{"id":13083,"date":"2013-07-03T09:07:28","date_gmt":"2013-07-03T13:07:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/carleton.ca\/edc\/?p=13083"},"modified":"2021-08-13T10:20:49","modified_gmt":"2021-08-13T14:20:49","slug":"spotlight-on-teaching-excellence-shawna-dolansky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/carleton.ca\/tls\/2013\/spotlight-on-teaching-excellence-shawna-dolansky\/","title":{"rendered":"Spotlight on Teaching Excellence: Shawna Dolansky"},"content":{"rendered":"

By: Sabrina Doyle<\/em><\/p>\n

Religion has a way of inciting passionate discussion. And year after year, religion professor Shawna Dolansky has seen these passions manifest in her students during class.<\/p>\n

\u201cI often get students who either take the class because they hate religion and want to prove it wrong, or because they grew up in a religious household and wanted to learn more. And so I try to make the course equally challenging for both groups.\u201d<\/p>\n

She\u2019s not trying to play peacemaker, per se, she\u2019s just coming to the text from a completely different angle than they\u2019re perhaps used to. While some may have traditionally looked at the bible from a theological standpoint, Dolansky makes it clear from the start that they\u2019ll be looking at it from an academic, historical standpoint.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about putting the puzzle pieces together using archeology. Finding out which match together and which don\u2019t, and creating a story out of those pieces.\u201d<\/p>\n

Dolansky recently won a Provost\u2019s Fellowship in Teaching Award<\/a>, partly for the effusive praise her students give her. Among the reasons listed in her recommendation letters: she challenges students to become more deeply engaged both in the course and in life, and not to settle for superficial answers.<\/p>\n

\u201cI want them to be able to question what the text actually says and what I\u2019m saying it says. I encourage them to ask as many questions of the text – and also of me – as possible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next venture she wants to explore is how to incorporate more technology into her teaching. Students are often engaged in digital media during class anyway, she says, so using it as a teaching method makes sense.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s wonderful that Carleton encourages good teaching, and rewards it in this way,\u201d Dolansky says. She laments that some universities consider teaching as a distraction from research.\u00a0\u201cTo me, you can\u2019t separate the research from the teaching. Each enriches the other.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By: Sabrina Doyle Religion has a way of inciting passionate discussion. And year after year, religion professor Shawna Dolansky has seen these passions manifest in her students during class. \u201cI often get students who either take the class because they hate religion and want to prove it wrong, or because they grew up in a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[383,384,201],"yoast_head":"\nSpotlight on Teaching Excellence: Shawna Dolansky - Teaching and Learning Services<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"By: Sabrina Doyle Religion has a way of inciting passionate discussion. 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