Celebration of Faculty Scholarship: Showcasing their niches

By Hannah Wiley, Features Editor

The first annual Celebration of Faculty Scholarship (CFS) will be held in Science Hall Commons on Oct. 22 from 4-6 p.m., hosted by the IMPACT Center and students are encouraged to attend. “Faculty scholarship is a celebration of the unique and meaningful ways that faculty enhance the learning experience through their own expertise,” said Dr. Jonathan Rodgers of psychology, who is co-director of the event alongside Heather Campbell, professional director

of the Canisius Center for Analytics and Data Ecosystems (CCADE). 

The IMPACT Center is a resource on campus that supports and promotes faculty’s scholarship. During Covid, the center fell away and now it is being revamped. “If any faculty wants to write a grant, we'll help them to provide resources and everything that they need to be able to do that. And we wanted to also give faculty an opportunity to share the work that they've done. So we're doing that in a couple of different [ways],” said Campbell, one of which is CFS. 

The event is open to students as “we really want student participation. This is a time to see your faculty talking about [their academic passion], their thing,” said Dr. Rodgers. While the event is designed around faculty, there is an emphasis on student attendance. This is an opportunity for students to not only see the hard work our professors put in outside of the classroom and school hours, but also to learn more about what they find interesting. This is also an opportunity for students to find research opportunities with professors whose research they find fascinating.

The event is meant to emulate Ignatian Scholarship Day, the student presentation of Canisius Earning Excellence Project (CEEP) and other research, as it gives faculty members the analogous opportunity to share their scholarly research and works. “A lot of the time people think of scholarship as research, but we have people that write poems, we have people that are more on the clinical side of things, like our PA faculty, we have people that are building websites and apps and all these different things,” said Campbell. So far, over 50 faculty members have registered for the event. Almost every department is represented, with some departments, like animal behavior, ecology and conservation (ABEC), having 100% participation from their faculty!

The event is also meant to emphasize the faculty and their niches and expertise. Professors teach classes that align with their interests: for example, Dr. Rodgers teaches psychology classes that center around neurodiversity, and Dr. Maura Snyder, an assistant professor in the communications department and director of the journalism program, teaches classes that center around media use and how that affects our society. Her expertise and niche are media effects and studying the ins and outs of how audiences respond to media. She will be presenting her research titled “Beyond Barbieland: Launching discussions about the shared female experience.” The presentation “examines the use of Barbie (2023) as a catalyst for discussions on shared female experiences. This work examines the consumption of meaningful media and the discussions that follow,” said Dr. Snyder.

The first hour will consist of lightning talks where faculty members present their work in a presentation-style format. The second hour will emphasize the Ignatian Scholarship Day format, in which you can walk around as faculty present their scholarship as posters, videos, apps, etc. The event will also have a raffle and provide attendees with food. Our faculty look forward to sharing their passions with our students. Canisius being where leaders are made is not a sentiment extending only to our students but also to our valued faculty.