Author Archives: Liv Raddatz

Meagan Kearney, Growth and Structure of Cities, BMC ’21

Student in Cities Praxis Fieldwork Seminar: Exploring Urban Questions through Practical Engagement (CITY420)

Field Site: THINK.Urban (‘Edit the City!’ project)

Field Supervisor: Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman

Fieldwork Description:

I was involved within an urban consulting team charged with leading and facilitating the pedestrianization of South Street with a focus in community input and open-data within the decision making process. Along with participating in weekly meetings, one being the inner team group and the other with South Street business owners, I researched and created a pedestrian street case study compilation and a South Street urban development timeline to better inform and inspire future programming and methods of the pilot project. Both resources will be included in their website and final report.

Praxis Project:

Please click on the image or here to access the StoryMap that Meagan created to share her work.

Benita Ikirezi, Growth and Structure of Cities, BMC ’21

Student in Cities Praxis Fieldwork Seminar: Exploring Urban Questions through Practical Engagement (CITY420)

Field site: Philadelphia City Planning Commission

Field Supervisor: David Kanthor

Fieldwork Description:

Before completing my studies at Bryn Mawr College, I wanted to gain knowledge in transportation from a local government’s perspective and how they are working to mitigate consequences of climate change, social inequality, and accessibility to deliver sustainable transportation systems. This course will focus on the impacts of COVID 19 on parking in Center City Philadelphia in terms of revenue and compare with other cities in the USA. It will also look at how the city of Philadelphia is addressing climate change through the increase of electric vehicle parking stations.

Praxis Presentation:

Please click here or on the image below to view Benita’s Prezi presentation.

Madeleine Park Hager, Growth and Structure of Cities, BMC ‘21

Student in Cities Praxis Fieldwork Seminar: Exploring Urban Questions through Practical Engagement (CITY420)

Field Site: Brandywine Realty Trust

Field Supervisor: Stacey Mosely

Fieldwork Description:

Brandywine Realty Trust, which was founded in 1994 by Jerry Sweeney, is a real estate investment trust that owns over 24 million square feet of property across the United States. I became interested in Brandywine after hearing that the company was exploring new ways to expand upon their existing Neighborhood Engagement Initiatives in Philadelphia. I wanted to understand the role of private investment in community development and was eager for that learning to take place at Brandywine.

I had the great fortune of working under Stacey Mosley, who, after 5 years in government service, moved to Brandywine where she spearheads data analytics for the company. Under Stacey’s guidance, I had the chance to support Brandywine’s project, which hopes to find new ways of supporting the local community.

The following is a poster with a variety of homeowner resources that I produced during my time for the purpose of informing and supporting local residents.

Praxis Project:

HOMEOWNER PROGRAMS

Please click here to access a PDF version of the poster.

Joe Dizenhuz, Growth and Structure of Cities, HC ’21

Student in Cities Praxis Fieldwork Seminar: Exploring Urban Questions through Practical Engagement (CITY420)

Field Site: Philadelphia Orchard Project

Field Supervisor: Kimberly Jordan

Fieldwork Description:

This Praxis course allowed me to explore issues of social justice, community engagement, and urban food production within the lens of the Philadelphia Orchard Project. In my role at the Philadelphia Orchard Project I conducted original research, interviewed partners and community members, assembled data sheets, and helped drive an increase in online engagement with our social media presence. Through my individual readings and discussions in the Praxis Course I explored issues of social justice within urban agriculture and urban orchards, which allowed me to engage at a deeper level in my work at the Philadelphia Orchard Project.

Praxis Presentation:

Jasmine Brown, Psychology, BMC ’22

Student in Cities Praxis Fieldwork Seminar: Exploring Urban Questions through Practical Engagement (CITY420)

Field Site: Juntos

Field Supervisor: Zia Kandler, Erika Guadalupe Núñez

Fieldwork Description:

For my Praxis internship, I worked remotely at Juntos, a community-based immigrant/human rights organization located in South Philly. Because much of Juntos’ work is in-person with the surrounding South Philly community, my work centered around one of their political campaigns. For this particular campaign about York County Prison, I was able to begin working on it from the ground up — I initially researched immigration detention itself, before reading and analyzing several detainee interviews conducted by Juntos at York County Prison. I’m now working on facilitating the search and hire for an animator to create a video about the research I’ve done. I was able to secure an additional summer internship at Juntos, where I will continue to do remote research, engage in education advocacy by speaking about my research to others, and help the video project come to fruition.

Praxis Presentation:

Juntos Praxis Blog Presentation_red

Please click here to access a PDF version of the presentation.

Praxis Project:

Juntos York fact sheet

Please click here to access a PDF version of the document.

Menna Khaliel, Computer Science, BMC ’22

Inclusive Teaching in Computer Science

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Chris Murphy

Field Site: CodePath

Field Supervisors: Tejen Petal and Denize Ignacio

Course Description:

Inclusive Teaching is a course designed to investigate inclusivity in the computer science classroom. I have worked with Codepath.org as classroom instructor and TA assistant for students enrolled in their Android Development class. My responsibilities were holding class sessions and working with students on their class project as well as occasionally deliver and explain concepts. I also served as an active online TA for students who needed help working on their class project. Through my experience, I was able to see how students engage and preform in a computer science classroom in response to different pedagogies. Throughout the course, I wrote reflections on the classroom environment and learning resources after reading and learning about inclusivity in teaching from various articles and research papers.

Praxis Poster and Audio Narrative:

Please click here or on the image below to hear Menna present and expand upon her Praxis poster (below).

How to make your course more inclusive FINAL

Please click here to access a PDF version of the poster.

Sophie Greer, Neuroscience, BMC ’23

Coding a Neuroscience Database

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Rebecca Compton (Haverford)

Field site: Van Hooser Lab, Brandeis University;

Field Supervisor: Dr. Steve Van Hooser

Course Description:

This Praxis Independent Study course would explore the basics of computational neuroscience. Through this course, the student will learn about how to facilitate the replication of research studies, collaboration between labs, and storage and analysis of data by helping code the Neuroscience Data Interface, a new database that will help labs store, analyze, and exchange neuroscientific data. The student will learn how to model neurological and neuropsychological concepts with math and computer science, and will learn more about programming languages commonly used in computational neuroscience. The course will involve programming languages such as MATLAB and Python and will hopefully culminate with the student getting their name on a research paper.

Praxis Presentation:

Coding a Neuroscience Database ppt for final blog post

Please click here to access a PDF version of the presentation.

Maria Bohan (she/her), Literatures in English, BMC ’21

Libraries and Antiracism

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Alison Cook-Sather

Field Site: Swarthmore College Libraries

Field Supervisor: Lorin Jackson

Description of the Course:

In this course, I explored the challenges and opportunities of moving antiracist work forward in the field of library and information science (LIS). Through readings and field site experiences (including making executive summaries of important resources, participating in staff committee meetings, zine making, and social media management), I worked to identify strategies for antiracist work in LIS and conceive of the role I want to carve out for myself as a future school library media specialist.

Praxis Reflection:

Praxis Project:

IDEA Moodle Redesign Proposal

Please click here to access a PDF version of the document.

Jingsia Hathorne, BMC ’23

Equitability: The Power of Story

Faculty Advisor: Emma C. Eisenberg

Field Site: Complete Picture (in Fremont, California)

Field Supervisor: Rebecca Grace

Course Description:

Science tells us that when listening to a personal story, the audience experiences the action at brain level and grows synchronized with the storyteller’s emotions. The neural networks that decipher stories overlap with the networks that interpret live social and emotional interactions. Much as computer simulations can help us to grasp complex logic problems, narratives offer unique opportunities to cultivate empathy. This course explores how empowering a defendant to tell an authentic accounting of their life-story to the judge deciding their sentence can inspire a deeper and more balanced understanding of the totality of the individual facing judgement. It is the key to a more equitable justice system.

Praxis Presentation:

Please click here to access a PDF version of the presentation.

Anna Thompson, Linguistics and Math, BMC ’21

Music, Business and Language

Faculty Advisor: Prof. Amanda Weidman

Field Site: The Hood Elle Woods Management

Field Supervisor: Tyler Garber

Course Description:

It is easier than ever before to become a creator or an entertainer, but it is not without its own challenges, from social media marketing to metadata tracking, and more. Everyone should have this opportunity to put their creative work into the world, but especially with business and legal matters, it can often appear inaccessible, stopping people from pursuing their passions. Taking on a linguistic and ethnomusicology perspective, this course will explore music, business, and language at its interface in practical experience in working with artists, podcasting, and an online music business e-course.

Praxis Project (Short Story):

My praxis course covered a wide variety of topics, one of which was the relationship between the work and research academics due in regards to popular music and the day-to-day issues facing the artists themselves. Rather than provide an academic essay or something otherwise formal, I have written a short story from the perspective of an artist, covering many of the themes discussed in the course and connected to the fieldwork- some of which include the concept of authenticity in relation to social media and music, metadata, and pay for artists. I hope this short story encourages you to consider this created perspective of an artist and reflect on the themes discussed.

Praxis Blog Post_Anna Thompson_red

Please click here to access a PDF version of the document.

Museum Studies Fieldwork Seminar (Prof. Scott and Prof. Houghteling)

Course Description:

This course provides students a forum in which to ground, frame and discuss their hands-on work in museums, galleries, archives or collections. Whether students have arranged an internship at a local institution or in the Bryn Mawr College Collections, this course provides a framework for these endeavors, coupling praxis with theory supported by readings from the discipline of Museum Studies.

The learning goals for the course are:

To connect Museum Studies theory and practice
To connect internships in museum, archives or galleries to students’ individual interests and career goals
To gain knowledge about some of the fundamentals of Museum Studies—including the history of museums, the role of museum in society, current trends in museums, museum ethics and about the variety of museum professions

Telling Bryn Mawr Histories (Prof. Gallup-Diaz)

Instructor: Prof. Ignacio Gallup-Diaz

TA and Praxis Student Coordinator: Emma Burns, BMC ’21

Course Description and Reflection by Prof. Gallup-Diaz:

The members of the Spring 2021 offering of H268 gathered at a particularly disorienting moment in time — a history class, filled with participants experiencing a jarring historical moment.

Why jarring?

The members of the seminar met at the confluence of the ongoing pandemic (a global event), the Black Lives Matter movement (as a US process with global ramifications), the MeToo movement (a global process), and the Bryn Mawr Student Strike (a local one).

Although one might assume that we are in a ‘post-Strike’ situation/world, the historian in me would suggest that we’re still in midst of ‘The Strike Process,’ even tho’ the strike-event itself is over.

While the resolution of the Strike (through the acceptance of most-of the student demands) does provide the College with a path forward, the administration’s engagement with ‘the Strike’ exposed some uncared-for wounds, while re-opening others that were partially- or only recently-healed.

“Telling Bryn Mawr Histories” — the goal of the course — makes the tellers acutely aware of their position with regards to the archive and the institution they are studying/analyzing. Although this is a complex situation for a scholar-researcher to navigate and analyze under ‘neutral’ circumstances, it is a necessary part of the knowledge-gathering process. In this case, students navigated an additional complication, as they were not ‘on neutral ground,’ they were critically thinking about decisions and processes placed in motion and controlled by ‘BMC-players’ who have more power than they do at their educational-home.

So, this seminar convened within a situation filled with possibilities, and the Black Lives Matter and MeToo movements — one with it’s imperative to recognize and dismantle white supremacy, and the other with it’s attention to consent, empathy, and volition — opened spaces for ‘out-of-the-box’ thinking and drew our attention to issues of ethics and our responsibility to ‘the past.’

The Instructor found his interactions with the members of the seminar to be both enriching and rewarding.

What is Praxis?

Praxis is an experiential, community-based learning program that integrates theory and practice through student engagement in active, relevant fieldwork that is integrated into academic courses.

There are three types of Praxis courses, which require increasing amounts of fieldwork but do not need to be taken successively.

Praxis I and II

Praxis I and Praxis II courses are offered within a variety of academic departments and are developed by faculty in those departments.

Praxis Independent Study

Praxis Independent Study courses are developed by individual students, in collaboration with faculty and field supervisors.

Students may enroll in more than one Praxis course at a time and are sometimes able to use the same field placement to meet the requirements of both courses.

Praxis Fieldwork Seminars

Praxis Fieldwork Seminars bring students working at independent but related field sites together to meet with a single faculty advisor.

For more information about Bryn Mawr College’s Praxis program, please visit our website.

Computer Science Major, BMC’ 24

NASA L’SPACE Academy

Faculty Advisor: Dr. Chris Murphy

Field Site: NASA

Field supervisor: Dagmawi Sirak

Course Description:

This course aims to bridge school with the workforce and explores the process of transitioning an aerospace mission from conceptualization to implementation through NASA fieldwork. There is an emphasis on communication and interdisciplinary collaboration. Students will work in a team with others from a variety of backgrounds (including mathematics, computer science, and engineering) to learn NASA best practices and produce a technical Preliminary Design Review. Students are sorted into teams and assigned projects based on their respective backgrounds and locations, and are paired with a mentor for the duration of the Academy. The fieldwork is designed to be a student-driven project, where students are trained in critical areas each week during whole cohort sessions with Subject Matter Experts.

Reflection:

For my Praxis Independent Course, I was a part of the NASA L’SPACE Academy, where I worked with a team of engineers and scientists to design a secondary payload mission into the Venusian atmosphere. Our team was comprised of three divisions – business, science, and engineering – and I worked on the engineering team as a software engineer. This experience was very interesting because although my role focused on software and computing, it didn’t involve any programming. This was different than any experience I’d had up until this point because in classes, the focus was on learning and applying new programming concepts. However for this project, there was a heavy focus on balancing the design and software requirements with the mass, volume, and budget constraints- as well as ensuring we met the scientific objectives. Another difference I noticed was the interdisciplinary work and communication between members of the team. Because I worked with engineers from diverse backgrounds – including aerospace, mechanical, and electrical, asking about and explaining technical concepts to other members of the team was crucial to ensure we all had a thorough conceptual understanding so we could create a cohesive final product. Working across departments with the Business and Science teams meant that similar communication was needed, which was both new and enjoyable to me. Overall, I had a very positive experience working with my team in the NASA L’SPACE Academy, and I think it was extremely helpful for gaining practical experience and exposure to the aerospace industry.

Zoe Shinefield, Environmental Studies, BMC’ 22

Writing Science and Beyond: An Exploration of Written Science, Policy Analysis, and Other Scholarly Works

Faculty Adviser: Dr. Michelle Francl

Field Site: Think Tanks and Civil Societies Program (TTCSP) at the University of Pennsylvania

Field Supervisor: Dr. Jim McGann

Course Description:

Good writing can engage scientists, policy makers, and the general public alike in environmental issues and problem solving. This course examines writing as a tool to translate complex scientific research and other scholarly works for a variety of audiences. Building on the learning done in the Writing Science course (CHEM B125), student and advisor will explore how science is translated and expand on the question of “how does scientific research make its way out of the lab?” by asking, “how do the most powerful scholarly works inspire and move people?”

Reflection:

Praxis Blog Final