1/7/2016

Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs

Fellowships Office, Keck 576
500 Fifth Street, NW
Washington, DC 20001
Fellowship Committee:
It is my pleasure to write to you in recommendation of Christine Alexander-Greene. I have
known Christine since last January when she took my class EDUC 715, Statistical Principles in
Research Design in the College of Education at Towson University. The class was online and
synchronous and conducted via WebEx. She attended the class in Towson MD virtually from her
home in North Carolina. The class is a required one for doctoral students in Instructional
Technology, and she was one of several students in the Occupational Science doctoral program
who took the class as part of her course requirements in that program.
The class was challenging for a couple of reasons. First, it brought students from two different
backgrounds together (Instructional Technology and Occupational Science), who had different
kinds of prior experiences and dissertation research plans. Second, it was conducted online with
students from all over the country. With this background, I can say that Christines performance
was exemplary not only in terms of her course grades, but in demonstrating effective classroom
participation in a virtual setting. I noted in looking back on her grades she earned a 92% grade
for the course, including an outstanding midterm on which she earned 102% of possible points.
Her work was thoughtfully prepared, well-organized, and responsive to feedback.
It is worth emphasizing that taking courses online requires a special level of commitment to
learning by students. It is occasionally suggested that online courses make learning more flexible
and accessible, and while this may be true, it is also true that online courses require more selfdirection and persistence than face to face courses. There are inevitable technical issues that need
to be dealt with, but more important, seeking help requires a serious commitment to work with
colleagues, faculty, and utilize personal resources to learn on ones own. Considering that
Christine has taken both our research methods courses online, she demonstrates a strong level of
persistence and self-sufficiency.
In looking over her plans for research, and observing some of her work in the second course
shes taken (Qualitative Methods) in our program, I see that she intends to put to use her
qualitative methods training to help understand the effect of occupation among children who live
in poverty. She seems to have the passion and is securing the training to help her undertake a
research career that may fill an important void.
I recommend Christine highly for the pre-doctoral Fellowship. Please feel free to contact me if
you have any questions.

Sincerely,

Scot W. McNary Ph.D.

Associate Professor
EDTL/COE
Towson University
8000 York Rd.
Towson MD 21252
410 704 4835
smcnary@towson.edu