at Penn State Berks and one of the nation's most highly regarded authorities on effective college teaching. Many of you know Maryellen as the editor of The Teaching Professor newsletter and from her book Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practices, which is considered the go-to guide for educators looking to adopt a learner-centered approach in their classrooms.

22nd Annual Young Historians Conference — April 26, 2012
February 6, 2012

The Young Historians Conference, started by Dr. Karen Hoppes, Challenge Program History instructor at Lakeridge High School, is an annual event co-sponsored by PSU’s Challenge Program and History Department.

High school students from Challenge History classes submit research papers to a jury selected by the History Department.

These papers are scored and up to 40 are accepted to be presented at the Conference, which is held in April at PSU. Students present their research papers in concurrent sessions organized by theme; sessions are attended by peers, teachers, parents, and other interested guests. Faculty Commentators from the History Department moderate and facilitate discussion following the presentations.

The Young Historians Conference is a powerful and authentic experience for young History scholars in our high schools, celebrating their scholarship, and providing a professional forum for dialog and feedback. Our students tell us in our annual surveys that this conference is one of the most significant ways they connect to PSU and to a college experience, while still in high school. 

Important Dates and Forms:

• MARCH 16 deadline to submit paper to your Challenge History Instructor
  • 22nd Annual Young Historians Conference RESEARCH PAPER SUBMISSION FORM 

• APRIL 12 deadline for presenters and attendees to register and submit $15 payment 
  • 22nd Annual PSU Young Historians Conference REGISTRATION FORM 

Northwest Academy Students Head to College…as Juniors and Seniors