by: Gina Buchanan<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I am delighted\nto feature Alena Buis for our faculty profile series in our monthly newsletter.\nI had the opportunity to chat with Alena earlier this month and I am excited to\nshare her story with you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
<\/strong>\u201cSeptember 4, 2019. I arrived this morning for the first day of classes and parked my car. Looking ahead out my front window, I was reminded of another first day. This one, eighteen years ago.<\/em><\/p>
Eighteen years ago, this very same day, I drove into this same parking lot, pulled into the same parking spot, the very same spot, and looked out the window of my car seeing the same green leafy tree I saw this morning. Eighteen years ago. <\/em><\/p>
But on that day. I was a young woman arriving at KPU for my first day of classes. I did not know anyone. I did not know anything. I was so afraid.<\/em><\/p>
I sat in the seat of my family\u2019s battered dodge ram van and cried.<\/em><\/p>
And today I am here, a faculty in the very same place where I began as a student more than eighteen years ago today.\u201d <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n
Alena\u2019s roles<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alena teaches\nin the Fine Arts Department in the Faculty of Arts. Alena has been teaching at\nKPU since 2015 as a sessional faculty and this term is contracted to teach\nARTH1120: Art and Visual Culture, Prehistory to Early Renaissance. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
In addition to\nher role as sessional faculty at KPU, Alena also serves as the Department\nChair, Art History and Religious Studies, at Langara College.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A little bit about Alena \u2026<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Unlike all of\nher friends who had chosen to attend either UBC or SFU, spending hours a day\ncommuting, wandering across campuses into large lectures theatres and learning\nfrom professors who did not know them, Alena fondly recalled her experience of\ndriving a few minutes from her family home to campus, learning in relatively\nsmall classes from professors whose name she knew and who knew her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Alena\nhad begun university believing she would pursue a business degree of one kind\nor another, her studies would take an unexpected departure. Inspired by the\nfaculty she encountered and the teaching she enjoyed Alena fell in love with\nArt History eventually graduating after two years of study with a Fine Arts\nDiploma.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alena was just beginning. In the ensuing years she continued to pursue what had become a passion earning a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with distinction, Major Art History (Concordia) a Master of Canadian Art History (Concordia) and a Doctor of Philosophy in Art History (Queens). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alena has been the recipient of numerous honors, awards and scholarships including a 2008 SSHRC Canadian Graduate Scholarship ($105,000) the 2011 Alfred Bader Travel Scholarship \u2013 The Netherlands ($30,000), and a 2012 Winterthur Museum Dissertation Fellowship ($7000 USD) to name but a few. Just this month, she was selected to receive a 2019-2020 OER Research Fellowship from Brigham Young University to<\/strong> research on the impact of open educational resources on the\u00a0C<\/strong>ost of education, student success\u00a0O<\/strong>utcomes, patterns of\u00a0U<\/strong>sage of OER, and\u00a0P<\/strong>erceptions of OER.\u00a0 Congratulations Alena! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Her research in open pedagogy will serve only\nto supplement an already extensive and impressive list of publications in\naddition to conference presentations and I invite you to view a list of her\ncontributions to her field https:\/\/alenabuis.wordpress.com\/curriculum-vitae\/<\/a> <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The journey from student to teacher <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
Although Alena\ndid not begin her first day at KPU intending to be a teacher, she confided she\nrecalled thinking that very thought as she left campus for the last time as a\nstudent wondering, \u201cit would be so cool to return here. To teach here would be\na dream come true.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n
She recalled\nfondly and appreciably of the profound influence of two of her professors\nduring her student days, both of whom became her mentors and one, eighteen\nyears later her colleague at KPU!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Alena credits\nboth Rebecca Fairburn (retired) and Dana Cserepes, current chair of the Fine\nArts Department with introducing her to Art History and to igniting a passion\nthat has not waned in the ensuing eighteen years. She spoke of her immense\ngratitude for having had the opportunity to learn from these two instructors and\nof how profoundly they have influenced her life\u2019s work. She spoke\nappreciatively of the passion and enthusiasm of each of the educators and her\nrecollection of the many stories and pictures they shared of their own\nencounters with the objects and ideas of which they were teaching. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Talking with\nAlena served as a powerful reminder of our potential influence as educators. Be\nit intentional or unintentional who we are as educators and how we choose to\nengage with our students can have significant impacts the consequences of which\ncan and do extend beyond the classroom. \nIn the busyness of it all, to do everything that is asked of faculty and\nthat we ask of ourselves, it can be easy to lose sight of the possibility and power\ninherent in our choice to teach. I am also reminded of how meaningful it can be\nfor students to learn from and with us. To allow them to know how it is that we\ncame to know. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
You have authored some interesting\nchanges to your course, what are they?<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n
I teach ARTH\n1120, Art and Visual Culture: Prehistoric to Early Renaissance. I have adapted\nit to be a ZED CRED course with zero textbook costs to students! <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I asked\nAlena for what inspired her to shift to open educational resources she spoke of\nteaching another first year course and coming into awareness of the\nconsequences for students, and their learning, of the required text. \u201cThe text\nthe students were required to purchase was a costly massive tome. It was\ncumbersome. It was hard to use in class. It did not allow for agile learning.\u201d So, I decided to change the requirements. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Khan Academy\nhas partnered with Smarthistory a free resource for the study of art history\ncreated by Beth Harris and Steven Zucker. An independent not-for-profit\norganization Smarthistory provides over 1500 essays, videos, images, and links\nto additional resources on the art and cultural history of the Paleolithic era\nto the 21st<\/sup> century. The videos allow for me to \u201cflip\u201d the classroom\nto allow for more small group projects, and other student engagement techniques\nthat promote active learning. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
I have become very\ninterested not only in open education resources but also, open pedagogy. For me\nit has become important to consider how power and privilege are enacted and\nknowledge constructed in the discipline. The Assumption Handout (Scrubbing your assumption <\/em>about\nyour students) <\/em>distributed\nas part of the Intercultural Teaching Program \u201cblew my mind!\u201d There is so much\nunsaid, unnamed, unwritten in the discipline. I am knowing that more keenly\nnow. I have also become interested in helping my students uncover and challenge\ntheir assumptions and mine too and in inviting them to be actors in not simply\nobservers of the discipline. Challenging perhaps traditions associated with the\ndiscipline \u2026 who decides what is art,\nwhat is to be written about art and who writes. These are just a few of the\nmany questions that have become important for me to engage my students with. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The newly developed\nproposal writing assignment I have created based upon Emily\nClark\u2019s 10 Proposals for a More Ethical Art History<\/a> allows students not\nonly to construct knowledge about the ethics of art history rather than relying\non another\u2019s construction but also create and share this knowledge in a written\nassignment or any one of several other formats. Options listed in the\nassignment as alternatives to a written assignment include a podcast or video,\nan infographic, art work or another (instructor approved) self-styled means of\narticulating the proposals. <\/p>\n\n\n\n