URI_Research_Magazine_Momentum_Spring_2018_Melissa-McCarthy

Sari’s Sanctuary Outdoor River Classroom, Wakefield, RI.

teachers, Saugatucket River advocates, and community stakeholders. They had already raised some funds, but with Foster’s help, the coalition was able to secure funds from the Champlin Foundation, a local organization that funds nonprofit projects. The classroom is open to students and the public, and is maintained by the Town of South Kingstown. Arts for All Foster also lends her skills to advance local diversity- driven arts programs. She has spent several years working with Rhode Island-based GEAR (Give Everyone A Role) Productions, facilitating strategy meetings, securing funding, and supporting the artistic director as she trains other communities in the GEAR method. The nonprofit theatre company puts on large-scale, high quality school-based performances where students of all abilities cast themselves in roles, but also mounts yearly plays featuring actors of all abilities.

“I’m very inspired by that work because GEAR offers inclusive opportunities for aesthetic enrichment to individuals with cognitive and physical disabilities from all over the state, opportunities that they may not have otherwise,” she says. “Actors with disabilities perform alongside those with conventionally-abled backgrounds; the results are inspiring and of exceptional artistic quality.” Scholarship of Teaching Some faculty members find their way to teaching as a requirement alongside their research. But for others, like Foster, teaching becomes the research. “The teaching I do is an intentional form of applied scholarly practice,” she says. Foster has partnered with URI’s Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (ATL) to pursue a series of projects that examine how teaching affects student interaction and learning. This past fall, Foster

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