The new modality of the online class, brought to us by COVID-19 and the necessity of teaching students in person and online simultaneously, is known as the “hybrid” class. Formerly a “hybrid” course would be considered as one that mixed online asynchronous resources with an in-person class session. In the early days of online learning, […]
As all of us in higher education know, March 2020 was a very difficult month. Perhaps the “ides of March” is a good way to describe the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic and the rapid “pivot” that all of our universities and colleges had to make as we transitioned from in-person to online instruction and […]
The United National Sustainable Development Goals #SDG are a useful framework for future curriculum, as it aligns learning objectives within classes to urgent global needs. It was a nice surprise to get the email below from Springer letting me know that my new book, STEM Education for the 21st Century, is one of their “top used publications […]
As part of my work at Soka University, I developed a new observatory system, which is now known as the Nieves Observatory at Soka University of America. The telescope is a research-grade system that can be remotely operated and I am excited about being able to share the system with students who are all around […]
After consulting with our colleagues at Pitzer College, which has one of the best Fulbright advising programs in our area, we developed a Soka University Fulbright program, led by faculty member Sarah England. Meetings at Pitzer College, and help from Nigel Boyle, then Dean of Pitzer College, helped us develop a program to recruit potential […]
On March 25, 2019, SUA signed a new Memorandum of Understanding with Claremont Graduate University (CGU), to enable SUA students to have preferred access to their Accelerated Degree programs in four tracks, Education (with an MA or MA + teaching credential), Management (with an MBA from the CGU Drucker School of Management), and International Studies […]
In parallel with our initiatives to enhance teaching, we launched several programs to help support and incentivise faculty research at Soka University. One of our initial efforts was to include Soka University of America in leading databases such as SCOPUS and SCIVAL, and so in my first year as Dean, I managed to get these […]
Soka University has a strong tradition of emphasis on effective teaching, and its extensive GE and Core curriculum helped to bring faculty together to discuss courses and pedagogy. This was a strength that I leveraged, along with the Faculty Enhancement Committee, in developing a strategy for enhancing and building teaching effectiveness at Soka University. One […]
One of my big tasks upon arriving at SUA was to help develop their new interdisciplinary Life Sciences concentration. Soka University is an amazing and interdisciplinary liberal arts university, with a mission to “foster global citizens dedicated to living a contributive life.” We wanted to add Life Sciences as a fifth concentration, after the existing […]
After my work in Singapore at Yale-NUS College, which included helping organising the Yale-NUS opening symposium and a conference at Yale University on Global Liberal arts, I was eager to work with Soka University to develop new types of global liberal arts programs that fully engage the diversity of students and faculty and link discussions […]