Author Archives: mdilwort

Author Archives: mdilwort

Starting to Research

Starting to Research

Whether you’ve been a student for a long time or are just getting started, knowing how to do good research can be a challenge.  You’re probably great at finding movie times with Google, browsing Wikipedia for quick information, and maybe you even do your shopping or banking online.  So you know that you’re good with a computer.  But what about the next step?  In your classes, you’re often told that you can only use ‘scholarly’ sources, and professors reject web pages.  How do you distinguish what the scholarly sources are, and where to find them?  And how do you use them? IU East subscribes to a lot of high quality sources that are ideal to use in your academic work.  … Continued
For the Love of Cities…and Service

For the Love of Cities…and Service

  The wait is over and the “One book” selection for Fall 2014 has been announced! It is For the Love of Cities: the love affair between people and their places by Peter Kageyama.  The book examines what makes cities lovable, and what motivates residents to take action to make their community a better place to live. He explains the “continuum of engagement” and how to move from “functional” to “meaningful.” In chapter seven, Kageyama writes “A recurring thread in this book is the notion that small things, seemingly insignificant, can have disproportionate impacts…In making lovable cities, just as in making loving human relationships, little things matter–a lot.”  He calls them “love notes.” Right here at IU East we have … Continued
Mental Health Awareness Month

Mental Health Awareness Month

  May is Mental Health Awareness Month and the theme this year is ‘Mind Your Health’, a look at how mental health works as a component of overall health.  The mind and the body influence each other, and caring for one benefits the other.  That’s a principle that education has long espoused – physical education classes and athletics programs work side-by-side with courses dedicated to science and math and literature and psychology and foreign language, because nurturing the mind benefits the body, and caring for the body helps cultivate an agile mind. Your IU East Campus Library has lots of resources to help you learn about these topics – from the new fifth edition of the American Psychological Association’s mental … Continued
World Book Night

World Book Night

The book I chose this year is Rebecca Lee’s Bobcat and Other Stories—I chose this collection of short stories because I believe that short stories are a wonderful genre to use to get new or not so avid readers interested in literature. Lee creates a variety of interesting characters in her work that present the reader with all kinds of questions on what it means to be human, and I think there is a story in her collection for every reader. I chose to be involved in World Book Night because I believe that a love of reading is crucial for success in almost every discipline. Reading is a fundamental part of our experience as humans, and an invaluable tool … Continued
Studying the Bard

Studying the Bard

And since you know you cannot see yourself, so well as by reflection, I, your glass, will modestly discover to yourself, that of yourself which you yet know not of. ~ William Shakespeare A bedrock foundation of any literature curriculum is William Shakespeare, who is still considered the greatest English-language author even over 400 years after his birth (the date of which is not known, but generally celebrated on April 23 – also the date of his death).  Shakespeare plays a huge role in the IU East curriculum – and not just in ENG-L 315, Major Plays of Shakespeare.  His work touches literature courses including ENG-L 297, English Literature to 1600, ENG-L 225, Introduction to World Masterpieces, ENG-L 308, Elizabethan … Continued