News and information about the Rhodes classroom experience.

Dr. Charles McKinney and Dr. Charles Hughes of Rhodes College are contributors to Understanding and Teaching the Civil Rights Movement published by University of Wisconsin Press. Chapters provide strategies for teaching famous and forgotten civil rights people and places.

Warming oceans. Wildfires. Shifting weather patterns. This semester, Rhodes College is offering a new course dedicated to one of the most challenging global issues—climate change. The liberal arts environment of Rhodes is uniquely suited for important conversations about this subject, since it cuts across many disciplines. The spring 2020 course is a collaboration between Dr. David Rupke and Dr. Sarah Boyle.

Rhodes sophomore Scott Wicker and chemistry professor Dr. William Eckenhoff have been investigating artificial photosynthesis in the production of hydrogen gas, which is a promising alternative fuel that could one day replace gasoline as a transportation fuel.

Rhodes College’s German Program is featured in an article about successful language programs actively building new communities and connections. It appears in the Fall 2019 issue of Profession, which is published by the Modern Language Association (MLA), one of the world’s largest scholarly associations.

Does cramming for a test have any benefits? What’s the best method for retaining information? How do memory skills change over a person’s life span? These are the types of questions Dr. Geoff Maddox, associate professor of psychology, explores with students in his Memory and Cognition Lab at Rhodes.

Prof. Victor Coonin’s students arrive at his courses with a certain amount of knowledge of Michelangelo’s marble sculpture of David, but they might not be as familiar with an earlier “David,” one wrought in bronze by the sculptor Donatello, who is credited with helping to usher in the Renaissance style. Prof. Coonin has published a book that is being described as the first thorough biography of the Florentine sculptor in 25 years.

Her new novel, The Gone Dead, has been featured by The New York Times as one of the “12 New Books to Watch For in June.”

This year’s issue was produced by students in Prof. Amy Benson’s literature course English 265, which focuses on literary magazines and the role they play in shaping literature. Students gained hands-on publishing experience, including editing, design, and promotion.

Rhodes College is being awarded nearly $1.2 million for a project to support undergraduates interested in becoming K-12 mathematics and science teachers in high-needs school districts and to participate in research opportunities throughout their degree program to expand their skill set as educators.

The grant comes from the Robert Noyce Teacher Scholarship Program of the National Science Foundation. The Urban Teacher Partnership for Culturally Relevant STEM Education is the name of the five-year project at Rhodes.

With this fall’s midterm elections quickly approaching, some Rhodes students are following day-to-day news coverage, particularly of Tennessee’s Senate and Governor’s races, in their political science courses. One of those courses is Campaigns and Elections, taught by Prof. Amy Jasperson. 

“We are focusing on the fundamentals of campaigns, the ‘rules and reality’ that shape them, and the factors that influence the choices of voters,” says Jasperson.