Starting March 21st Teacher Talk will be meeting in 05-142 every Tuesday from 11:30 to 12:30. Teacher Talk is an informal meeting that is open to all teachers. Join your fellow teachers in discussing and sharing ideas on the craft of teaching.

Several of our new Residential Faculty (Click on a picture below to see its larger version.)

Meet new residential faculty Esmeralda Delaney

Esmeralda DeLaney was born in Los Angeles, California. She started her education with an AA Degree from Glendale Community College. She graduated from Arizona State University with a BA and MA degree in ART/Art Education She earned a MFA Degree in Ceramics from Texas Tech University. She has traveled extensively throughout Europe, Scandinavia, Eastern Europe, Russia, and the Middle East.

Esmerelda is a well-known artist in the Phoenix area, and has done Public Art Projects. For over 20 years, she has participated with her students in 'The Empty Bowl Project', benefiting the homeless in the Phoenix area. Another charity Esmerelda is doing with her students is "The Pots for Pets", which donates to a no kill shelter.

Meet new residential faculty Shelly Jenkins

Shelly Jenkins is a native Phoenician and was born at St. Joe's Hospital in Phoenix. There aren't too many in this area who can say that. She has two brothers and two sisters. She has four children and one teenage grandson and two chihuahua mixed dogs.

Shelly has been in the Health Care field for 30 years and her expertise is OB with an emphasis in maternal-child health. She has also worked in various fields over the years in the health care industry such as LPN, RN, nursing assistant, scrub tech, just to name a few.

For fun Shelly enjoys movies, theater and traveling.

Shelly's Flame is Rachelle Hall.

Meet new residential faculty Kristen Jaskie

Kristen Jaskie is a fourth generation Arizona native. She became interested in complex systems in High School and studied Computer Science and Mathematics at both U of Arizona and the University of Washington for her undergraduate degree. Upon graduation, she started her own company, and subcontracted on a DoD engineering research project for several years. Convinced she wanted to pursue a path in research, she completed her MS in Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence at UC San Diego in 2011 and along the way made the fabulous discovery that the teaching she did to pay her way through school was more fun than anything else. She now teaches Computer Science and Math at GCC and hopes to play with research in a more relaxed fashion during the summer months.

Kristen loves to travel and has spent many months backpacking around America, Europe, and parts of North Africa. She is also an avid outdoors-woman and hikes, backpacks, and white river rafts at every opportunity. She lives with family and her two dogs very, very far away from GCC and is hoping to buy her first house much closer to GCC in the near future.

Kristen's Flame is Larissa Hill.

The yearlong new residential faculty orientation program continues each month with our group meeting and on-line discussions in Blackboard. The February FYRE meeting featured President Kovala meeting and getting to know the new faculty, information and a tour of the Couseling Center and Fitness Center. On Saturday morning February 4th, several of the new faculty meet at Thunderbird park for the annual FYRE hike. The next FYRE meeting is Friday, March 30th in LS-104 at 1:00.

Mark your calendar for Maricopa Community College's premier learning technology event on May 15, 2012 at Mesa Community College. The program will include track and poster sessions, presentations, round tables, and more. Topics will include online, hybrid, blended or other modes of technology enhanced learning, emerging Internet and Web 2.0 tools for teaching and learning, new and emerging technologies, technology applications that facilitate communication and collaboration, instructional models for collaboration in virtual worlds (Second Life, Open SIMS, etc.), distance learning including mobile learning, open content and open source, E-portfolios and other assessment tools, student success and assessment strategies in online learning, online learning resources (library, learning centers, etc.), and many more. Wireless access will be available, so please bring your favorite mobile device so that you can participate in the social networking of the conference!

This event has been pre-approved for 6 clock hours of Faculty Professional Growth.

For more information and to register visit http://mcli.maricopa.edu/techconf

A.T.O.M.S.

    ATOMS - Acronyms Terms and Other Maricopa Stuff    
If you have been puzzled by the alphabet soup of acronyms that you hear and have wondered what a few of them might stand for, then A.T.O.M.S. is for you.

Try A.T.O.M.S. out at http://www.gc.maricopa.edu/facdev/atoms/

(A.T.O.M.S. was created by and is maintained by GCC Faculty Development).