Active in Puerto Rican Studies

Our Department says “presente” at PRSA!

Six faculty members and two graduate students from the English Department will be presenting at the 8th Puerto Rican Studies Association (PRSA) Conference, titled “Cartographies of Identities: Puerto Rico(ans) in the 21^st Century.” The interdisciplinary encuentro will take place at the Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Puerto Rico y el Caribe, October 1-4.

Here’s a preview of what we will present:

English faculty members Catherine Mazak, Rosita Rivera and Nancy Vicente will join Teresita Santiago (Penn State) and Jorge Schmidt (Social Sciences, UPRM) on a panel titled Teaching and Learning English on Contested Ground: Language, Identity and Education in Puerto Rico. (10/3 @ 10:15 a.m.)

English faculty member Liz Dayton and Hispanic Studies faculty member Doris Martínez will present a paper titled Communities in Contact: Puerto Ricans and Dominicans in the Geographical Spaces of New York City and Puerto Rico. (10/3 @ 2:45 p.m.)

English faculty member Jocelyn A. Géliga Vargas and MAEE students Irmaris Rosas and Fabiola Barrera will join Luis Daniel Cruz (undergrad, Social Sciences, UPRM), Carlos Delgado, Tania Delgado and Alfredo González (all Aguadilla community leaders) and Héctor Bermúdez (Museo de la Mujer y el Hombre Negro de Puerto Rico) on a roundtable discussion titled Historia oral afropuertorriqueña: una misión y una visión (Afro-Puerto Rican Oral History: A Mission and a Vision). (10/3 @ 4:30 p.m.)

English faculty member Mary Sefranek will present a paper titled The Production of Digital Narratives in Rural Puerto Rico: Technological Panoramas, Prospects and Im/Possibilities in English Education. (10/4 @ 2:45 p.m.)

For more information about the conference and to view the voluminous conference program, go to: http://www.puertorican-studies.org/

L³ Society September Newsletter

The first edition of the L³ Society’s September 2008 Newletter is hot off the presses!

This newsletter, created by and for students is focused on the study of language, literature, and linguistics.

The L³ Society’s editors in chief are Adriana I. Caraballo and Angel Matos Caro.

In this edition, the writers for the Lx newsletter include Kimberly Santiago Vega and Wilmary Rivera Flores. The writers for the Literature newsletter are Marshley Márquez, Alexandra Morales, Larrisa I. Ramos, and Odette M. Ortiz.

Links to the newsletters may be found below.
Congratulations to our students for their innovative intellectual endeavors!

Lit Newsletter Sept 08
Lx and Language Newsletter Sept 08

Dr. Mary E. Sefranek Receives NCTE Research Foundation Grant

Dr. Mary E. Sefranek recently received notice that she was awarded a $7,500 National Council of Teachers of English Research Foundation Grant for the research project, “Sowing and Cultivating Local 21st Century Literacies and Language in Rural Puerto Rico”. With this grant, she will implement an interdisciplinary, digital, bilingual book-making project with third grade students and teachers at the Escuela Nueva Elemental Urbana in San Sebastián that focuses on the historical and contemporary production of coffee in that municipality, as well as its impact on the local environment.

This project will bridge students’ studies of English, Spanish, Technology, Science, and Social Studies, enabling them to make significant connections between disciplines that are too frequently taught in isolation. In addition, it will require collaborative planning between the three participating teachers and the researcher, and draw on a number of local community resources, including the Museo Agrícola of San Sebastián, a local coffee plantation, and the Colegio’s own Extensión Agrícola.

This project will be implemented in the current 2008-2009 academic year and will build upon prior research at the same school site that was made possible thanks to the award of seed grant funding from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in June of 2007.

For further information about the 2007-2008 digital book-making project, please refer to the weblog http://digitalnovillabook.wordpress.com/

CGS recognizes MAEE graduate Aleida Ferrer!!!!

MAEE graduate Aleida Ferrer was recognized in a recent publication by the Council of Graduate Schools (Washington, DC). Her thesis project (“The Design and Creation of a Bilingual Phonemic Awareness Test for Puerto Rico”) was the only one from Puerto Rico listed in the CGS publication Making a Difference: A Selection of Graduate Degree Holders and their Contributions to the Public Good. Congratulations to Ms. Ferrer, to the Chair of her committee, Dr. Elizabeth Dayton, and to her committee members, Drs. Eileen Blau and Billy Woodall.

Article Published in CENTRO

My very first peer-reviewed article was published in the Spring edition of CENTRO, the journal for the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.  The article represents the core of my dissertation work, and is titled “Negotiating el difícil: Uses of English text in a rural Puerto Rican community.”  -Cathy Mazak 

Review of CENTRO in El Nuevo Día

The recent issue of the journal CENTRO, in which both former MAEE student Kevin Carrol and I have an article, was reviewed this week in the newspaper El Nuevo Día.  You can read the review, where it mentions our names, at the following link:http://www.elnuevodia.com/diario/noticia/revistas/revistas/revistas_recientes/397096-Cathy Mazak 

Casa Abierta

On March 14, 2008, the institution opened its doors to 9th, 10th, and 11th graders of Puerto Rico’s private and public schools. Over 2000 students from around the island were welcomed into Coliseo Mangual to learn about the diversity of our faculties and departments.

Representation from the Department of English was immense and faculty members, graduate students, and undergraduate students collaborated in making this all-day event an overwhelming success!

Amongst the English faculty members were Roberto López, Iris Toro, Myrna Rivera, Carmen Maldonado, Betsy Morales, Stephanie Cardona, Raymond Knight, Waleska Morciglio, Gayle Griggs, Rosita Rivera, Sandra Ríos, Mary Leonard, Jocelyn Géliga, and Aixa Rodríguez.

Way to go, Department of English!

Honor Roll Ceremony

This past Thursday, March 27, 2008, exemplary students from Arts & Sciences received special recognition for their academic excellence.

Please help us to congratulate the following students from the Department of English who, through their hard work, are on the Honor Roll!

Isabel Abón, Emily Aguiló, Adriana Caraballo, Christopher Hernández, Marshley Márquez, Angel Matos, Leslie Mendoza, Juan Ñeco, Yolanda Padilla, Ileana Pagán, Lorianne Ramírez, Gabriel Romaguera, Katherine Rosa, Astrid Sambolín, Julio Vega, and Roxana Velázquez.

Congratulations to María Quintero!

Maria Quintero, T.A. for the English department, has had an article entitled “Life at the University of Puerto Rico’s Arts and Sciences English Writing Center,” accepted for publication in The Writing Lab Journal, an affiliate of NCTE from Purdue University. 

Her research, an ethnographic study of the peer tutors in the writing center, explores the unique ESL scenario in the only Writing Center in Puerto Rico, an island that due to its historical context, does not fall into any typical category in the tutoring of English writing. 

Dr. Mary E. Sefranek’s January/February Chronicles

At the start of the new year (January 11, 2008), I was pleased to welcome to our campus the teachers, parents, and 6^th grade students participating in my Arts and Sciences seed grant funded research “Portraits of San Sebastián: The Production of Digital Bilingual Narratives in La Escuela Nueva Elemental Urbana for a digital photography workshop with the Oficina de Prensa. This activity was reported on our institution’s homepage and is archived at http://www.uprm.edu/news/articles/as2008010.html

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