FHASS faculty awarded SRCA grants
FHASS is proud to announce that Profs. Michael McNamara, Patrice Esson, and Nathaniel Barr have been awarded one of Sheridan’s new SRCA (Scholarship, Research & Creative Activities) grant at the $10,000 level for their proposed project entitled “Does Creativity Training Make A Difference? An Analysis of Creative Thinking Scores amongst College Students taking part in a Creative Problem-Solving Course at Sheridan College.” In this project, the research team proposes to assess the impact of Sheridan’s Creative Problem-Solving training on students’ creative capacities. Findings from the research will provide an evidenced-based foundation from which we may validate, promote, and/or improve Sheridan’s high-profile Creative Problem-Solving training curriculum. Additionally, the research yields an important opportunity for the Sheridan team to make a meaningful contribution to the knowledge surrounding a contentious question in the field of creativity — namely, do creativity enhancement programs make a difference for one’s creativity?
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Don’t stop clapping yet: FHASS is proud to announce that Prof. Brandon McFarlane has also been awarded one of Sheridan’s new SRCA grants for a project entitled “Integrating Adult Colouring into Post-Secondary Curriculum to Enhance Mindfulness and Creativity” (though we at Alchemy prefer “The Creative Colouring Project”!). The project explores the pedagogic potential of adult colouring by assessing its impact on mindfulness and creativity. It involves two studies. The first uses standard divergent thinking tests to determine if colouring has any noticeable impact on creativity. The second uses a modified version of In-and-Out note taking that includes a colouring component; the pedagogic effectiveness of the teaching tool will be measured through a Likert-type scale. Beyond pondering how colouring exercises might be productively integrated into the classroom, the project seeks to provide a public good by establishing if adult colouring indeed provides the much-trumpeted benefits attributed to colouring by authors and publishers.
