Einaudi Center for International Studies
Assié-Lumumba Leads IAD
New Director Sees "Extraordinary Possibilities"
N’Dri Thérèse Assié-Lumumba took the helm on July 1 as the Institute for African Development’s director.
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There's a New Trade Agreement in Town
Last week, NAFTA’s replacement went into effect. “I think it’s an improvement; just how significant remains to be seen,” said Lance Compa, LASP faculty member. “But I’m optimistic that there are opportunities created by this new agreement that can generate progress and fairness for workers and unions in all three countries.”
And Compa may have a role in making sure the hoped-for improvements are enforced.
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Appeals Court Strikes Down Trump Administration's Asylum Ban
“The Trump administration is sure to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court,” said Stephen Yale-Loehr, a professor of immigration at Cornell Law School.
Yale-Loehr is one of the Einaudi Center's migrations faculty fellows.
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Watch: The Protests and U.S. Democracy (Democracy 20/20)
Protests against police violence and racial inequality have spread across the United States, attracting large crowds not only in major cities, but also in smaller cities and towns. Three experts on U.S. politics analyze the protests and their implications for U.S. democracy, moderated by LASP director Ken Roberts.
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Language Resource Center Speaker Series - Christopher Hromalik
November 5, 2020
3:30 pm
"Inclusive by Design: Universal Design for Learning and the World Language Classroom"
Christopher Hromalik
Professor of Spanish and Coordinator of Spanish and French, Onondaga Community College
Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is a research-based framework for designing instruction to be more accessible to all learners. By following the principles and guidelines of the UDL framework, instructors can design a more inclusive learning environment that will provide an improved experience for all students.
This talk will provide both a theoretical introduction to the UDL framework and practical suggestions for applying it to the language classroom. First, a brief introduction to UDL and information on learner variability (i.e., the diversity in how everyone learns) will be provided. Next, results of research that has investigated the effects of an annual UDL training for faculty, staff, and administrators will be briefly shared. Finally, the main focus of the presentation will be on specific strategies that faculty can employ as they seek to universally design their language instruction. Given the current global health crisis and the importance of including all learners when teaching a language at a distance, specific strategies for synchronous and asynchronous online language instruction will be provided.
Bio: Dr. Hromalik is Professor of Spanish and Coordinator of Spanish and French in the World Languages Department at Onondaga Community College. He is also the Chair of the ACTFL Distance Learning Special Interest Group. His main area of research is the role of self-regulated learning in second language acquisition, with a focus on community college students studying a language online. From 2016-2019, he was the Faculty Coordinator of the Universal Design for Learning (UDL) Academy, which was funded as part of the Onondaga Pathways to Careers (OPC) project through a grant from the U.S. Department of Labor’s Office of Disability Employment Policy. In this role, he served as the lead instructional designer and principal investigator studying the impact of UDL training on community college faculty, staff, and students. Since 2011, he has given presentations and conducted trainings for faculty, staff, and administrators on how to create accessible digital instructional materials and how to apply the Universal Design for Learning framework. He has also been a presenter for workshops on the design and development of online language instruction since 2015.
Join us live on Zoom.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Southeast Asia Program
South Asia Program
Language Resource Center Speaker Series - Kate Paesani
October 7, 2020
4:30 pm
"Multiliteracies Pedagogy and Teacher Professional Development: From Research to Practice"
Kate Paesani
Director of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA), University of Minnesota
Recent scholarship foregrounds multiliteracies pedagogy as a viable approach for developing students' language literacies, yet few resources exist to assist teachers in implementing this approach. Following a brief overview of multiliteracies pedagogy, I summarize research findings related to teachers' understandings and applications of multiliteracies pedagogy in postsecondary language programs. This research base then serves as a point of departure for identifying teachers' professional development needs. Based on these needs, I present two tools for teachers that were developed for CARLA's Foreign Language Literacies project: an infographic featuring multiliteracies and other meaning-based approaches and a lesson analysis checklist. Both tools bring together research and practice by helping teachers explain multiliteracies concepts, distinguish multiliteracies from other approaches, and scaffold multiliteracies lesson plans.
Bio: Kate Paesani (Ph.D., Indiana University) is Director of the Center for Advanced Research on Language Acquisition (CARLA) and affiliate Associate Professor in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Minnesota. Her research focuses on literacy-based curriculum and instruction and world language teacher development, couched within the frameworks of multiliteracies pedagogy and sociocultural theory. Her work has appeared in journals such as Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, Foreign Language Annals, L2 Journal, Language, Culture, and Curriculum, Language Teaching Research, and Reading in a Foreign Language. She is co-author of the book A Multiliteracies Framework for Collegiate Foreign Language Teaching (Pearson, 2016), and is co-editor of Second Language Research & Practice (slrpjournal.org), the open-access journal of the American Association of University Supervisors and Coordinators (AAUSC).
Join us live on Zoom.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Latin American and Caribbean Studies
Southeast Asia Program
South Asia Program
Fall Activation Plan: International Town Hall
July 9, 2020
8:00 am
International Students, Parents, and Alumni:
Please join us for a conversation with campus leaders, including President Martha Pollack, Provost Michael Kotlikoff, and Vice Provost of International Affairs Wendy Wolford, to learn more about Cornell's plans for the fall semester.
Following President Pollack’s statement on Cornell’s plans to reactivate campus, we want to gather with all of you for a community forum about concerns specific to the international community. Since the pandemic’s beginning, uncertainty has been the one constant. We hope to respond to your concerns and answer questions that you may have.
We invite you to join us virtually on July 9 at 8 a.m. EDT. Registration is required.
Please submit questions for the panelists when you register for the event to help us anticipate interest and provide targeted responses.
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Program
Einaudi Center for International Studies
Coronavirus: How Much Does Your Boss Need to Know about You?
"I'm not a privacy absolutist," says Ifeoma Ajunwa, IAD faculty member and assistant employment law professor at Cornell University in the US. "But we shouldn't allow pandemics to become pretexts."
The months of working from home has prompted a surge in firms buying software to monitor our productivity remotely, she says. These tools can track key strokes made on a laptop, activate webcams and take screenshots.
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Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should
“It’s probably sensible most of the time to believe if the government says now is the time to open up, it might be safe,” says Robert H. Frank, the author of Under the Influence, a book about peer pressure, and a management professor at Cornell University.
And peer pressure, he says, isn’t always a bad thing. Taking cues from those around you has cognitive advantages. “It’s a complicated world out there,” he told me. “Each one of us knows only a tiny fraction of what would be good to know. You don’t know much; I don’t know much. But together, people actually know quite a bit about the world.”
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Some Of China's Freed Labor Activists Start New Lives, But State Pressure Lurks
"Especially given that [Chinese leader] Xi Jinping has reasserted the role of Marxism in education and official ideology, the state wants to keep a very tight grip on defining the terms of the debate," said Eli Friedman, an expert on labor in China at Cornell University.
Friedman explains the activists' union work highlighted deficiencies where the Chinese Communist Party has not upheld its own socialist commitments: "Students trying to organize with workers, while aggressively framing the struggle in Marxist political terms, poses a real threat to ideological monopoly," he says.