Spring 2015

Dear friends,

Happy New Year. We hope you had a restful break, all set with school and work, and are ready to get back to MSUrbanSTEM!

First things first, Punya and his family creates a new year’s card every year. If you haven’t seen it yet you can see it here. (For more on the history of this family tradition, click here).

Inside-Out: A new year’s video for 2015 from Punya Mishra on Vimeo.

With that let us get ready for an exciting spring semester. This semester we are going to shift gears a bit, though somethings (such as the DreamIT) will continue. The main focus of this semester is going to be on leadership. Each of you has already demonstrated that you are leaders in different ways. Our goal this semester is to (a) work on ideas on what it means to be a leader; (b) develop ways of thinking about yourself as a leader; (c) and develop a plan for future to support your leadership goals.

We will do that in many ways, one of which will be a poster presentation at the American Educational Research Association Conference – the largest educational research conference in the country. More details on this and other events can be found elsewhere on this website.

We will also expect that each of you will continue to work on your DreamIT projects. Again more details on that on this site as well.

This image captures some key dates and activities coming up…

MSUrbanSTEM-Spring15.001

 

First off though, we need you to do the following.

  1. Say hello to Rohit Mehta, who is joining our instructional team. Rohit is a film fiend (he has watched more movies than all of us combined, i think) and a graduate student at MSU.
  2. Order the book Rocking the Boat: How to Effect Change Without Making Trouble by Debra Meyerson. We will be using this book during this semester so order it right away!
  3. Mark the following dates on your calendar
    1. March 7 and May 16 for our day long meetings
    2. The evening of either April 17 or 18 (we will let you know soon enough which date) for the presentation at AERA
    3. July 7 for a final dinner (plans still being made).
  4. Read through what needs to be done in the upcoming weeks and get cracking… A good way to start on that is by watching this video created by Candace that lays out what we will be doing this semester. Video is below.

As always, we are here to help you in any which way we can. Do not hesitate to contact us if you have any questions or concerns.