Faculty Development

Eight Ways to Support Faculty Needs with a Virtual Teaching & Learning Center

Teaching and learning support professionals, particularly those who must perform miracles as a “Department of One,” can have one of the most challenging jobs on campus. They not only support the course design, content delivery strategies, technology integration, and training/orientation for faculty and students in online learning programs (asynchronous and synchronous formats), but they also support all other teaching/learning needs for classroom, blended, and any other teaching environment. This professional may be an instructional designer, an educational technologist, or very often, a designated faculty member with some or all of these skills.

Kathleen MacDonald August 25, 2009

Tenure-track Positions Continue to Feel the Pinch

As college teachers, most of us know that the profession is changing, but we aren’t always as up on the details as we should be.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD August 20, 2009

Creating a Faculty Investment and Reward Model

What obligations do faculty members have to their institutions beyond their disciplines and departments? It’s a question that is sure to get a lot of play as higher education institutions deal with the pressures brought about by increased scrutiny from outside constituents and other factors such as changing student demographics and a shift from a faculty-focused to a learner-focused orientation.

Rob Kelly June 23, 2009

Faculty Evaluations: Those Hurtful Student Comments

At most places now, students are given the opportunity to evaluate instructors at the end of each class. Along with standardized items, students are invited to offer open-ended narrative comments on the course and instructor. Sometimes the comments are nice; sometimes negative but constructive; sometimes negative and destructive.

Glenn Hartz PhD June 10, 2009

Retaining Faculty of Color

Most higher education institutions include language in their mission statements about the importance of diversity, but they often fall short when it comes to retaining faculty of color, says Christine A. Stanley, executive associate dean of faculty affairs at Texas A&M University, and editor of Faculty of Color: Teaching in Predominantly White Colleges and Universities (Anker Publishing, April 2006).

Rob Kelly June 2, 2009

Retirement Reflections: Things I Will and Won’t Miss After 33 Years of Teaching

I am just about to retire from Penn State and leave my faculty position teaching undergraduates. I’ll still be working; there’s this newsletter to edit and a world of faculty who still need advice, ideas, and encouragement to do their very best in the classroom. But you don’t end 33 years of college teaching without thinking about those things that will and won’t be missed on campus.

Maryellen Weimer, PhD June 1, 2009

Non-Tenure-Track Faculty Contracts: One School’s Approach

In 2005, Appalachian State University established three-quarter- and full-time non-tenure-track contracts with benefits for non-tenure-track faculty members who had been teaching at least three-quarter time for three years. The move was intended to provide fair compensation and promote loyalty that might pay off in improved quality of instruction.

Rob Kelly May 22, 2009

Promoting Teaching Excellence: What Departments Can Do

On Tuesday’s post, we discussed an Oxford University study that looked at departments recognized for their excellence in teaching at 11 research-intensive universities. Based on what they learned, Christopher Knapper and Sergio Piccinin, two of the researchers who conducted this study, offer the following advice:

Rob Kelly May 14, 2009

Characteristics of Departments that Value Teaching Excellence

A study based at Oxford University looked at departments judged noteworthy for their teaching at 11 research-intensive universities in Europe, Australia, and North America to determine what these departments do to bring about and sustain teaching excellence.

Rob Kelly May 12, 2009

Faculty Collegiality: Six Tips for Getting Along with Disagreeable Colleagues

Have you ever left a meeting in which you were trying to work with some colleagues on aligning the curriculum for a course that several of you teach, and decided that the best (printable) word to describe a colleague was “difficult?”

Jacqueline Waggoner Ed.D. April 21, 2009

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