Reflective Practices at Smith College

Academic Presentations & Publications

[Forthcoming] Bacal, Ben-Ur, Hernandez, Holland. (2024). Own Your Narrative: Transformative Student-Designed Stories. SXSW EDU Austin, TX.

Bacal, Fisher, Rose, Cuzzolina, Esteves-Joyce, Hall & Tensuan. (2020). “We’re Building the Ship as We Sail It” - Transforming Our Institutions with and for Equity-Seeking Students. AAC&U Annual Meeting, Washington D.C.

Bacal, J., Keisch, D., & Litchford, M. (2018). “It made my story feel important" – Digital storytelling as a resilience-building intervention. Presented at the symposium on Academic Resilience in Higher Education (SARHE), University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA.

Bacal, J., Keisch, D., & Mendez, Y. (2018). “It made my story feel important” – Creating stories that are transformative for the teller and the listener with undergraduates who are the first in their families to attend college. Presented at the Current Trends in Digital Storytelling: Research & Practice, International Digital Storytelling Conference, Zykanthos, Greece.

Bacal, J., Steele, K., Farrel, K., & Sacco, M. (2016). Catalyzing a transformative college experience: How reflective programming inspires students to develop self-authorship and purpose. Presented at the Student Affairs Professionals in Higher Education Annual Conference, Indianapolis, IN.

Bacal, J., & Steele, K. (2016). How reflective programming catalyzes self-authorship and purpose. Presented at the American College Personnel Association Annual Conference, Montreal, CA.

Bacal, J., & Simmons, R. (2015). Teaching resilience: The role of uncertainty and failure in undergraduate learning. Presented at the Seven College Conference, Northampton, MA.

Bacal, J., & Walters, J. (2015). Excavating the experience to find the story. Presented at the Sixth International Digital Storytelling Conference, Northampton, MA.

Bacal, J., & Walters, J. (2014). What is the place of women’s own stories in the undergraduate experience? Presented at the National Women’s Studies Association Conference, San Juan, Puerto Rico.

Academic Courses

Designing Your Path

Taught within Integrative Learning at Smith College

“It takes a while for our experiences to sift through our consciousness,” writes Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones (p. 15). The goal of this class is to allow time for gaining some perspective through what Goldberg calls “composting,” turning over “the organic details of your life until some of them fall . . . to the solid ground of black soil” (p. 15). During this class, you will surface prior knowledge and link it to new knowledge, synthesize learning from different contexts, setting goals, developing theories and making use of mistakes and failures as opportunities for learning. Our work will engage you in testing out different integrative paths of your own design. In conversation with peers, you will design multiple possible paths that integrate your academic and co-curricular interests and experiences in a way that is personally meaningful and also consequential to the world beyond yourself. 

Developed with Borjana Mikic, Emily Norton, director of Design Thinking, Stacie Hagenbaugh, director of the Lazarus Center for Career Development, Sarah Moore, Danielle Ramdath 

Articulating Your Path (experimental course)

Taught within Integrative Learning at Smith College

The novelist Ali Smith wrote, "Language is like poppies. It just takes something to churn the earth round them up, and when it does, up come the sleeping words, bright red, fresh, blowing about. Then the seedheads rattle, the seeds fall out. Then there's even more language waiting to come up" (Autumn, p. 69). If the goal of Designing Your Path was what Natalie Goldberg calls “composting,” turning over “the organic details of your life until some of them fall . . . to the solid ground of black soil” (Writing Down the Bones, p. 15), then Articulating Your Path is about allowing your language to bloom. 

You will draw on work from DYP 132 or a comparable reflective experience, and begin to look outward. After reviewing and assessing your most important learning experiences, you will do qualitative interviews to gain a multidimensional understanding of your discipline in the world. At the same time, you will create a "personal syllabus," a reflection on maintaining and pursuing your own curiosity. Over our time together, you will develop a narrative digital portfolio; toward the end of the course, you will gain experience with public voice through an op-ed, TED talk or other piece of media.

Developed with Borjana Mikic, Emily Norton, director of Design Thinking, Stacie Hagenbaugh, director of the Lazarus Center for Career Development, Monica Dean