I have spent much of the last 12 years teaching various topics in statistics, research methods and measurement to undergraduate and graduate students at St. Thomas and elsewhere. My students typically have been hard working and eager to learn. They came to class and took notes. They learned the steps of important processes. Their nodding heads indicated that they understood the material as it was being presented to them. And yet, these bright and capable students often had difficulty applying course material in novel or ambiguous but true-to-life contexts. Despite the clarity of my explanations or the number of times I demonstrated how to apply concepts and processes, students often didn’t know what to do with what they knew.

I came to understand that remembering and understanding are necessary, but not sufficient, for the kind of “knowing” that allows one to think critically and solve complex problems. This realization seemed particularly problematic, as it is precisely this type of“knowing” our students need now, in our increasingly technical and competitive world.

While this need for knowing exists in all disciplines, it may be especially urgent for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines. In 1996, the Advisory Committee to the National Science Foundation, responding to a call to improveundergraduate STEM education, published “Shaping the Future: New Expectations for Undergraduate Education in Science, Mathematics, Engineering, and Technology.” One of its recommendations called for faculty teaching undergraduate STEM courses to “build inquiry, a sense of wonder and the excitement of discovery, plus communication and teamwork, critical thinking, and lifelong learning skills into learning experiences.”

At St. Thomas, STEM faculty members have taken to heart the call to actively engage students through critical thinking and collaborative problem solving.

In spring 2010, Kris Wammer, associate professor of chemistry, organized a two-day workshop on the use of Peer-Led Team Learning (PLTL) in entry-level STEM courses. PLTL involves groups of six to 12 students who take the same course (e.g., Chemistry111) and work with trained peer-facilitators to address problems that facilitate conceptual understanding of course material and the development of problem-solving skills. The workshop was well attended by biology, chemistry, mathematics, computer and information sciences, geology, physics and engineering faculty. At its conclusion, faculty decided to initiate a PLTL program for students taking introductory STEM coursesat St. Thomas.

After an intense summer of planning, the PLTL program was ready to launch: A program structure consisting of a coordinator, four departmental liaisons and 16 to 20student peer-facilitators was agreed upon; shortterm funding to support a program coordinator and pay peer-facilitators for the 2010-2011 academic year was secured from the dean of the College of Arts and Sciences and the Biology Department; discipline-specific peer-facilitators were recruited and trained; concept-focused, problem-based activities were developed by departmental liaisons for use by peer-facilitators in small-group sessions; formal PLTL program evaluation procedures were devised; and a name for the PLTL program was created: the STEM Learning Community (LC) Program.

In fall 2010, STEM LCs emphasizing collaboration, active learning, problem solving and critical thinking were introduced. Each semester since then, STEM LCs have been offered to about 300 chemistry students, 200 biology students, 130 calculus students and 90 statistics students, most of whom are first-year college students at St. Thomas. Between 180 and 240 students participate in the STEM LCs each semester.

Research on the use of collaborative learning strategies in undergraduate STEM education suggests that they are a highly effective strategy for promoting the kind of “knowing” that is expected of STEM professionals. Evaluation of the STEM LC programat St. Thomas indicates that benefits for participants and peer-facilitators are many: learning effective study skills; acquiring depth of understanding; gaining skills in collaboration; and developing confidence in problem-solving abilities. As one STEM LCparticipant noted, “I learned different ways of approaching a problem, and if I didn’t understand something, the group was able to help.” Another participant stated, “I study more efficiently and more often” as a result of this experience.

Mithra Marcus, clinical professor of chemistry, is excited by the impact of the STEM LC program on her students. She noted, “This program has helped my students think critically about course material rather than just focus on memorizing facts.” Such an emphasis has translated into improved learning outcomes for participants. Significantly higher exam scores have been achieved by LC participants in all of the courses in which LCs are offered. In the case of chemistry, STEM LC participants scored more than five points higher, on average, than their peers on a standardized, nationally normed chemistry examination.

Through my own involvement with the STEM LC program, I am reminded that my job is not to simply tell students what is important to know. If I truly want my students to beactive learners, critical thinkers and effective problem solvers, I must find ways for them to connect with one another and with the material in deep and meaningful ways. The STEM LC program appears to offer an effective strategy for doing just that.

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Because many people choose the same password for multiple websites, learning someone’s login information for one site gave hackers access to that person’s accounts at numerous other sites. What followed were reports of pranks that included changing Facebook profile pictures to disturbing images, and buying and having random items delivered to unsuspecting victims whose accounts had been used for the purchases.

Lulzsec hackers claimed they posted the information and encouraged its misuse “for the laughs,” as well as to prompt users and organizations to implement better security practices.

The widely publicized attacks from Lulzsec are just one example of a growing problem: the susceptibility of organizations to data breaches. Concerns about the security of sensitive information sent over the Internet have existed for years, yet those fears have too often been focused on what happens to information in transit. The recent attacks and the hundreds of data leaks that are reported every year make it clear that the larger issue is what happens to personal data after it reaches its destination.

When you provide valuable information such as a credit card number to an organization, you often have no way of knowing if the organization is storing this data and what steps (if any) it is taking to prevent the data’s theft. Often, you only find out that an organization was storing your information insecurely after receiving a letter notifying you its database was hacked or one of its employees lost a laptop containing sensitive data.

Clearly, many organizations are not doing enough to protect their customers’ information. While few details of the Lulzsec attacks are known, it has been widely reported that some of the compromised websites were poorly designed and vulnerable to simple SQL (structured query language) injection attacks. These attacks, which allow attackers to execute database commands simply by submitting data (e.g., through a Web form) with carefully placed special characters such as quotation marks, give hackers access to entire databases of customer information.

Making matters worse, it appears that in many cases sensitive information was simply stored “in the clear” instead of being encrypted first. This means that once attackers had access to the databases, they were able to immediately see actual customer information instead of only seeing unintelligible, scrambled data. Users also share some of the blame, having reused usernames and passwords at multiple websites, despite the well-known dangers of this practice.

Solving the Problem Through Education

What can be done to prevent these types of attacks from happening repeatedly in the future? A key step toward solving the problem is better security education for everyone involved, but most importantly for those designing and managing the computer systems that interact with sensitive customer information. With reliance on the Internet continually increasing, it has become essential that anyone working in computing be knowledgeable in information security.

To address this growing need for security education, the St. Thomas Department of Computer and Information Sciences created a major in information security in 2008 and has begun offering two new security courses, with more offerings to come.

Our information security curriculum is designed to teach students essential technical skills such as how to prevent SQL injection attacks and properly use encryption, while also teaching them “how to think like an adversary” so that they can better anticipate newthreats. As a result, our majors, when faced with designing or evaluating a system, will be able to foresee potential security issues and will have the technical skills needed to address them.

Additionally, the CISC Department also requires all computer science majors, not just those in the new information security major, to take a course in information security early in the program. This is in contrast to computer science programs at most other universities, which either do not teach a security course at all or only offer it as anupper-level elective.

Making security a required course ensures that all our computer science graduates are knowledgeable in current attacks and defenses, and placing the course early in the major gets students thinking about security issues right from the start of their college education. It is tempting to think, based on the well-publicized attacks from Lulzsec and others, that the information security field is in a dire state. While it’s true that many organizations have inadequate security, it’s actually a good thing that leaks have been in the news.

The publicity undoubtedly will lead to more security awareness in average users, spur governments to enact tougher regulations and ultimately force organizations to take precautions to protect customer data.

Our graduates, with their training in information security, will be well-positioned to fill the accompanying need for security expertise.

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In 2001 St. Thomas received a generous five-year, almost $2 million grant from the Lilly Endowment Inc. as part of a nationwide effort to stimulate a theological exploration of the idea of vocation on college campuses. As Father Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas, commented when the grant was announced, this initiative “will allow members of our university to consider deeply the meaning and mission of their lives.”

So far “Beyond Career to Calling,” as St. Thomas’ Lilly program is titled, has funded more than 30 different projects on campus in a wide variety of departments and disciplines. They include the vocation of professional women, life values in medicine, law students serving the marginalized, team-teaching theology “bridge courses” such as Theology and Politics, and engaging first-year students in St. Thomas’ urban mission.

“Beyond Career to Calling” differs from similarly funded Lilly programs at other campuses because its framework is decentralized, that is, faculty and staff propose, then direct, individual projects tailored to their department or discipline. “Beyond Career to Calling” is coordinated by Dr. Mary Reichardt, Catholic Studies and English departments. Here are three recently funded projects.

Vocation in Action: Design of a Breadfruit Shredder for Haiti

By Dr. Camille George, engineering, and Dr. Ashley Shams, Classical Languages

One interdisciplinary project, funded by the Ireland Grant for New Initiatives (one part of the Lilly Grant), involved St. Thomas’ engineering and French students in helping women’s cooperatives in Haiti harvest breadfruit for use as a flour substitute in making breakfast bars for school children.

Breadfruit, a naturally occurring food in Haiti, spoils quickly in that highly humid environment. With Dr. Camille George’s mentorship, St. Thomas’ engineering students designed a manual device to shred fresh breadfruit evenly. The breadfruit is then sun-dried, and the resulting dried shreds have a shelf life of up to a year.

With Dr. Ashley Shams’ mentorship, St. Thomas’ French students then created appropriate visuals for the Haitian users of this breadfruit shredder to understand and maintain that technology. The final design for the “Tommie Shredder” was produced by a graduate student in manufacturing engineering and will be delivered along with the culturally appropriate manuals developed by the French students to Haiti very soon.

St. Thomas’ mission to “Challenge Yourself (and) Change Our World” is especially evident in this project. Developing appropriate sustainable technology and helping ensure that the users can work with it effectively provided a meaningful context and objective for students in both major fields to anchor their academic learning. Most importantly, the project helped foster a theological sense of vocation in the students’ lives. The engineering students understood that their skills can be channeled toward creating a world in which every citizen has adequate food and water and access to a renewable energy supply. The French students used their language skills in an authentic service context while working alongside other professionals. For both sets of students, the experience gained from this project broadened their understanding of work as a calling as well as their awareness of cultural and global issues.

Vocation and the Christian Intellectual: A Faculty Reading Group

By Dr. John Boyle, Theology

This ongoing project, funded by the initial Lilly grant, gives faculty the opportunity to reflect on the vocation of the Christian intellectual in a small group setting and through discussion of works of literature. While participants have varied from year to year the group generally numbers about a dozen and meets weekly during the semester. So far, our discussions have centered on Flannery O’Connor’s The Habit of Being, Augustine’s City of God, Dante’s Divine Comedy, and, this year, Plato’s Republic.

The overarching goal of the discussions is to encourage faculty to think afresh about what drew them to the life of the mind in the first place and to renew a sense of their vocation as Christian teachers and scholars. Over the years, many participants have commented on how refreshing it is to have time to discuss with colleagues serious ideas in a sustained manner – too often a rarity in academic life. Many of these conversations spill out into corridors and faculty offices throughout the week.

Some participants in the discussion group teach the books in their classes; most do not. Nonetheless, our readings affect our teaching in that they serve to give new shape to ideas discussed in the classroom and provoke us to think anew about how these ideas can be more effectively communicated.

The life of the mind ought not be an isolated affair. These faculty discussions on the vocation of the Christian intellectual have helped foster a sense of the intellectual life as a shared enterprise, one first shared with our faculty colleagues and then with our students.

Computers and Callings: The Vocation of the Computer Professional

By Dr. Carole Bagley, Quantitative Methods and Computer Science

During the 2004-05 academic year, I directed a program funded by the Ireland Grant for New Initiatives that focused on interdisciplinary computer careers and on viewing one’s computer-related profession as a vocation. I was assisted in the implementation of the program by Dr. Mari Heltne. The program invited a series of guest speakers to campus, with follow-up student discussion sessions. These events were then capped by a student writing contest.

Each invited speaker works in a field where an interdisciplinary approach to work is required, and each understands his or her job as a “calling,” that is, as work that goes beyond merely bringing home a paycheck.

The presenters and topics included Dr. Noreen Herzfeld, professor of computer science at St. John’s University, who spoke on artificially intelligent computers and their theological impact; Curt Melzer, an attorney and CIO of Dorsey and Whitney law firm, who discussed his passion for working with computers in a law practice; Greg Johnson, director of channel management at Thrivent Industries, who presented on the importance of climate in an organization and how professionals can make a difference in the world through their work; Jon Giftakis, senior scientist in neurological therapy research at Medtronic, who spoke on a model for “calling” that a company can instill in its employees; and Dr. Jill Tarter, director of the SETI Research Lab, who discussed working with passion for what you love.

A week after each guest presentation, the Computer Science Club sponsored a student discussion facilitated by a professor. These discussions were open to all students with an interest in pairing computer science, information systems or quantitative methods with another discipline of study. They focused on issues related to the presentation, and specifically on matters of theological vocation and calling in the computer field. Finally, students had the opportunity to submit essays on the topic of computer science as a vocation for a prize.

These and numerous other questions were explored by 40 students at the spring Inquiry at UST: A Poster Session with the Results of Faculty-Student Collaboration at St. Thomas.

Part of a 2002-2005 grant of $445,000 from the Bush Foundation, which is matched by St. Thomas, funds student research using inquiry-based teaching methods. Students work on real problems often taken from outside the university in the ways they will be called upon to employ their disciplines after they graduate. Students who work collaboratively on research projects during the academic year usually are paid $1,000 and supervising faculty $500. The Young Scholar Grants, which fund full-time summer research, pay $3,000 per student and $500 to faculty.

“I believe that one of the most effective ways for students to learn is through collaborative inquiry: students and faculty working together on research that can have real world consequences,” stated Father Dennis Dease, president of St. Thomas. “This is completely in keeping with our mission as a Catholic university grounded in the liberal arts tradition. We strive to provide a high degree of personal attention in a challenging campus environment that is engaged with the complexities of our urban community and the world beyond.”

Is it really true that more Baptists than Catholics in Indiana spend more money on charitable gambling? Well, yes. Does steganography work in hiding invisible messages inside computer documents? Yes, it can.

What about negative impacts of the commonly used herbicide atrazine on animal and human health? Senior biology major Sarah Larson found that atrazine, a herbicide whose negative affect on humans has been reported in many studies, is dangerous to fish and frogs’ reproductive systems even in very low levels in runoff water.

Is the Republican the authoritarian and the Democrat the nurturant or are they just being framed?  And what’s the difference between a “tax cut” (as Democrats say) and “tax relief” (as Republicans say, implying that tax is a burden)? “Ideology and the effectiveness of ‘the sell’ confound voters,” reported psychology senior Ingrid Johnsen, who interviewed 30 undergraduates and found that conservatives are more often influenced by the way a message is framed than liberals.

Senior Mary Dienhart, a journalism major, researched Sequoyah (1770?-1843), the Cherokee leader who worried that his culture was being destroyed by white domination. An ingenious silversmith who made metal type, he overcame years of criticism and constructed from an oral tradition a syllabary system of 86 symbols which “paved the way for a print culture for all American Indians.”

As for that remote-controlled paintball vehicle built by four senior computer science majors – Britt Hammerberg, Robert Kennedy, Cory Tranby and Ben Werner – it could not be demonstrated at the inquiry, despite frequent requests, because it fires 17 paintballs a second. The vehicle lost the friendly paintball war to St. Cloud but won first place for design in a project sponsored by General Dynamics Information Systems of Virginia, which works with colleges and universities to generate new product ideas.

“Basically, they gave me a starting point of what they wanted the project to do, but after that they gave me complete control over what exactly we were going to do.”

He estimated he devoted some 200 hours, June through August, to online research; in addition, the trio met weekly. They decided to look at the acceptable-use policies of various Internet service providers from the United Kingdom, Canada and the United States.

Stierman researched more than 100 Internet service providers (ISPs), a “long process.” He was interested in whether American ISPs are more tolerant because of the First Amendment.  He found that they were, with most of the providers banning only “threatening or intimidating material.”

American free-speech protections have prompted a migration of foreign sites to American ISPs. “People from Germany and France, for instance, and other countries have started moving their Web sites over here because the whole European system is starting to regulate more tightly as to what content is acceptable,” Heltne noted.

“Neo-Nazis cannot host sites in Germany or in France. Denial of the Holocaust is against the law there, so those groups are coming over here.”

Stierman’s research was translated to the classroom in discussions about hate speech and the First Amendment. Heltne said that, at first, students favored rules prohibiting hate speech on the Internet – that “free speech isn’t worth it.” But as they continued their readings and discussions, the question arose: Who decides what is and is not hate speech?

“They realized that maybe that wasn’t the answer,” Heltne said. “Maybe the answer is to expose it and to expose the problems in our society rather than to try to regulate them out of existence, because that isn’t going to happen. It’s really interesting to watch the thought process.”

The trio enjoyed the faculty-student research experience. Bunton says it was fun, rewarding and a “great joy to participate. You never fail to learn something because the student approaches the topic differently than you would have, and yet you get to understand why he thinks that this is the way to do it or why she thinks this is the way. It’s great.”

As a bonus, the research also had practical applications for Stierman. He now deals with both marketing and technological aspects of Internet technology for Vivid Image, a Web-development and marketing company in Hutchinson, Minn., which hired him even before he graduated.