Our institution will soon embark on a strategic planning initiative. What common mission binds us together as a faculty at UMW? I would say that our mission is to provide quality liberal and professional education at a public university price. Our current programs were developed out of our historic strength as a school of liberal arts and sciences, a school which has always emphasized teaching excellence at our core.
It is no surprise then that UMW is developing a new teaching center, as I have discussed before. The purpose of this post is to argue that the new teaching center is well situated to play a key role in re-visioning of UMW’s place in the world of higher education. But only if we think broadly about what a teaching center should be.
It would be easy to fall back and think mechanically of a teaching center as a set of programs to promote teaching and learning. Programs require budget, so the TC is about budget and a bigger budget creates a bigger TC. This may fit an administrative perspective of what a TC is, but I think we can do better than thinking this way.
An innovative Teaching Center should be conceived of as an entity, which does things, not an as entity that funds things. The TC staff and associates should have an active agenda. I’m not sure exactly what this looks like, but I think it involves efforts to think about and execute pedagogical innovations on a regular and continuing basis. Such a center should be a think tank, conversation hub, conversation catalyst, and in fact a leader in the institution’s inward-facing and outward-facing deep intellectual conversations about teaching and learning.
Think of the best professional conference you’ve ever attended, where you met and talked with people doing very interesting work, work with relevance to your professional life. There you learned important insights which you were anxious to take home. You also heard ideas to inspire you. That experience is what I think the teaching center should be: the conference, and the preparation, thought, experimentation, writing and reflection that led up to the conference.
A good example of this might be the working group that developed our summer 2008 First Year Seminar Workshop. The group consisted of a somewhat eclectic group of interested faculty: the Dean of Arts & Sciences, the Associate VP for Academic Affairs, the Directors of the Writing Intensive and Speaking Intensive Programs, the Director of the former Teaching Innovation Program, the Coach of the Debate Team, the Director of the Division of Teaching & Learning Technologies, the University Librarian & three reference librarians, and two faculty who co-chaired the FSEM Advisory Committee since the inception of the program three years ago.
The group worked intensively and effectively during the spring 2008 semester to develop a excellent faculty development workshop for FSEM instructors. (Contrast this with the all too accurate view of most faculty committee meetings.) This wasn’t just administrative exercise, but very much an academic one. We spent quite a bit of time brainstorming about how we envisioned the FSEM program and how we could best incorporate that vision into a two day workshop. We explicitly planned for the workshop to model the themes we agreed were the crux of the FSEM experience. Finally, we recruited expert faculty to prepare and present the individual workshop sessions.
The dynamics exhibited in the working group were particularly interesting. The participants were a group of individuals, each of whom brought a particular expertise to the table which was respected by the others in the group. The Dean seemed to take a backseat role, allowing the rest of us to step up and contribute in unique ways. The result was a workshop that, based on the evaluations turned in, the participants found more than worthwhile. (You can judge for yourself by looking at the videos of each session here.)
Another model for the Teaching Center might be the academic department. An academic department revolves around a faculty. The faculty teach, but they also do research in the field. The research and teaching are complementary, even symbiotic. Students come to the department to learn about the field. Some even desire to become specialists. An academic department has a budget but it’s not primarily about funding speakers or travel. Rather, a department’s activities revolve around the study of the field, by people with various levels of expertise: from novices to authorities. Its focus is both internal (teaching) and external (scholarship).
This raises an obvious question: Beyond the director (who we are currently searching for), who would serve as faculty of the Teaching Center? The Teaching Fellows program, which we are initiating this Spring provides a start:
More than a faculty development initiative, the program is designed to bridge teaching, scholarship and service. … Teaching Fellows will be given the opportunity to explore a specific question involving research and experimentation with new pedagogies, assessment of student learning, innovative course design or curriculum development, emerging academic technologies and tools of access to information, or other areas that may promote excellence in teaching. Fellows will use what they learn to develop a new course or to substantially revise an existing course which will then be taught in the academic year following the fellowship. … An important objective of the program is to develop expertise by participants that can be drawn on subsequently by faculty at large. Fellows will be expected to engage in regular conversations about their work with the Teaching Center Director and other participants in the program, as well as to reflect publicly using the Teaching Center web environment.
The Teaching Fellows program provides a core faculty for the TC, but at present we can only fund four fellows per year. I wonder if we could also create affiliation for other faculty with the TC? Could faculty solicit TC imprimatur for teaching innovations that have been done in the past or are being done currently? Could we develop a list of faculty experts in certain areas of pedagogy, faculty who are willing to consult with others who wish to learn more about their expertise?
A colleague who is generally supportive of the teaching center asked: Why would someone want to affiliate with the TC? What’s in it for them? This raises a more general question: How to make this kind of activity (as well as pedagogical research more generally, or creative scholarly digital activities) valued for promotion, tenure, and pay raises?
One possible idea is suggested by the online section of the Journal of Economic Education. In addition to traditional articles, the Journal solicits scholarly digital creations, which if accepted are allowed to post the Journal’s equivalent of a Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval: “JEE Selection”. You can see an example of this at a recently approved submission which identifies short clips from feature films with economics content. (For a complete listing of JEE Selections, see here.) This seal has gained acceptance in the economics education community. Perhaps we could create something similar for TC-affiliated faculty or creations.
The issue of giving faculty credit for pedagogical scholarship is a bigger problem than UMW can solve on its own, but progressive leadership could help. Note to those on the provost and dean search committees: keep this in mind!
The vision for the Teaching Center I am outlining here goes beyond the traditional model, which revolves around collecting resources on teaching & learning, funding workshops & faculty development opportunities, and nurturing a culture that respects pedagogy as a scholarly responsibility. These are necessary, but not sufficient for what I have in mind, a center which has the potential to energize what we do as an institution.
I think this idea could have legs. What do you think?
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