Without question, one of the hardest-working members of the UEA Executive Committee is Michael Mullins. When he is not teaching as an instructor in the Foreign Languages Department of UMD’s College of Liberal Arts, Mike is fulfilling his duties as UEA’s legislative liaison.
Mike has become quite familiar with the stretch of Interstate 35 between Duluth and St. Paul. More importantly, though, Mike himself has become familiar to our state legislators as he works tirelessly to remind them of the mission of the University of Minnesota and, specifically, of the value of his union brothers and sisters in Duluth and Crookston.
Recently, Mike gave the UEA-Duluth Executive Committee a homework assignment that we’d like to ask our members to help us with. He has been working to produce a package of promotional items to be distributed to state lawmakers that will give them a sense of the UM system’s unique mission that integrates scholarship, teaching and service.
To illustrate this to lawmakers, Mike has asked us to assemble a list of “talking points”: Examples of all of us in action.
Below you’ll find the list that has been assembled so far, but what we hope is that you’ll see this as just a starting point. We’d like to ask you to think of the different ways UEA members contribute to a style of education that is fueled by important research and inspired by bringing that research into the classroom and the community.
You can share your own ideas by emailing UEA-D information officer John Hatcher (jhatcher@d.umn.edu) or by going to our new, private Facebook page and joining the conversation.
- Undergraduate Research Opportunity Programs: The UROP program is an opportunity for UEA members to instill their passion for research and scholarship in undergraduates. This program provides grants to undergraduates who work with a faculty advisor on their own individual research projects. It's something that UEA members gladly do and, it should be noted, something they are not compensated for in any way.
- Community partnerships: The work of UEA members is not bound by the classroom; in fact, it’s not even limited to students. UEA faculty are continually looking for ways to share their expertise in myriad fields. An example of this is the Student to Business Initiative, in which faculty from the Labovitz School of Business and Economics guide student teams as they develop marketing plans for area businesses.
- A Nobel Prize? In October 2012, Brian Kobilka learned that he and colleague Robert Lefkowitz were recipients of the Nobel Prize for their work on G-protein-coupled receptors. Kobilka told Minnesota Public Radio that it was UMD and the faculty there that inspired his research: “It's in a relatively small campus and I was very comfortable there. I was able to start research fairly early on with professor Conrad Firling, and that, I think, really started my interest and passion in research."
- Nationally recognized performance artists: The UEA members who work in the performance arts in Duluth can take a bow, so to speak, for helping Duluth develop a strong reputation for the arts. Inspect the School of Fine Arts calendar on almost any night and Duluth residents will find some type of student or faculty recital, theatre performance or other event to attend.
- UEA-Duluth faculty have answered the challenge of redefining learning in a new era of online technologies. Each semester the list of online courses grows, offering students the chance to graduate in a more timely fashion.
- Post Secondary Enrollment Options and the College in the Schools Program allow eligible high school students to get a head start on their college careers in the classrooms of UEA members.
- Building community: UEA members work with the Office of Civic Engagement to help students get to know their community and see the impact of poverty and racism firsthand. The interns and volunteers in myriad programs across the university serve the community in after-school programs, group homes and elsewhere. This work of students is coupled with faculty who conduct research designed to help understand and solve community problems.
- Unique to UMD are the Center for Indigenous Knowledge and Language Revitalization and the Enweyang Ojibwe Language Nest, both projects designed to preserve Native languages that are currently on the verge of extinction.