Higher Education Administration | Open Access Articles

About The Authors, Volume 27 (2009)

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

About the editors and authors of volume 27 (2009) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development.

Acknowledgments, Volume 27 (2009), Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Acknowledgments for volume 27 (2009) of To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development, by Linda B. Nilson of Clemson University.

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Editor's Introduction: The Educational Developer As Magician, Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

After so many changes in the academy, faculty and educational developers face challenges that require magic to meet. Faculty members are supposed to perform the magic, and we educational developers are expected to teach them how. The trick is to teach more in the same amount of time to disinterested and unprepared students, under the conditions of larger classes, less authority, and lower rewards. College and university faculty are under attack for failing short, and educational developers are next in line to feel the heat. Perhaps we should start defending our faculties, explaining our challenges, and publicizing our efforts and …

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Experiential Lessons In The Practice Of Faculty Development, Ed Neal, Iola Peed-Neal

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The practice of faculty development, as distinct from its theoretical and empirical principles, must largely be learned experientially, through an often painful process of trial and error. In this chapter, we offer some of the lessons we have learned in our combined total of sixty-four years as faculty developers, in hopes that others might benefit from our experience.

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Maturation Of Organizational Development In Higher Education, Gail F. Latta

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Organizational development (OD) is fundamentally about increasing institutional capacity for change. Organizational culture is a pivotal variable mediating the success of institutional change initiatives. Faculty and OD professionals are poised to address the need for increased understanding of organizational culture and change in higher education institutions. This chapter presents a conceptual guide to theories of change and cultural analysis that inform OD practice. Distinctions between content and process theories of change, as well as normative and idiomatic approaches to cultural analysis, are reviewed with respect to their utility for facilitating change in the academy. Implications for the maturation of OD …

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Ten Ways To Use A Relational Database At A Faculty Development Center, A. Jane Birch, Tara Gray

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Providing quality support to faculty requires attention to administrative details and event logistics. As professionals, we must also assess the impact of our work and be prepared to report to those who will judge its worth and allocate resources. To do this we need current, accurate data that are easy to access and easy to use. We also need a simple way to manage faculty development activities and evaluate the outcomes. The best technology for achieving these goals is a relational database. This chapter describes ten ways a relational database can be used to support faculty developers in their various …

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Magicians Of The Golden State: The Csu Center Director Disappearing Acts, Cynthia Desrochers

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

The California State University (CSU) Teaching and Learning Center directors perform daily feats of magic, often culminating in one particularly dramatic trick at the end of the academic year—their own disappearing acts. This chapter traces the history of the center director position in the CSU system, reports where directors go when they leave the position after only a few years, and proposes how frequent turnover might be reversed through organizational factors aimed at promoting retention of these Magicians of the Golden State.

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Practical Tools To Help Faculty Use Learner–Centered Approaches, Phyllis Blumberg

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Instructors often resist dramatic changes in their teaching, and learner-centered approaches are not intuitive for most instructors. They need tools to help them adopt these approaches. This chapter describes four tools—1) a list of components of Weimer’s five practices of learner-centered teaching, 2) reflection questions to prepare instructors to determine the learner-centered status of their courses, 3) self-assessment rubrics, and 4) a Planning for Transformation form—to help instructors change their teaching. Taken together, these tools form a comprehensive system with which to plan for change. This system encourages and assists instructors to make incremental changes toward using learner-centered approaches in …

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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, …

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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. …

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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 …

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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 …

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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 …

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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.

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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 …

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2009-10 Unopa General Meeting Minutes

UNOPA: Minutes

No abstract provided.

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Full-Text Articles in Higher Education Administration

About The Authors, Volume 27 (2009)

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Acknowledgments, Volume 27 (2009), Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Editor's Introduction: The Educational Developer As Magician, Linda B. Nilson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Experiential Lessons In The Practice Of Faculty Development, Ed Neal, Iola Peed-Neal

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Maturation Of Organizational Development In Higher Education, Gail F. Latta

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Ten Ways To Use A Relational Database At A Faculty Development Center, A. Jane Birch, Tara Gray

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Magicians Of The Golden State: The Csu Center Director Disappearing Acts, Cynthia Desrochers

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Practical Tools To Help Faculty Use Learner–Centered Approaches, Phyllis Blumberg

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

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

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

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Learning–Centered Evaluation Of Teaching, Trav D. Johnson

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

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

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

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

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

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

To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development

Writing War: The Memorial Design Project, Janine Utell

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Ending In Honors, Samuel Schuman

Honors in Practice Online Archive

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

Honors in Practice Online Archive

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

Honors in Practice Online Archive

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

Honors in Practice Online Archive

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

Honors in Practice Online Archive

Building An Honors Development Board, Scott Carnicom, Philip Mathis

Honors in Practice Online Archive

2009-10 Unopa General Meeting Minutes

UNOPA: Minutes