Center for Principled Problem Solving Call for Proposals
The Center for Principled Problem Solving
Interdisciplinary PPS Pilot Project Initiative
Call for Proposals
The Center for Principled Problem Solving at Guilford College is an academic program dedicated to understanding and facilitating social change and innovation. The CPPS emerges from the Guilford College transformative and practical liberal arts education. CPPS teaching, research and programming initiatives are guided by the College’s core values of community, diversity, equality, excellence, integrity, justice and stewardship. CPPS initiatives may be designed for and operate within any community and are not limited to any particular size or duration. Participation in the CPPS and its initiatives is open to all Guilford College constituents and to interested members of the broader community.
The CPPS is now accepting project proposals for its Interdisciplinary PPS Pilot Project Initiative. Up to six proposals will be selected for participation in this Initiative. The selected projects will receive CPPS support and will help to determine the direction of the Center’s work in the future.
Successful proposals will show ample evidence of, or potential for, putting our community’s values to work in the world. Proposals may be for new projects or may emerge from curricular or co-curricular projects already being undertaken. Successful proposals will present a clearly identified social concern or cultural opportunity and will include a timeline for accomplishing project goals. Projects may be proposed for any setting or population. Successful proposals will be interdisciplinary in approach and will include an intellectually diverse set of participant teachers and learners. These projects may be designed to offer academic credit or take place as a component of an existing class, but neither is required. All applicants should reflect upon, and incorporate when appropriate, Guilford College’s Five Academic Principles.
The active participation of at least one faculty member is required for each project, and additional faculty or staff participation is strongly encouraged. Any member of the Guilford College community may submit a project proposal and all members of the Guilford College community are eligible for project participation.
Faculty or staff members directing a PPS Pilot Project may be eligible for a CPPS honorarium or community service recognition; students proposing projects selected for the pilot program may be eligible for independent study credit. Successful proposals will be eligible for project development and programming funds of up to $500 and will be supported by the staff and resources of the CPPS. Assistance in identifying and securing external funds for project development or continuation will be offered to pilot projects.
Up to six projects representing a diverse range of approaches and interests will be selected for the Initiative. Proposals not selected for the Pilot Project Initiative may still be considered for CPPS support.
Those interested in submitting proposals should attend an Interdisciplinary PPS Pilot Project Initiative informational meeting and must complete a Pilot Project Proposal application. Days and times of the informational meetings will be announced in the Buzz. Applications will be available at the informational meetings to be held at the Center for Principled Problem Solving, 111 King Hall. Completed applications and required supporting materials must be submitted to the CPPS by November 2nd, 2007.
Questions or concerns about the Initiative and the application process should be addressed to CPPS Director Mark Justad at extension 2853 or by email at justadmj@guilford.edu.
More About the Center and the Initiative
What are we talking about? What is this Center? What are we looking for?
Letting Guilford be Guilford Guilford College has identified “Principled Problem Solving” (PPS) as one of those things that makes Guilford, Guilford. We are a community of teachers and learners—academics in the best sense of the word — who seek to not only understand, but also to engage, our world. In fact, in making the claim that PPS is at the center of the Guilford transformative educational experience we commit to holding understanding and engagement in close proximity. We believe that we are always already in the world seeking understanding through reflection and principled engagement. And at Guilford our individual and collective interactions with the world are guided by a set of shared core values, values that reflect the school’s Quaker heritage and a commitment to a better future for all.
The Center for Principled Problem Solving Guilford College established the CPPS in the Fall of 2007 to help guide a campus-wide PPS initiative. This initiative seeks to strengthen the Guilford transformative educational experience by emphasizing PPS as a central theme of its academic programs. The CPPS is charged with two primary tasks related to this initiative. First, it will organize and coordinate campus efforts to incorporate PPS across the curriculum. Second, the CPPS is to serve as a resource for students, faculty, staff, and community members in support of their efforts to effect social change or innovation consistent with a PPS focus. This Interdisciplinary PPS Pilot Project Initiative seeks to further both of the charges given to the CPPS by the College.
The Interdisciplinary PPS Pilot Project Initiative This Initiative is the CPPS’s first programming undertaking. As such, we are looking for a diverse set of projects (number of participants, fields of study, constituencies impacted, nature of the problem, approach to addressing the problem, relationship to Guilford’s core values, etc.) that will help to define what the Center is and how it can best serve the needs of the Guilford community and beyond. We imagine that these projects will include a mix of faculty, students and staff; and the Center’s priorities require that we have faculty representation on all projects. However, the specific make-up of project participants and how they engage in the project is left to its designers. PPS projects may have broad aspirations, such as influencing a national issue, or target local or even internal to Guilford concerns. Selected projects will become “CPPS Projects” and receive the support of the CPPS staff in design, implementation, fund-raising, and whatever else might need to be done to make the project successful. In short, we are looking for passionate people with thoughtful and creative ideas for putting our community’s values to work in the world—and to help us create the Center for Principled Problem Solving at Guilford College.
Principled Problem Solving: Guilford Core Value Examples
Community. Students in residence halls often have problems getting along, from noise to disagreements. Facilitators from Guilford’s Conflict Resolution Resource Center work with a first-year residence hall to create community agreements. Students work together to define their rules and boundaries and are empowered to take an active role in shaping the community in which they live.
Diversity. Today's students enter a world of increasing diversity. Dissimilar cultural norms, opposing political agendas, and racial and ethnic divisions are real-world problems that must be understood if they are to be resolved. Guilford students research, organize and run a Model United Nations conference for area middle school students. By simulating the processes of the United Nations, participants experience the ways in which the international community deals with economic and environmental concerns, human rights abuses, disarmament and conflict, and many other global problems. The conference enhances the communication and negotiation skills of participants, and teaches valuable lessons about other countries and cultures.
Equality. Economic disadvantage is a major problem in urban America. Young residents in a local neighborhood lacked resources to attend summer camps. Guilford students realized that without some alternative activities, these kids could turn to gangs, drugs or worse. Students wrote a grant to the Bonner Foundation requesting support for initiatives to address the problem. They developed programs and activities that kept the children safe and occupied for the summer. Some of the kids who were in gangs left them to take part in the camp and some students received academic help to prepare them for the school year.
Excellence. How can animal life be understood and protected as species are threatened with extinction from urban sprawl, uses of pesticides, and more natural predators? Students in an Animal Behavior class spend an afternoon a week conducting independent research on various species of animals at the North Carolina Zoo. Some of the research reports were of such excellent caliber that the head of Zoo research not only asked for copies of the reports but also offered internships to these students.
Integrity. The distortion of financial information to inflate profits and impress investors is a growing national concern, from the debacle of phantom revenues at Enron to the reported backdating of stock options at Apple Computer and other companies. An Introduction to Accounting course examines not only the fundamental skills of accounting, but also addresses ethical problems and issues. Students examine the preparation and misuse of accounting information by studying current cases and learn how ethics can and should be applied.
Justice. A philosophy professor helps to organize the Colloquium Voices from Palestine and Israel: “Living for Peace” in a Holy Land to explore nonviolent approaches to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The twelve-session colloquium involved three leading Israelis and three leading Palestinians who have devoted much of their lives to seeking a nonviolent resolution to the conflict.
A course on the Vietnam War team taught by instructors from History and Political Science included a “problem day” each week during the semester. On this day students were to use course materials to explore how different disciplinary understandings yielded varied understandings of policy priorities and decisions. Students also worked over the course of the semester to design and create a memorial to some aspect of the war.
Stewardship. The environmental stewardship of the planet for future generations is a problem today. The construction of a bioretention cell, a specialized system to treat storm water run-off from one of the residence halls was funded in part by a student’s grant from the National Wildlife federation. The student used the experience and data gathered for her senior thesis and the system will be studied in future environmental studies courses with plans to assess if it could be a viable alternative that can be used in Greensboro to protect ecosystems and our drinking water supply.
A class in sculpture making exhibited their work as part of an Earth Day celebration at a local public library. The students’ work incorporated recycled materials and elicited questions about environmental stewardship as it relates to the creation of art in community.
A more exhaustive inventory of Guilford PPS efforts can be found on the College’s web page at www.guilford.edu/about_guilford/values/.