Digication ePortfolio :: Kendall McMillen

DRAFT: This module has unpublished changes.

My most influential classes so far:

Cook Honor's College CORE	At IUP, I was a part of the Cook Honor's College. To be a part of this program, we had to stay on the Dean's List our four years there, and take four semesters of a class called CORE. Each semester was broken up into two units, where each unit was focussed on a specific question, and we would approach each question and unit through a different discipline (fine arts, literature, history, etc.). The questions ranged from "What do we know, what do we believe, and is there a difference?" to "What is art?" and "What makes us human?" There were no tests in CORE, and instead was a discussion based class where we did a lot of reading, writing, and group discussion. Each class finished with a thesis paper where we answered the question, and then presented our findings to the other classes in different disciplines. This experience was really important in shaping my critical thinking skills, open-mindedness, and argument structure. It also gave me a new way of thinking about basic things and ways to apply knowledge.
CRIM 470: Comparative Study of Justice	This was the last criminology class that I took at IUP and was probably my favorite. My previous criminology classes were very important to build the basics, especially learning criminological theories, but this class looked at contemporary issues existing in our criminal justice system, as well as those in other countries. It was interesting to look at how different places and cultures view certain crime and handle their criminals and justice system and compare that with ours. We applied theory as well as philosophy to try and understand what other countries do, as well as how we could improve our own criminal justice system.
PSYC 322: Violence Across the Lifespan	This psychology class was very different from any others that I have taken, and gave m e a different view and experience in the world of clinical psychology. This class centered around childhood victimology and forensic investigation. We had lecture, and then also practiced giving actual forensic interviews to children and adults (actors) in situations spanning from domestic violence to child neglect. We also practiced conducting home assessments and had guest speakers present on their work as social workers or detectives.
PSYC 290 & 291: Research Design and Analysis	These two classes were pivotal in teaching me how to actually conduct and analyze research. In both of these classes, I learned the important statistics and research methods needed to conduct certain experiments as well as how to properly analyze and interpret the results. In each of these classes, we actually created and conducted experiments on levels of processing in memory (290) and compensatory control (291) with student participants from the university. It showed us how to properly design and execute a study, and then how to interpret and report what we found.

Academics