Tag: Issue 6 Volume 20

Chemistry instructor makes new tools for disabled students to learn also

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By Daniel Johnson, Investigative Reporter

Chemistry instructor Carol Martinez has taken on quite a chal­lenging task, which is to make science classes and labs more accessible and practical for students with disabilities with the Universal Design Project cre­ated by Martinez.

In the summer of 2013, Martinez said she was approached by the Disabilities Resource Center on behalf of a student who was classi­fied as being disabled with complete blindness, and wanted to take a sci­ence class that was needed to com­plete his Associate degree.

On behalf of the student’s request the DRC encouraged an adaptation to the curriculum for Chemistry 1410 and 1492, so the Math Science and Engineering department began work­ing on a process to achieve that goal, Martinez said.

One of the main things that the chemistry class focuses on is called peri­odic trends of the periodic table and the books have many figures that address that, but there is no way for a person who is not sighted to figure out what those trends are, she said

“I made a couple of three dimen­sional charts to show what those trends are,” Martinez said.When the subject matter was discussed in the classroom the visually impaired student was able to use the tactical learning tools to feel out what was being discussed, she said.

The tactile tools used were able to help the other students in class, as well as assisting the student who the tools were intended for, so everyone is ben­efiting from this new project, she said.

“With me purchasing a few items, as well as using some of my creative ingenuity, I was able to make other tools that proved to be useful to the student,” she said.A lot of the tools that were used to benefit this student were used for the first time, so it took a lot of work on behalf of the student and the supporting staff to help achieve the goals that were set, she said.

Many tools were purchased to accommodate the student by the MSE department, such as an atomic tactile model set to differentiate between pro­tons and electrons, as well as a talking scale, talking thermometer and talking colorimeter, she said.

“It was great to be able to see the student use all of these items to achieve the same level of learning and participa­tion as all the other students in the class,” Martinez said.

Tutor at Montoya campus Maria Stevens said the student had been a reg­ular visitor to the tutoring center, and it was already known that he benefited from tactile learning tools, but that online work was tough for him.

However, with the challenges set fourth though, the student still showed a level of dedication that is rarely seen, she said.

“The idea of coming up with new ways to help students that have different needs than most was a challenge that we at the tutoring center had fun taking on,” she said.

If the student had something set up to remind himself physically of what he was trying to remember mentally it made the learning process easier for him, she said.

Stevens said that the reading and writing portions of the class were tough for him, but that giving him a support­ive foundation of extra curriculum helped him to succeed.

“I believe that we were helpful because he would not have been able to achieve his goals without the use of the tactile tools, and different tutors and teachers being there to support him,” Stevens said.

Martinez said there are materials available for students with disabilities, but are not designed to reach the spe­cific needs of each individual with dif­ferent incapacities.

The student in question was recently affected with blindness Martinez said, so his ability to read in brail was not that great and buying a book in brail would have been no better than giving the book to someone who could not read English.

Stevens said the idea of being able to provide enough equipment to anybody that wants an education is some­thing that the school would like to see as a whole even if it is not financially possible.

This experience is why it is nice to see teachers and tutors working together to

provide different forms of learning materials to help out students, she said.

“We are going to try to meet the needs of all indi­viduals that need assistance, be it hearing impaired, blind or any other kind of disability in any subject that they may be taking,” she said.

Stevens said that Martinez has helped to develop the working relationship between this student’s class and the tutoring center and that makes her a truly standup kind of individual.

Now, if any other students need special assistance similar to this case or with new challenges it will be the responsibility of the Universal Design Project to try and create or provide the needed equipment, she said.

“I am more then willing to take what I have cre­ated and use it to teach any and all students with spe­cial needs that need chemistry classes for their degrees. Since everybody has different learning styles, it only seems right to try and find a way to teach everybody in any way that is needed,” she said.

In August, all of the tools that were made to help the particular disabled student last spring, will be presented at the bi-annual conference on chemical education in Grand Rapids Michigan Martinez said, where hopefully these new tools created can be used to teach disabled students at all levels of science and chemistry education.

Theater department gets new digs

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By Nick Stern, Copy Editor

Acting students at CNM can now look for­ward to a brand new stage and a whole new building dedicated to the theater department for the first time in the school’s his­tory, Theater Instructor Joe Damour said.

And as the new stage is being built this summer so will a new associate’s degree pro­gram be offered, which will specialize in theater, beginning in the fall 2014 semester, Damour said.

Damour said classes that are offered in the new major will include acting I and II, improvisa­tion, screenwriting, and camera acting, as well as a few others, which will all be transferable to UNM. “The purpose of the pro­gram is that we get people into jobs, and that it gives us a chance to express ourselves in an incredible way,” he said.

Early Childhood Multicultural Education major, Avery Miller said she was not aware of the new theater or the Associate’s in theater until recently, but was greatly impressed by the new changes and what they could mean for the students and surrounding community.

“Personally I could benefit from it construc­tively for my students when I begin to teach. I would know a little bit more about theater, how it goes and how to be more dramatic, and maybe be more of a char­acter myself,” she said.

The construction for the new stage began in March of the spring semester and is antici­pated to be up and ready to go by the middle of August; just in time for the fall 2014 semester, Damour said.

Different types of theater classes are expected to be able to take full advantage of the space when the semester rolls around, he said.

Damour said the building being renovated for the theater used to be a document storage build­ing, and will include an outdoor mini-amphithe­ater as well.

“The whole program is roaring and getting underway and it is because —well, it’s because we worked on it, but the theater is part of what we asked for a long time ago. I mean, how can you have a the­ater program without a the­ater? Everything takes time — this is a huge institution,” Damour said.

The new stage is intended to seat 60 to 80 people, and much of the work has already been completed, he said.

The stage and the­ater style seats are univer­sal, and can be moved or morphed to accommo­date each show for space, need and audience size, he said.

The new theater area will have the latest in what is to offer for auditorium spaces, which Damour said includes sound-proof paneling throughout the staging area, a lighting and sound system, a dressing room, prop making and clean-up areas, as well as a new sound proof venti­lation system installed and designed to eliminate any noise while shows go on.

“It is going to be all the latest stuff,” Damour said.

Once the new the­ater is complete, it is planned to hold two large productions a year, which students of any major can audition for and can receive credit for participating in the play, Damour said.

“We hope to have a show go up toward the end of the fall term,” he said.The new stage and theater major will go hand-in-hand, as the stage will be completed and ready for use while the option to major in theater should become available, Damour said.

The renovated space is intended to not only serve the community with different types of the­atrical productions, but to help the theater program grow and develop in to something bigger and better than it was before, which Damour said was only a couple classes just a few years ago.

“All there was really was intro to theater— there was an academic course on musical theater, but I believe that was it,” he said.

One possibility Damour said he sees for the future is the chance for experienced actors in the community to work with CNM students on differ­ent productions, which could provide invaluable experience and insight for students hoping to enter the field of acting.

Damour said it is very common for actors to come speak and teach students, but that there was no outlet for it until the new upgrades to the program, he said.

“Being able to act with somebody who’s got a ton of experi­ence —students will be able to benefit immensely,” he said.

For more informa­tion on theater classes and the new theater major curriculum, students can inquire with the CHSS department at the Max Salazar building in the fourth floor office.

An exploration of the flora on Main Campus

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By Carol Woodland, Guest Writer

CNM’s Main campus has a commitment to using native, drought tolerant plants in their landscaping, said Anthony Rael head of Maintenance and Operations.

Rael said the landscape was designed to con­serve water by using only enough to establish new plants and to water only when and where it is needed as plants grow.

Some of that water used comes from building runoff which flows directly into planters, he said.

Biology professor Deborah Muldavin and avid gardener, said she takes notice of the land­scaping at CNM.

“I wanted to point out to you that a lot of these things that we’re calling native plants, if you look carefully at the distributions, you’ll find some that are real generalists that are all over, and then you’ll find that some plants that are used actually would not naturally grow here, but they’re still called native,” Muldavin said.

A lot of the plants we are seeing on campus could be better described as “regional”, and might not be able to survive without the inter­vention of humans, she said.

Muldavin said that when growing native plants; putting plants together that have the same needs in terms of soil, moisture and sun­light is essential, and that she watches the plants at Main to see how the landscape planning works out.

The right plants grown together will do a better job taking care of themselves better than people could ever do, and that this concept is called ‘preservation,’ she said.

“Preservation is something different than landscaping, we’re not doing any preservation here at all,” Muldavin said.

Rael said that the mission of the Grounds Department is to make sustainability one of the key decision making components for grounds design and management, which includes consid­ering all inputs to grounds relative to their cost and benefits to the earth and local ecosystem.

“Our directive is to increase biodiversity and self-sustaining systems while reducing depen­dence on fossil fuels and other extracted miner­als,” he said.

Muldavin said that some of the diversity can unfortunately be damaging to native plants and ecosystems explaining that non-native plants compete with native ones, especially in “dis­turbed” locations.

These plants can be disturbed by over graz­ing animals or digging up the earth to try to plant something else, she said.

“When we landscape our yards and around buildings the initial thing we do is create distur­bance,” she said.

One invasive tree grown on Main and all throughout Albuquerque and beyond is the Tamarisk, which was originally planted all over New Mexico to control soil erosion, she said.

In some areas, such as the Bosque del Apache, ecologists have been using efforts for decades to try to remove the Tamarisk; including fire, bulldozers and introducing a new insect to the environment, Muldavin said.

When the Tamarisks are able to grow freely, they take over extensive areas, and almost noth­ing else can grow there, nor do the trees sup­port very many animals because they are not edible, she said.

“They plant them intentionally because they’re really drought tolerant, but some stud­ies suggest when you’ve got thickets of Tamarisk along the acequias that it literally draws the water down, but that’s controversial– some people say yes, some people say no,” she said.

One interesting tree found on campus is the Chitalpa, which is a hybrid between a desert willow and the Catalpa tree, she said.

“I think it’s lovely, I really like it,” Muldavin said.

Another plant Muldavin likes is a rose variety sometimes called the “near-wild rose,” because though it isn’t wild it retains the look of a wild rose, and is planted in a few different areas on Main around the TC building and in the court­yard of KC and grows well here, she said.

Of the native plants on campus, one called rabbit brush or Chrysothamnus is growing all over and is used as medicinal plant for a lot of people and can be identified by its pungent smell, Muldavin said.

In the planter to the west side of the JS building, a native tree called the New Mexico Olive is thriving, and though the fruits it bears are not edible for humans, they are a favorite of birds, she said.

Muldavin said she thinks it would be won­derful if CNM was able to get someone who was a really good botanist to come in to do a semi­nar for the grounds people to teach them more about native plants.

She said she likes seeing the effort to bring new plants in, but thinks the way the plants are maintained could be made simpler by allowing the plants to assume a more natural appearance.

“What frustrates me with the way that they are managed; I don’t think that the maintenance people who go out and do this are responsible for these decisions. But it’s odd to see native plants put in and somebody somewhere decides that these plants need to be tidied up and pruned into globe shapes when the natural form allows for more circulation of air. Being an ecologist, I really like the natural form, and I would think that it would be less labor intensive if they would just accommodate that— just leave it,” she said.

Exemplary instruction gives disabled students a fighting chance

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By the Chronicle Editorial Board

It is tough as it is to have a disability that prevents mobility, use of hands or feet, and causes speech, vision or hearing dif­ficulties or impairment that can truly devastate what a person is able to do on a day to day basis.

More than 18 percent of Americans have some type of dis­ability that precludes them from the smallest activities that many of us out there take for granted every day, and more than 12 percent have a severe debilitat­ing impairment that limits these people’s activities and at times their quality of life, according to ctb.ku.edu.

So, it is extremely reas­suring to see that instructors at CNM are taking disabled stu­dents into consideration when it comes to these instructors’ classes, curriculum, the way they teach students, and how they can help students with dis­abilities to learn and succeed at this school, such as in the front page article ‘Chemistry instruc­tor makes new tools for disabled students to learn too.’

Science classes and labs can be challenging as it is, but could be almost impossible to learn from when a student has a disability that prevents them from learning the curriculum in a class.

It is commendable that Carol Martinez and the Disability Resource Center saw that there is a need for special­ized curriculum and created new tools for disabled students to be able to learn with hands on mate­rials, instead of having to opt out because of their inaccessibility.

All students deserve the same quality of instruction when paying the same amount to get their educations, including dis­abled students, and sometimes they are left out in the wind when there is no means or outlet for them to learn from, espe­cially in math and sciences.

Disabled people are forced to wait much longer to become employed, and are sometimes treated as if they are a burden, but most importantly people do not take the time to consider what disabled individuals must go through just to finish out the day, and it is truly admirable that this instructor and department took the time to consider what some disabled students need to get by or learn, and helped at least one student so far to suc­ceed in doing so here at CNM.