Educational Administration and Supervision Commons^™

Romancing The Muse: Faculty Writing Institutes As Professional Development, Elizabeth Ambos, Mark Wiley, Terre H. Allen

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Conclusion
Given the tremendous success of the SWIs, we intend to continue to offer them for the foreseeable future, maintaining the features that faculty value most: space, sustenance, and editorial, statistical, and coaching assistance. But we will also make changes based on faculty feedback gathered during the final day’s luncheon debriefing and from the written evaluations. In addition, we intend to conduct formal research on the Institutes’ long-term effects on faculty productivity, satisfaction with scholarly work, and faculty retention. Important questions remain. For example, what is the return on investment in these Institutes, in terms of faculty productivity, career advancement, …

Leadership For Learning: A New Faculty Development Model, Jane V. Nelson, Audrey M. Kleinsasser

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The authors provide examples of a model that develops faculty leaders for learning in all institutions that prize research. The examples come from seven university-wide initiatives, which were sponsored by the institutions faculty development center. The initiatives spanned a nearly ten-year period. Based on four conceptual groundings—scholarship of teaching and learning principles, educational renewal, the production of social capital through soft projects, and horizontal structures—the model has the power to transform faculty into leaders. Elements of the model include a call to participate, a diverse cohort of participants, commitment to providing resources, conference center planners, and peer review and assessment. …

Searching For Meaning On College Campuses: Creating Programs To Nurture The Spirit, Donna M. Qualters, Beverly Dolinsky, Michael Woodnick

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Discussing spirituality on a secular college campus can be risky. Yet faculty and students have expressed a need to explore meaning in their lives and work. This chapter describes one university’s year-long efforts to develop a social web of activities around spirituality and meaning in community members’ lives. We describe the process of determining needs and the resulting programs. But more important, we share lessons learned, including advice on creating the climate for spiritually oriented programming to gain acceptance and be viewed as an enhancement to campus life.

Defeating The Developer's Dilemma: An Online Tool For Individual Consultations, Michele Dipietro, Susan A. Ambrose, Michael Bridges, Anne Fay, Marsha C. Lovett, Mari Kamala Norman

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter introduces an online consultation tool that helps resolve the tension that developers often experience in consultations between offering quick fixes and providing in-depth but time-consuming conceptual understanding. The tool that the Eberly Center for Teaching Excellence has developed provides instructors with concrete teaching strategies to address common teaching problems, while also educating them about the pedagogical principles informing those strategies. The tool can be used to enhance traditional face-to-face consultations or, by itself, to reach a wider faculty audience, including adjunct and off site faculty.

Lessons Learned From Developing A Learning–Focused Classroom Observation Form: Learning-Focused Observation Form, Steven K. Jones, Kenneth S. Sagendorf, D. Brent Morris, David Stockburger, Evelyn T. Patterson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

At the United States Air Force Academy, we are attempting to go through a cultural transformation, making an overt shift toward a more learning-focused paradigm. In this chapter, we describe the nature of this transformation, as well as why we have chosen to move in this direction. We also describe one specific initiative we have undertaken: the development of a new learning-focused classroom observation form. We conclude by sharing a baker’s dozen lessons we have learned about classroom observation, effective teaching, and faculty development in general as a result of having developed this form.

Reported Long–Term Value And Effects Of Teaching Center Consultations, Wayne Jacobson, Donald H. Wulff, Stacy Grooters, Phillip M. Edwards, Karen Freisem

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

We regularly ask clients for feedback on their recent consultations with Center for Instructional Development and Research (CIDR) staff, but in the past we have not systematically assessed our longer-term contributions to the teaching of our clients. We recently surveyed faculty and teaching assistants who consulted with CIDR one to five years ago and found that many former clients highly valued CIDR’s contribution to the development of their teaching. However, some of the most highly valued benefits they identified were not limited to what they did each day in class. This chapter identifies benefits of consulting with a teaching center …

Promoting The Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning At Community Colleges: Insights From Two Learning Communities, Stanford T. Goto, Andrei Cerqueira Davis

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) is a powerful vehicle for professional development. Faculty make their teaching public as they investigate phenomena in their classes. This process encourages sustained discussions of teaching. In conducting SoTL, community college faculty face substantial hurdles: heavy workloads, few institutional supports, no employment rewards, perceived irrelevance, and weak peer networks. Can these challenges be overcome within existing institutional structures? This chapter explores this question by examining how SoTL is pursued in two learning communities. Evidence from these institutional case studies suggests that SoTL programs are viable in community colleges, despite major challenges.

Starting And Sustaining Successful Faculty Development Programs At Small Colleges, Michael Reder, Kim M. Mooney, Richard A. Holgren, Paul J. Kuerbis

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

This chapter complements a recent chapter in To Improve the Academy by Mooney and Reder (2008) that discusses the distinctive features and challenges of faculty development at small and liberal arts colleges. As a continuation and expansion of that more conceptual discussion, we aim to convey practical strategies for relatively new faculty developers at small institutions with incipient programs. The suggestions offered in this chapter are grounded in our experiences as faculty developers at liberal arts colleges and developed through numerous national conference presentations and conversations with colleagues in the field over the past decade. Although our recommendations are particularly …

Establishing External, Blind Peer Review Of Scholarship Of Teaching And Learning Within The Disciplines, Cheryl A. Stevens, Erik Rosegard

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Colleges and universities face growing pressure to reward multiple forms of scholarship in order to align their missions with faculty roles and rewards. This chapter proposes that disciplinary societies develop templates, processes, and criteria for external, blind peer review of the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) in order to provide a reliable and valid way to judge the quality of faculty SoTL work. Although SoTL requires support from faculty development programs and other interdisciplinary SoTL forums, it will continue to be viewed as evidence of teaching excellence rather than scholarship until discipline-based external, blind peer-review processes are established.

Learning–Centered Evaluation Of Teaching, Trav D. Johnson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Over the past decade, institutions of higher education have placed increased emphasis on promoting student learning. This emphasis has influenced thinking about teaching, course design, and faculty development, but it has had little effect on the evaluation of teaching. In other words, the evaluation of teaching remains focused on instruction (that is, teacher performance and course characteristics) rather than on student learning. Learning-centered evaluation of teaching provides a viable way to emphasize student learning in the evaluation process. This approach uses principles of program evaluation and emphasizes learning goals, learning activities, learning assessments, and learning outcomes in the evaluation of …

Meeting New Faculty At The Intersection: Personal And Professional Support Points The Way, Ann Riley

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Faculty developers can play a significant role in increasing the retention of new faculty. This chapter presents a study conducted at a public research university that reveals that first-year faculty need personal, relational, and professional support. However, the importance of each type of support shifts during this first year, suggesting that faculty development efforts aimed toward new faculty should adjust accordingly. This study uses a sequential mixed-method design and is grounded in adult development theory, which views new faculty as adult learners in a career-life transition and faculty developers as adult educators.

When Mentoring Is The Medium: Lessons Learned From A Faculty Development Initiative, Jung H. Yun, Mary Deane Sorcinelli

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Campuses across the country are investing considerable time, effort, and expense to replenish their faculty ranks with a new generation of scholars. How can mentoring help these new faculty juggle the many demands of surviving and thriving in academia? And how can institutions frame mentoring as a broader faculty development initiative in which faculty at all stages of the academic career can teach and learn from each other? This chapter addresses these questions by sharing the goals, design, and lessons learned from the Mutual Mentoring Initiative at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Preparing Advocates For Faculty Development: Expanding The Meaning Of “Growing Our Own”, Deborah S. Meizlish, Mary C. Wright

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Discussions about preparing newcomers for faculty development focus almost exclusively on the staffing needs of teaching centers. Unfortunately, this emphasis significantly narrows what it means to prepare people for the field. Instead, we suggest that successful preparation has two elements: preparation of talented individuals for formal positions in the field and preparation of knowledgeable advocates or allies. As evidence, we present results from a survey of our center’s graduate teaching consultants, documenting how their work shaped their future connections to faculty development. Our results challenge centers to consider how their programming can “grow” both professionals in and advocates for faculty …

Teaching Learning Processes—To Students And Teachers, Pamela E. Barnett, Linda C. Hodges

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Our teaching and learning center serves faculty and graduate students as teachers and undergraduates as learners. Here we share the experiences of graduate student facilitators whom we trained to lead problem-solving skills workshops for undergraduates. Our aim was to help these graduate students see themselves as teachers of disciplinary thinking as much as of disciplinary content. However, they also began to reexamine their teaching beliefs and practices, recognize and respond to the needs of novice learners, and become more conscious of the demands of learning their disciplines. We offer this program as a model for developing future facuity.

Writing War: The Memorial Design Project, Janine Utell

Honors in Practice Online Archive

It seems a fortuitous—and frightening—time to be teaching a course on literature and art of war in the twentieth century. As an assistant professor in a small English department within Widener University’s humanities division, which serves a range of students through our general education program, I am constantly mindful of making the aesthetic socially and ethically relevant. Furthermore, as a sometime-teacher in the General Education Honors Program, I am conscious not only of making the arts and humanities relevant to a diverse body of students but of challenging some very driven and engaged thinkers and writers.

Ending In Honors, Samuel Schuman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What follows is a slightly revised version of a presentation given by Sam Schuman at the 2008 NCHC conference in San Antonio, Texas.

Implementing Honors Faculty Status: An Adventure In Academic Politics, Jesse Peters

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Ijoined the faculty at the University of North Carolina Pembroke in 1999. At that time there were about 3200 students, and we were mostly a commuter campus. Currently we have just over 6000 students, and the campus has shifted to a much more residential student body. The physical plant has expanded and improved, and the faculty has almost doubled. We have added several new degree programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. The focus of this essay is the expansion of the honors college, particularly the implementation of a system granting official honors faculty status. This system has helped …

Networking An Honors Community Out Of Fragmentation, Karlyn Koh, John Chaffee, Edward Goodman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

What makes an honors program a community? And how does one build a vibrant honors community at a commuter community college? In the City University of New York’s LaGuardia Community College Honors Program, we have been grappling with such questions especially because ours is an urban, non-residential campus that serves a diverse, non-traditional student population. Our student population is roughly 38% Hispanic, 21% Asian, and 20% Black; in 2007, 58% of our students were foreign born, 19% took evening classes, and 46% were part-time students. How can we provide the program with a sense of cohesion without the infrastructure of …

Separate But Equal: Will It Work For Professional Honors Programs?, Beata M. Jones, Peggy W. Watson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Developing honors opportunities for students in professional schools can be difficult, as noted by, for example, Giazzoni (2007), Bishop and Sittason (2007) and Noble and Dowling (2007) and also as demonstrated by honors program statistics at Texas Christian University (TCU). Despite the difficulty, high achieving students in professional schools should have the opportunity to benefit from an honors education. According to Bruce (2008), “honors education looks different from other types of education. . . . Honors pushes our comfort zones . . . [and] . . . challenges us to . . . be open to new ideas” (19–29). This …

The Role Of Peer Leaders In An Honors Freshman Experience Course, Melissa Johnson

Honors in Practice Online Archive

The purpose of this paper is to describe the role peer leaders play in Introduction to Honors Professional Development, a 1-credit, graded, honors course for first-year students at the University of Florida. Peer leaders are experienced undergraduate students who co-instruct the course along with an honors advisor. While the specific roles of peer leaders may vary from section to section, in general all peer leaders are expected to be advisors, resources, and role models to first-year students.

Building An Honors Development Board, Scott Carnicom, Philip Mathis

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Development has a long history in American higher education. The first institutions of higher education founded in the United States were private and relied heavily on donations of money or land (Brittingham & Pezzullo, 1990). Public schools, which once enjoyed a period of relatively generous government funding, must also now vie for development dollars in an increasingly competitive market. The organized development efforts of both private and public colleges and universities have evolved and expanded over the years, giving rise to centralized development offices and trained, professional development officers. However, many academic leaders outside the development office, including honors directors …

Women In History -- Madame C. J. Walker 1867-1919, Germaine W. Huber

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

Madame C.J. Walker's name has been synonymous with black hair and hair care products and until I began to research her life for this report, I believed that this was her major claim to fame. I found I greatly underestimated the contributions to African American and American history this extraordinary woman made. "I am a woman who came from the cotton fields of the South. From there I was promoted to the washtub. From there I was promoted to the cook kitchen. And from there I promoted myself into the business of manufacturing hair goods and preparations ... I have …

Voices Of Women In The Field- To Everything There Is A Season, Nancy G. Howell

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

My pathway to leadership has been long and winding and I have, at times, approached that path hesitantly and with trepidation. I, like many women of my generation, did not visualize myself as a leader in my younger years. I believed that because I was basically shy and introverted, I would never possess the qualities that I believed were necessary for leadership. In the 1950s of my childhood, leaders were men, with few exceptions. At least, those people officially designated as leaders in that society were men. It has only been through experience, maturity and education that I have recog- …

Women Of Color School Leaders: Leadership School Should Not Ignore, Jean Haar, Jerry Robicheau

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

School districts are faced with challenges resulting from the changing demo- graphics of the student population. Consequently, school districts are creat- ing positive, multicultural learning environments. School districts intent on establishing multicultural learning environments should consider the contri- butions people of color, specifically women of color can make in leading the endeavor. This study highlights the insights and experiences of three women of color school leaders. Their stories demonstrate how leadership from women of color contributes to the development of positive, multicultural learning environments. Their stories provide insight for school districts as they seek effective leadership for their schools and …

First Things First: Writing Strategies, Marilyn Grady

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931) is a fine example of the voice a writer has. Born in Holly Springs, Mississippi, she was born into slavery. Her par- ents died of yellow fever when she was young. As a result, she became the head of her family and took a teaching position near her home to support the family. She moved to Memphis in 1881 because there were more teaching jobs there (Myers, 2008).

Book Review Of Pearls, Politics, & Power: How Women Can Win And Leadcurley, Virginia Russell Curley

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

Pearls, Politics & Power: How Women Can Win and Lead is part memoir and part scholarly text. Written by the first female governor of Vermont, the text is based on interviews with women in politics with research to support the conclusions they draw. As a former Ambassador to her native Switzer- land and current faculty member, Madeleine Kunin writes a succinct, if not sometimes truncated, account of the status of women in American politics, touching on the primary barriers to women's ascent to elected office. Con- sistent with the complex weaving of psychological and sociological factors that affect access to …

Journal Of Women In Educational Leadership Vol.7 No. 1, Marilyn Grady, Sharon Hoffman, Joseph L. Eckenrode, Jean Haar

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

1 Those Who Point the Way- Marilyn L. Grady

3 Women in History- Madame C.J. Walker & Germaine W. Huber

7 Creative Maladjustment: Engaging Personal Narrative to Teach Diversity and Social Justice- Ilene L. Ingram

23 The European Perspective on Women's Leadership- Hildegard Macha & Quirin J. Bauer

The European Perspective On Women's Leadership, Hildegard Macha, Quirin J. Bauer

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

The perspective of women in leadership positions is of particular impor- tance in Europe. It is a main subject in the areas of research and science. For example: At the University of Augsburg we conducted several studies of women's leadership and the female academic career in view of gender is- sues such as gender within the family and in socialization. Furthermore we accomplished two gender mainstreaming studies with the focus on equity in several universities in Germany (Gender mainstreaming is a European law of 1997 and a political strategy of diversity management).

In this article we want to show the …

Women In History- Madame C.J. Walker 1867-1919, Germaine W. Huber

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

"I have to cancel my hair appointment!" This is a lament I've heard and voiced many times, and not one to be taken lightly. The relationship between women and their beauticians is as important as that of a marriage, especially for women of color. Madame C.J. Walker's name has been synonymous with black and hair care products and until I began to research her life for this report, I believed that this was her major claim to fame. I found I greatly underestimated the contributions to African American and American history the extraordinary women made.

Creative Maladjustment: Engaging Personal Narrative To Teach Diversity And Social Justice, Ilene L. Ingram

Journal of Women in Educational Leadership

We all have stories-beautiful and ugly stories-neat ending and never ending stories. When personal narratives, the stories that come closest to the human ex- perience, are used as pedagogy, they can be windows offering views of different worlds and people. In this way, personal narratives become lanterns that illumi- nate the real and imagined fences that divide us as human beings. The intention of this article is to give an account of both how and why I use personal narrative as a pedagogical method to teach diversity and social justice.