Sociology Professor Made Presentation at Regional Meeting

Dr. Kristin Park, Westminster College associate professor of sociology, gave a presentation at the annual meeting of the North Central Sociological Association April 16-18 in Dearborn, Mich.

Park's presentation, "Applying the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning to Teaching about Income Inequality," discussed course revisions Park made to her Social Inequality class during her spring 2008 sabbatical.

"I designed and redesigned course assignments and exercises with attention to their fulfilling the different learning outcomes of Bloom's cognitive taxonomy, including Applying, Analyzing, Evaluating, and Creating material," Park said. "Some of the exercises include playing a Social Inequality Monopolyâ„¢ game; writing vignettes that profile members of social classes; and writing a diary entry and creating artwork as a homeless person in the United States today."

Park also discussed the service learning her students have completed at Head Start and other early learning programs in New Castle.

"In their service learning and the journaling that accompanies it, students have given an objective description of their classroom and then interpreted their observations using sociological concepts and theories," Park explained. "They also share their emotions and moral evaluations as personal reflections. These different aspects of the service-learning match Kolb's experiential learning model through the varied ways they ask students to receive and process information."

Park, who has been with Westminster since 1993, earned an undergraduate degree from Colgate University and a master's certificate, master's, and Ph.D. from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Contact Park at (724) 946-7251 or e-mail kpark@westminster.edu for additional information.

Dr. Kristin Park