ASP committee to host in-person feedback session on first draft

By Dominic Chiappone asst. news editor

Members of Syracuse University’s Academic Strategic Plan committee will host in-person meetings with undergraduate and graduate students later this month to gather feedback on the plan after the Feb. 17 release of its initial draft, said Jamie Winders, SU’s associate provost for faculty affairs, at a Wednesday forum.

SU hosted a previous feedback session at the Schine Student Center in November 2022 to directly engage with students and gather perspectives on ASP, a five-year roadmap outlining 10 goals the university aims to reach by 2028. Over 30 SU community members attended Wednesday’s feedback session, the second of three planned virtual feedback sessions.

This year’s ASP is the first SU has produced since its 2015 Trajectory to Excellence. The plan sets a goal for all undergraduate students to participate in a study abroad or other study away program by 2028, expand STEM research and workforce training in anticipation of Micron’s new Clay facility and promote diversity and community engagement.

Throughout the discussion, faculty expressed optimism surrounding the draft’s approach to new academic objectives, like course and program offerings. Elisa Dekaney, SU’s associate dean of research, graduate studies and internationalization in the College of Visual and Performing Arts, said the upcoming changes are necessary to refresh the university’s academics.

“I am excited about the opportunity to engage in meaningful revision of what we do in a more programmatic and constant way,” Dekaney said.

Outside of ASP’s programming content, some attendees appreciated the structural allowances and framework of the plan itself.

Amy Schmidt, the program coordinator for the Citizenship and Civic Engagement department in the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, said she valued the inclusion of an annual symposium to revise and adapt the ASP on a yearly basis.

Others expressed their concerns with the plausibility of some of the plan’s goals, and questioned the logistics behind getting every undergraduate student to participate in a study abroad or study away program as outlined in the initial ASP draft. At the Feb. 23 feedback forum, Winders said individual colleges and schools at SU will need to revise their curriculum so that students with “rigid” degree tracks are able to fit into its study abroad goal. Alongside other panelists, Gretchen Ritter, SU’s provost, vice chancellor and chief academic officer, emphasized that students with athletic commitments and intellectual or developmental disabilities need to be included too.

Emily Stokes-Rees, director of SU’s School of Design, said there would be significant cost implications for students if required to go abroad. She said some of her students would love to go abroad but can’t afford it, and others don’t have the same interest as other students.

SU is ahead of most American universities in terms of its student participation in study abroad, said Steven Bennett, SU’s senior vice president for international programs and academic operations. He pointed to the U.S. News and World Report, which currently ranks SU as the ninth-best study abroad program in its 2022-2023 rankings.

Bennett also emphasized the importance that SU accommodates students’ needs in its expansion of abroad programs.

“We just need to be creative, thoughtful and prepared to invest the resources to make it possible for every student — regardless of their financial situation — to have that study abroad experience,” Bennett said. “We’re not going to be able to do it overnight. This is something that we’re going to have to build to over time, but this is in the spirit of distinctive excellence.” recent, said George Theoharis, a professor in the Teaching and Leadership department and the coordinator of SU’s Inclusive Early Childhood and Special Education undergraduate program.

Bennett said that as SU continues to gather feedback, the ASP will begin to come together with the upcoming strategic plans from SU’s individual schools and colleges.

SU will host another feedback session on Tuesday over Zoom. Following the feedback period, an SU News release states the plan will be finalized and shared with the SU community in early April.

He said systems for students with disabilities were established through the courts in the early now starting to see the same steady incline in inclusivity as disability policy has over the past 50 years. Though underfunded, McMillen said, Syracuse city schools are working to increase accessibility at the district level. in the U.S. for any other language pairs.

Often, the responsibility to determine and coordinate the necessary resources for students who are learning English can become discretionary, she said, because it ultimately falls on classroom teachers and ENL instructors.

When it comes to standardized testing scores, she said bilingual children are disproportionately affected by low ELA proficiency on both New York state and U.S. exams. She said because children don’t have the dual language support they need in order to be successful in schools, they’re falling significantly behind their monolingual English-speaking peers.

“But that’s not a consequence of bilingualism,” and time in separate spaces with specialists.

Up until the current wave in education inclusion, he said the common practice was to take English-learning students out of typical learning environments, rather than provide the support they need to acquire a new language in the classroom.

“When I first came (to Syracuse), anytime I would talk about inclusive ESL, people thought I was an alien,” Theoharis said. “Even though there were pockets around the country of people doing that, people had not gotten their heads around that here, even though they’d gotten their heads around including kids with disabilities.”

Theoharis said the integration approach is central to helping students establish connections with peers, and emphasized that community is an important aspect of learning a new language. He said committing to diversity as something that enriches a classroom has a practical side, as it helps to actually implement inclusion.

When it comes to areas of language and dialect, McMillen said, teaching practices can significantly impact identity because of how closely it’s tied to language. When assigning Literacy Corps tutors from SU to SCSD classes and students, Ramirez said she tries to pair tutors and students who share a non-English language.

“Being with a group that has the same values, same culture and same language as you helps them build that relationship, also with the community, and build the confidence they need,” Ramirez said.

At SU, Theoharis said the undergraduate program in elementary education emphasizes adjusting approaches to fit different needs. In SU’s programs and in the city of Syracuse, McMillen said there’s been a gap in traumainformed practices when it comes to meeting communication needs of refugees in Syracuse.

McMillen and CSD professor Jamie Desjardins plan to help address that gap through a one-credit course starting in the fall, which will include hands-on experiences like practice with live interpreters, for students going into clinical work like speech pathology. But most importantly, she said, the program is going to center on and be informed by refugees in the community.

1970s, long before language-related accessibility. For non-English speaking families who have historically needed educational resources for children, that path didn’t translate, Theoharis said.

“There’s a ton of special ed regulation that had come from case law, because parents sued states, sued districts,” Theoharis said. “If you’re a new family (to the area), even if your kids are not getting the education deserved, it’s really hard to sue states and school districts when English is not your first language, right?”

Theoharis — who also runs SU’s Ed.D. program in educational leadership and the education studies minor — said education is from page 3 important for workers in the dietetics industry as the people they aim to help.

“(AND) just (tries) to focus on highlighting healthy eating to consumers, but also highlighting the profession of dietetics, and that registered dietitians are the go-to credible experts for people to seek nutrition advice from,” Januseski said.

The year’s theme for NNM is “Fuel for the Future,” which hopes to emphasize the importance of fueling bodies at all ages with sustainable eating, according to AND’s website.

Olivia Mancabelli, an SU dietetic intern with a master’s degree in nutrition science, said the month’s celebrations emphasize nutritional principles like eating balanced meals, enjoying eating with family and friends and practicing food sustainability.

“The theme this year is ‘Fuel for the Future,’ and so they take into account your environment and being a little bit more eco-friendly,” Mancabelli said. “So (that means) really focusing on recycling or using all of a food product and not letting food go to waste.”

AND releases weekly messages on social media throughout the month that share nutrition improvement tips. The messages encourage cooking meals at home and eating in a way that’s environmentally friendly.

Januseski said AND’s actions throughout the month combat misconceptions about dietitians. These initiatives encourage people to seek care from registered dietitians who can help them meet their health goals.

“Sometimes people assume that dieticians might just be food police trying to get people to go on diets and stuff, and that’s definitely not true,” Januseski said.

SU’s Wellness Initiative Team, which helps students access health and wellness resources, will host programs throughout the month that discourage diet mentality, among other harmful wellness strategies, for faculty and staff. These programs include a seven-day mindful eating challenge from March 13 until March 21, a six-week interactive Am I Hungry? Mind-

“What I often see is speech pathologists will say or teachers will say, ‘Oh, they’re dual language learners, they’ll catch up eventually,’” McMillen said. “Then unfortunately, these kids, by the time they’re in third and fourth grade, haven’t caught up. They’re significantly behind their peers.”

For students who speak languages other than English and Spanish, she said a gap in standardized testing is one way responsibilities transfer to instructors. State tests evaluate monolingual English speakers and Spanish-English bilinguals, but there aren’t any commercially-available tests

McMillen said. “That’s a consequence of us — as clinicians, as teachers, as researchers, as people who are involved in children’s lives — not having the resources that we need to effectively identify kids who need additional support and treatment.”

Despite the inaccessibility of state tests, Carla Ramirez, SU Literacy Corps’ associate director, said SCSD intervention specialists and ENL teachers work to get English-learning students to a point where they’re able to perform well on tests like the NYS Regents Exam. To Theoharis, the recent shift toward inclusive ENL education means a necessary balance between time spent in the classroom

When education students leave SU, McMillen and Theoharis both said they ideally have a vision of teaching that values diversity and prioritizes individual needs and experiences.

“It’s being human-centered, being studentcentered, knowing that we’re all trying to come together as people and as humans to be and live and work in an environment where we’re going to need to communicate and connect through language,” McMillen said. “But we’re also going to need to connect through just being people and just being humans living our everyday lives.” jlseal@syr.edu

@JanaLoSeal ful Eating Program beginning on March 27 and the 440 Strong challenge, which asks participants to complete 440 repetitions of a strength training exercise over 15 days from March 10 through March 24.

Mancabelli said she values SU’s efforts to improve nutrition on campus, like the vegan, vegetarian and religious dietary options in dining halls and Core Life in the Schine Student Center.

“It’s huge that Syracuse University respects (well-rounded diets) and allows that option and the variety in the balance for all students,” Mancabelli said.

Mancabelli will also be presenting an in-person cooking demonstration to the staff at Syracuse VA Medical Center at the end of the month.

The Central New York Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics will also be emphasizing the importance of nutrition in community outreach. Januseski said the board will walk in Syracuse’s upcoming St. Patrick’s Day Parade on March 17, and will continue its social media campaigns for the month to share tips for living a healthier lifestyle.

Mancabelli encouraged people to take a closer look at how and when they are eating, emphasizing that food sustains the human body and keeps it going throughout the day. It’s important to celebrate NNM, she said, because diet is a key tenet of wellness.

“It’s so important because our food is our future,” Mancabelli said. “Our food is who we are.” kaluther@syr.edu

@kendallaluther slice of life