Author: Kathryn Zawisza

Carol Reeves, Associate Vice-Provost for Entrepreneurship and Professor and Cupp Applied Professor of Entrepreneurship, gave a presentation at the Teaching Faculty Support Center (TFSC) Winter Symposium titled “Building a Mosaic: How an Innovative Curriculum Can Draw on and Strengthen the Arkansas Ecosystem.”  In this presentation she outlined keys to curriculum Innovation.

She emphasized the need to innovate for the specific task at hand with the group of students or the resources that are available.  Just as an orange tree will not thrive in Arkansas, innovative ideas that have worked for other areas or other students may not work for you.  However, this does not mean that there are not innovative ideas and methods will not work at all, we just need to plant apple trees in Arkansas!

One of the issues that we face as faculty and staff at a University is dealing with students who are leaving home for the first time, dealing with new and existing health issues,and who are learning how to deal with the issues surrounding college life. This can be overwhelming and may lead to serious mental health issues. At the University of Arkansas we have the Counseling and Psychological Service (CAPS) to help faculty, staff, and students deal with the many mental health issues that they may face. The goal of CAPS “is to provide high quality clinical, outreach, consultation, training, and research services to the students, faculty, and staff of the University of Arkansas. CAPS designs these services to meet the academic, developmental, remedial, and preventive needs of the university community.goal is to provide students.”

At the University of Arkansas we have approximately 1,500 international students from all over the world that make up around 5.6% of our student body. Understanding and addressing the various challenges that these students face,as well as supporting them, is an important part of teaching these students. This article provides information on the makeup of our international students and the issues they face as well as how we can support them.