The department is home to seven disciplines—three career program and four general disciplines—which has been a challenge in terms of creating a sense of community. Before Gardetto became chair, there had not been any professional development for those part-time instructors, and community-building efforts were ineffective.

The need to improve professional development came from the college’s relatively low scores on academic rigor as measured by the Community College Survey of Student Engagement (CCSSE). There was much debate as to why the college had low academic rigor scores and whether they accurately reflected reality. Nevertheless, Gardetto decided to seek ways to intellectually engage the faculty on issues related to it.

Because of the department’s reliance on adjunct instructors, Gardetto made it a point to invite them to teaching seminars held over the lunch hour, but they didn’t attend. So she and several colleagues decided to start offering weekend workshops for adjuncts, which drew about half of them. And it blossomed, to the point where the department now holds three or four sessions per year.

These workshops typically run approximately four hours and focus on Bloom’s Taxonomy, including the following topics:

• Moving multiple-choice exams beyond memorization, using Bloom’s Taxonomy
• Creating a philosophy of teaching statement
• Teaching Generation WTF

These workshops are popular with the adjuncts because many are used to teaching at surrounding universities as well and have struggled to maintain academic rigor at the community college level without losing students or taking a hit on their students’ evaluations of their teaching.

“Teaching at the community college is somewhat different than teaching at our local private universities. They would try to use the same syllabus that they were using at the university and it wouldn’t work. Their initial thought was that the students weren’t up to doing the job and would end up watering down the curriculum so they wouldn’t have students fail. They were interested in discussing the ways they could integrate Bloom’s Taxonomy into their teaching to ramp up their rigor but at the same time not lose their students,” Gardetto says.

Gardetto and the other workshop coordinators come up with topics and provide short readings to generate interest and to prepare instructors to participate.

In each workshop, part of the time faculty meet as a department and part of the time they work in groups according to discipline, an approach used both for full- and part-time faculty development. “When I became chair, my experience with this department had been that our disciplinary boundaries were not recognized, and that was not a good thing for us. The idea had been that we’d see ourselves as more of a community if we were part of a big department. But I think, in fact, what happened was that we didn’t feel as connected because college professors are connected through their disciplines … I think they really are hungry for intellectual community and for recognition of themselves as professors within a discipline,” Gardetto says.

This sense of community is evident in the instructors’ investment in the workshops. In addition to taking time on Saturdays to participate, many instructors want to have more control over what happens in the workshops. For example, at a recent workshop, the facilitators gave a presentation and then the instructors wanted to have a discussion about the assignments in their courses. A next step will be a symposium where part-time instructors will do presentations for each other. To that end, the department has set up a Blackboard site to enable instructors to maintain the dialogue beyond the workshops.

The challenge now is to figure out how to direct the enthusiasm these part-time instructors are putting into their professional development. “They want more control over the content of those Saturday workshops, which is very interesting. That’s a sign that the community is working and that they’re coming together and want to empower their lives,” Gardetto says.

The key to the success of this adjunct development is the participation of the full-time faculty. “It really has to be faculty driven. Faculty need to step up to the plate to do this. And it’s such satisfying work. I can’t think of anything that’s more interesting, other than teaching, than interacting with colleagues and helping with their professional development. So much of the professional development—at least on our campus—is run by people who are in staff and administrative positions. Faculty need to be doing this, because they’re the ones who are trained in the disciplines,” Gardetto says.

Reprinted from Adjunct Professional Development Improves Teaching, Builds Community Academic Leader, 28.4 (2012): 8.

I had known it all along at some level, but now it suddenly became glaringly obvious to me. Deep down, sometimes out of conscious reach, students want to be transformed and their lives made more useful, productive, and powerful. I added the following new goal to my personal mission statement:

“My goal is to be a wonderfully inspirational teacher, always available to my students, and constantly encouraging, supporting, and challenging them. I intend to provide my students with a life-changing experience. I want to be renowned for my exceptional teaching skills and for getting my students actively engaged in their own learning.”

Now with this goal in mind, I now strive to follow three main principles of teaching.

My first principle of teaching is that the professor must care deeply about the class and be fully invested in the students’ learning. To show my investment, I show up early for class, respond quickly to emails and phone calls, and try to give substantive feedback on students’ work. I learn my students’ names early on. I intentionally convey my passion and enthusiasm through my words and my body language. I work hard to avoid being that clichéd professor who drones on and on, as bored by the material as the class is. I tell my students that I expect to learn as much from them as they from me, and I ask for their input on how to improve the class. In everything, I try to remind them that we are there to make massive progress on their intellectual and professional development.

That leads me to my second principle: the importance of encouraging complete student engagement and empowering students to take ownership of the class. At the beginning of the semester I lay out the purpose of the class, what the expected outcomes are, and how grades will be calculated. As the semester goes along, I ask for feedback every month via anonymous questionnaires and adjust the class according to the needs of the students. I have learned that even when students are doing fine with the material, they appreciate the opportunity to weigh in and have their opinion heard on how the class is going.

I have found that some seemingly pedantic aspects of teaching make a significant difference in the quality of student involvement. Many professors believe it is the students’ responsibility and choice, as adults, to attend class or do the homework. However, we have to remember that students have many valid obligations fighting for their time. If attendance is not mandatory, sometimes students will make the choice to skip. If reading is never referred to, sometimes students will not get around to opening the book. If I want my class to be truly rewarding, I need to set high standards for attendance and study habits.

My third principle is the importance of encouraging students to work together and learn from each other. I met so many of my lifelong friends and developed numerous relationships important to my career in school that I wanted to give my students every opportunity to do the same. Ice breaker exercises, encouraging students to learn each other’s name, and having frequent class discussions create an environment in which students feel comfortable working with each other. They learn the essential skills of networking and collaboration while also engaging with the material of the class.

Of course, even with these three principles, challenges always remain. But keeping these in mind helps me strive toward the goal in my personal mission statement. I am now much more comfortable running a class and encouraging student involvement. It is a pleasure to teach when the students are engaged and interested and when they speak up, ask questions, and even make arguments.

Here are my favorite specific tips from peers, students, and pedagogical experts for creating a positive learning experience for your students:

1. Syllabus. Make the learning outcomes as specific and clear as possible, and relate these to the assignment and to your grading metrics. Spell out expected student behavior, including professionalism (meet deadlines, show up on time, participate in class, etc.)
2. First Classes. Make a serious and obvious effort to learn your students’ names. Ask your students to address each other by name, rather than “he” or “she.” After you introduce yourself, ask your students to introduce themselves. Have the students fill out a questionnaire about themselves, including goals, interests, passions, and expectations for the course. Meet one-on-one with all students within the first two weeks of the semester and discuss their responses to the questionnaire. Some of the best teaching is done outside the classroom.
3. Classroom Atmosphere. Convey your passion and enthusiasm for the subject and your willingness to provide individual help. Foster a sense of belonging and respect. Encourage high performance and promote active engagement. For a small class, give the students a sense of community by sitting in a circle. Create a safe, nurturing environment in which students feel free to experiment and fail.
4. Classroom Specifics. Show up early for class, take attendance, and end class on time. Start class by asking a student to summarize the main points from the last class, and end by summarizing what was accomplished. Write the plan for the class on the board. Have students stand up and stretch, occasionally play brief games, and, when possible, take field trips as a class.
5. Classroom Interactions. Make the class as interactive as possible to transform the students from passive observers to active players. Constantly call on individual students by name to answer questions without first asking for volunteers. This keeps the whole class alert. Encourage the shy students to speak; don’t allow long-winded or loud students to dominate the conversation. Listen to students actively during discussion.
6. Beyond the Classroom. Manage your office hours: encourage students to drop by even if they don’t have specific questions; have a sign-up sheet on your door so students don’t have to wait. Reach out to students who miss a class. Be responsive to emails and calls from students and give students meaningful and meaty comments on homework assignments.

If you would like to receive a more detailed list of ideas for inspiring students to be enthusiastic and motivated in the classroom, please e-mail me at palmer@american.edu with “Handout” in the subject line.

Professor Chris Palmer is on the full-time faculty at the School of Communication at American University.

First, I asked my three daughters, who at the time were either in college or recent college graduates. They gave me sound advice from the students’ perspective. Once I arrived at AU, I asked my new faculty colleagues for their best ideas. Again, the answers and guidance I received began to shape the kind of teacher I aspired to be.

Although all this advice helped me to survive the classroom, I still made many rookie mistakes. I was repetitive, talked too much, and gave grades that were too high. I embarrassed students by brazenly pointing out their mistakes in front of the rest of the class, sometimes failed to allow a class discussion to blossom while at other times lost control of the class during discussions.

I allowed verbose students to talk too much and did not properly listen to what students were saying. I was boring, ran out of material to teach, and was scared of being challenged by a student and not knowing the answer.

I also made the mistake of rushing through material. I thought it was important to cover everything, not realizing that “getting through” all my notes had little to do with whether my students were learning.

Occasionally my students described the homework I gave them as “busy work” and criticized me for wasting their time.

I would sometimes say “Any questions?” to a roomful of silent, nonresponsive students. Usually, they were not asking questions because I hadn’t explained the issue well and they were afraid to look dumb. I mistakenly took their silence for understanding. I would get on such a roll with my ideas that I would forget I was talking to students, many of whom were being exposed to the information for the first time and would benefit from a little context.

On some weeks, I was slow to return student papers, and when I eventually did return them, my comments on the papers were glib and superficial because I had 30 papers to grade and was sick and tired of doing it.

I hated it when students obsessed over grades. “Professor, why did I only get a B on this paper?” Incessant questioning along these lines verged on harassment. I was sorely tempted to rid myself of the problem by agreeing to raise the grade, which would have been yet another egregious error on my part.

Over time, I learned from these mistakes. I continued asking my colleagues for advice, pursued professional development opportunities, and studied some excellent books on teaching, such as McKeachie’s Teaching Tips.

I also learned from my students. Every four weeks, I asked them for feedback. I gave out a blank sheet of paper and said to them, “On one side tell me what you like about the class and what you want me to continue doing, and on the other side write what you don’t like about the class and find unhelpful or missing. Make your comments anonymous so please be as brutal and candid as possible.”

One day a student wrote, “You are not pushing us hard enough. I want to get as much out of this class as possible. Please teach us everything you can. I want to learn more.”

This feedback hit me hard.

Editor’s Note:In part two of this article the author shares how he’s transformed his teaching. Continue reading »

Professor Chris Palmer is on the full-time faculty at the School of Communication at American University.

When the workshop was finished, I turned to a fellow English professor and said, “So that’s how it’s supposed to be done!”

Here’s what I learned:

Attitude matters. At the beginning of the workshop, the facilitator took the time to remind us that writing critique demands a safe environment: no one can be fearful that his ideas or her manner of expression will be put down or devalued. “Our job is to help one another say what we have to say as effectively as possible,” said our leader, looking us all in the eyes. Implicit was the message that everyone was already a writer, and a good one. The purpose of the workshop was to help everyone become the best writer possible. Despite all this, and despite my professional credentials as a writer, I still was nervous. Imagine how students in my classes must feel!

The setup is crucial. “In this workshop,” our facilitator said, “we will make ‘I’ statements only, no judgmental pronouncements. Say, ‘I was confused by the wording in paragraph two,’ not ‘paragraph two is confusing.’” The difference is one of tone: the first statement places the fault with the reader, not the writer. Further, before we writers read our pieces aloud, we were asked to describe the audience for whom we were writing, and to state any particular concerns we had about our essays. Then, the listeners were to try to be that audience, as well as to be themselves. When the reading was finished, the listeners were to converse about the paper while the writer, silent, took copious notes on everything that was said. No rebuttals, clarifications, explanations, or apologies on the part of the writer were allowed. She could, at the very end, ask the reviewers to clarify any comment that had confused or puzzled her. Most important, at the end of the workshop, when all papers had been discussed, we were to thank one another “for the incredibly hard work” we had done for each other. The facilitator’s careful directions articulated her expectations, and that shaped our behavior.

Acting is important. I knew the woman who facilitated this workshop. And I knew that for her, like for me, the process was old hat. Nonetheless, I watched her perform the setup and debriefing of this activity as though she had never done anything like it ever before in her professional career. She had us convinced that the work we were about to do was fresh, new, absolutely cutting-edge. She was so completely in the moment and so committed to this work herself that the rest of us could not help but be so as well.

Finally, I learned this: placing myself (and my little essay) in the hands of a master teacher reminded me that one of the difference between a ho-hum classroom performance and a really effective one is the degree to which we throw ourselves into the role.

Excerpted from Role Reversal: Learning from a Master Teacher, The Teaching Professor, 25.4 (2011): 3.

Contrary to what some in higher education believe, attending to students’ needs does not erode the process of higher learning; it enhances it. The collaboration of educator and student, who each bring varied insights and experience to the educational process, is unique to the learning environment. But within the student/teacher dynamic is the opportunity for faculty to wield significant influence in students’ perception that they are cared for by an institution that is responsive to their needs. Consider the customer service objectives outlined by the University of Texas at El Paso, which state:

In the classroom, on campus, and in the community, as UTEP representatives, we will:

• Interact with others respectfully and courteously.
• Listen carefully in an effort to understand others’ points of view.
• Be knowledgeable problem solvers.
• Take responsibility for UTEP’s continuous improvement.

These objectives do not suggest that students are “always right,” that their education is a commodity, or that faculty members are dedicated to pleasing them (and their parents). Instead, all members of the community are committed to ensuring that higher learning is a collaborative endeavor built on a foundation of respect, trust, and shared commitment to the values of education. Profound learning outcomes can emerge from such a framework.

While much of students’ “customer service” experience takes place in areas outside of the classroom, faculty can provide good academic service through a variety of mechanisms, most of which are simple and fairly intuitive. First, it’s important to clearly outline the objectives of the course in a manner that students understand. Spending time at the beginning of the course explaining and outlining the context of the objectives provides a framework for the semester’s activities, contributes to students’ understanding of how the course material supports the learning objectives, and reinforces how the course itself relates to their field of study. Further, a clear explanation helps students understand what they need to do in order to have a successful academic experience.

Throughout the semester, providing timely answers to students’ questions is an act of customer service. It’s certainly a challenge in a 24/7 digital environment to keep up with the demands for communication. However, little makes a student feel less valued than a significant delay in a response to questions. One way to manage the communication demands is to post clear policies on the syllabus, including a stand-alone FAQ page (I teach an online class with enrollment of up to 125, and without the FAQs, I’d be answering email all day, every day). Helping students find the information they need on their own is important, but if students have questions about the course material, it should be a priority to answer it as quickly as we can, even if we’re directing the student back to a course resource.

Regular feedback is another important academic customer service point. I am always surprised to hear from faculty who state that they can’t submit midterm grades because none of their assignments is due yet. For a variety of reasons, six weeks of instruction without the benefit of feedback is problematic. Even if course content and structure do not lend themselves to regularly graded assignments, it’s important for students to know whether or not they are successfully meeting course objectives. Regular feedback not only contributes to improved learning, it also mitigates any potential misunderstandings regarding student performance that could emerge later in the semester.

A commitment to good customer service is not antithetical to the values of higher education. We can provide good customer service without relegating ourselves to the ranks of knowledge brokers. Employing simple, intuitive support strategies in the classroom will enhance students’ learning and overall college experience.

Christine M. Nowik is the Assistant Dean of Student Success and Retention at Cedar Crest College.

Scholarly work on authenticity is being done in the field of adult education. Highlighted here are two articles, both featuring the work of Carolin Kreber, a professor at the University of Edinburgh. When Kreber and colleagues looked for a common conceptual understanding of authenticity, they found none. In their attempt at advanced understanding of the concept, they did an extensive review of the literature, starting with its philosophical origins. They make the point that “as long as authenticity remains only vaguely understood and ill defined…it is…not feasible to articulate a persuasive rationale for why we should be concerned with the phenomenon in the first place.” (p. 25)

Based on their review of the literature and a subsequent analysis by Kreber, which involved interviews with faculty and other empirical explorations, the following six dimensions of authenticity were identified.

1. Being sincere, candid, or honest — When students look at the teacher, they see a genuine reflection of that teacher’s personal identity. They also hear from someone who speaks with candor and integrity.

2. Being true to oneself — The teacher is a self-aware person who has made a commitment to teaching. This teacher has reflected on the purposes of education and has chosen to teach because educational goals matter. Authenticity here finds expression in consistency between values and actions.

3. Being true to oneself — Being true in this sense means not being defined by others but using self-knowledge to establish one’s own identity, regardless of how well or poorly it fits with the expectations of others.

4. Acting in the interests of learners — Authenticity extends beyond the individual. It is other-directed as well. In the case of teachers, it is caring about students and wanting them to flourish. One interviewee described it as the difference between teaching what we are interested in versus teaching what interests us plus what students really need to know.

5. Care for the subject — Authenticity also involves beliefs about the value of the subject matter and being committed to engaging students with the subject in important and meaningful ways. The ultimate goal is using connections between students and the subject matter to grow the authenticity of students. It might be something as concrete as genuine interest in the questions students ask and something as abstract as being fully invested in the course.

6. A process of becoming — Authenticity comes via a process that involves ongoing critical reflection. Teaching that is authentic continually revisits the purposes of education, and regularly inquires as to the origins behind and rationales that justify how certain norms and practices have come to be accepted.

At the conclusion of their literature review, Kreber and colleagues write: “The literature reviewed here revealed authenticity in teaching as an intriguing but also complex and multidimensional phenomenon. Authenticity in teaching involves features such as being genuine; becoming more self-aware; being defined by one’s self rather than by others’ expectations; bringing parts of oneself into interactions with students; and critically reflecting on self, others, relationships and context, and so forth. … Authenticity is not just something that exclusively rests within myself … for authenticity to be meaningful it needs to be sought in relation to issues that matter crucially.” (pp. 40-41).

The problem with the glib advice to “be real” and “do what comes naturally” is that it assumes teachers know their real selves and know how to act in ways that are consistent with those selves. That kind of knowledge does not come easily—it must be discovered and learned, and for many teachers that takes sustained effort. The effort to achieve authenticity in teaching is worth making, because teaching that shares what is genuine and real about the person is teaching that challenges students to pursue their own authenticity. It is teaching that goes beyond changing what students know—it can change who they are.

References: Kreber, C., Klampfleitner, M., McCune, V., Bayne, S., and Knottenble, M. (2007). What do you mean by ‘authentic’? A comparative review of the literature on conceptions of authenticity in teaching. Adult Education Quarterly, 58 (1), 22-44.

Kreber, C. (2010). Academics’ teacher identities, authenticity, and pedagogy. Studies in Higher Education, 35 (2), 171-194.

Reprinted from Authenticity in Teaching The Teaching Professor, 25.8 (2011): 6.

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A 2011 national study published in Professional Psychology: Research and Practice explored the psychological symptoms, symptom severity, and suicide risk of 628 student veterans. The study found that 24 percent of the sample experienced severe depression, 35 percent had severe anxiety, and 36 percent experienced significant symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). In addition, 7.7 percent have made an attempt to take their own life and 46 percent said they’ve thought about suicide.

The recent online video seminar From Rucksack to Backpack: Ensuring Student Veteran Success, featured three presenters; all with deep experience working with student veterans and students with disabilities. During the seminar Bruce Kelley, director of the Center for Teaching & Learning at the University of South Dakota, Justin M. Smith, the Fides Program coordinator at the University of South Dakota’s Center for Teaching & Learning, and Ernetta Fox, the director of Disability Services at the University of South Dakota, shared some proven ways you can better serve the veterans in your classroom and at your institution as a whole.

Fox explained how faculty needs to be aware that student veterans who have served in Iraq and Afghanistan often have “signature disabilities” that affect their cognitive abilities. Traumatic brain injury, concussive brain disorder, depression, and pain are common and may manifest as a variety of acquired learning disabilities, including dyslexia, dysnomia, audio or visual processing disorders, reading comprehension difficulties, and short- and long-term memory issues. It’s important to work with the institution’s disability services office to provide the appropriate accommodations that allow students with disabilities an equal opportunity to learn and show what they learned, Fox said.

When designing your courses, Kelley said there are a number of significant factors to consider related to student veterans. In many cases, these things you do to support student veterans will benefit all your students. For example, chain of command is very important in the military. If you teach large classes with TAs, then it’s helpful to explain in the syllabus who students should see if they have a question about a specific assignment, an exam grade, an excused absence, and so on.

In terms of learning activities, Kelley encourages faculty to precisely define criterion by which assignments will be evaluated and to assess frequently—formatively and directly.

“It’s very interesting that best practices in higher education coincide to a very close extent with best practices in the military when it comes to assessment,” said Kelley. “The military puts a lot of thought and a lot of value in assessment. It’s a part of every type of training exercise; and the goal of training and the goal of assessment in the military is to help units and personnel improve. They provide clear goals in terms of what the purpose of the mission or activity is, and we in higher education should do the same. Assessment is frequent and it’s immediate, and that should also happen in higher education.”

Reference:
Rudd, D., Goulding, J., & Bryan, C. (2011). Student Veterans: A National Survey Exploring Psychological Symptoms and Suicide Risk. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, 42(5), 354–360.

It’s 9 a.m. on a Wednesday morning around mid-term. “Carrie James” (a fictional name) grabs her textbook and class roster and heads upstairs to her first class of the day. It starts at 9 o’clock. She makes a pit stop before arriving at the classroom. When Carrie enters the room, most students immediately stop talking. She quickly calls roll and says, “Let’s get started. We have a lot to cover today.” Carrie begins the lecture by displaying a list of key terms on the document camera. She lectures for most of the period, closely following the text outline and then announces a test to the moans and groans of students. As soon as class ends, Carrie returns to her office, shuts the door, and turns her attention to the manuscript that she was editing for publication. She has an hour before her next class which she puts completely out of her mind.

All who work in higher education know someone like Carrie. We may even be like her ourselves. What has diminished her apparent joy in teaching? While the pressure to publish is quite real and has become even greater in recent years, faculty like Carrie miss the joy of teaching by focusing too much of their immediate attention on other work responsibilities thereby missing opportunities to find greater satisfaction in teaching.

Finding joy in teaching involves incorporating aspects of pleasure from other aspects of our lives into our teaching lives. As an example, I love to read. However, participating in a book club for pleasure (as opposed to professional reading) is not for me. It’s too restrictive. The freedom to choose to read any book that I want is a large part of the pleasure I derive from reading. Knowing this about myself, I can also look for ways to preserve autonomy in my teaching. Selecting and creating my own materials, designing meaningful learning activities, and developing my own assessment measures are some possible ways to exercise choice as a teacher.

Another source of joy in teaching comes from connecting with students and colleagues. By closing herself off from others, Carrie is decreasing her chance of finding much joy in teaching. Assuming this scenario is her daily routine, she seems to be isolating herself from the intellectual stimulation that others can provide.

One of the best lines in the popular PBS series “Downton Abbey” is spoken by Lady Violet Grantham. When her cousin Matthew, a lawyer, explains that he can do some extra work on the weekend, she replies, “What’s a weekend?” Every day was the weekend for folks like Violet. We all know the meaning of “weekend” even if we don’t change much the pace of our work. If only the weekend could be daily. Perhaps it can.

A recent study of working adults in various occupations conducted by Ryan, Bernstein, and Brown (2010) and published in the Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, confirms two factors that create what is known as the “weekend effect.” These factors, which yield a greater sense of happiness, are autonomy and relatedness. The reason we experience more satisfaction on the weekend has to do with our getting to choose how to spend our time and being able to connect with family and friends. Looking for ways to incorporate these factors into our daily work lives will lead to having a daily weekend. For instance, seize and celebrate the choice you have in conducting your teaching life. Exercise autonomy in curricular design activities. And, purposefully interact with people who can enrich your view of teaching and learning, i.e., primarily students and positive colleagues.

Excerpted from Journey of Joy: Teaching Tips for Reflection, Rejuvenation and Renewal. Download the complete ebook »

One of my goals for the summer was to think about the changes and additions I could make to my upcoming classes. I heard some great ideas, read some exceptional reports, and pondered which approaches and techniques would be of most value to my students. Some of the best ideas were not in my content area, but served as a great refresher to how I think about myself as an instructor, and how I perceive my students.

I reviewed a great text for a new class and found inspiration and ideas for dealing with adult learners. The text, Adult Learning Methods: A Guide for Effective Instruction, provided some valuable insight to me concerning my adult population. Some of the ideas deal with strategies for instruction and others on recognizing the differences in my own and my students learning styles. The ones that particularly stick in my mind have to do with the reasons adults come to class – whether they are 18 or 60, they come for a very diverse set of reasons.

Whether you teach a general education requirement or in a specific professional program, it is important to recognize the reasons these students are in your class. Are they wanting a better life, are they there for the love of learning, or are they in your class because it is required for them to get where they perceive they want to go? Motives may differ between age groups, between genders, and between you and your students. All of your students have their own valid reasons for being there, and it is important to recognize that the reasons don’t change the value of your instruction or their learning.

All of this reflects back on your philosophy of teaching, an important component as to why you are a teacher of adults. Does your philosophy help you reflect on what is important to you and help you articulate that to your students? It is important to reflect on your philosophy each and every year. Has it changed? Does the philosophy that you wrote for that tenure notebook still reflect how you feel about teaching and learning? The more time I spend with adult learners, the more I recognize that I learn in different ways than my students, and that the things I value in a course or program may be very different from them. It doesn’t make my philosophy wrong, but neither is theirs. It only makes them different and it is important to articulate that I respect both.

The last part that struck home with me was the importance of recognizing learning styles in my adult learners. I am a concrete, sequential learner and that is how I design my courses. It works well for the majority of my learners. It is the nature of my content and instructional design. However, there are always a few that don’t respond to my instructional design, either dropping out or stopping out of class after a few sessions. I’ve come to realize that I need to be open to making some changes — whether trying to work with some different instructional methods to retain those learners, or being much more clear in the nature of the design. The text gives some great ideas, such as learning contracts, and utilizing technology that may excite those other learning styles.

All in all, the summer was a good time to revisit these issues. With the Fall courses just beginning I now have the opportunity to implement these ideas on how to add a spark to my courses, better understand the new students in my courses and program, and perhaps continue to learn even more about myself. And that’s the whole purpose of a summer refresher.

Galbraith, Michael W., Adult learning methods: A guide for effective instruction, Third Edition, Krieger Publishing Co., Malabar, FL, 2004.

Dr. Vickie Kelly is program director and assistant professor of technology administration at Washburn University.

Here’s a list of the reasons why professional development plays a critical role in the ongoing growth of teachers. Professional development does support all aspects of academic careers, but understanding its importance to teaching is my emphasis here.

• Professional development promotes faculty responsibility for continuous, career-long growth based upon not only the trial and error of experience, but also theory, research, and professional collaboration with colleagues.
• The understanding of instructional concepts and teaching processes can be expanded and deepened via professional development.
• Good teaching is not just a “you have it or you don’t” skill, nor is it an automatic companion of terminal, disciplinary degrees. It is an action, process, and way of thinking and as such it constitutes serious, complex intellectual work. It requires regular reflection and exposure to new ideas and information that are inherently a part of good professional development activities.
• Professional faculty development connects faculty across disciplines and career stages, serving to create a pedagogical community within the college or university.
• Professional development is not remedial or something only for those having problems, but should be an integral part of every faculty member’s efforts to become more effective in the classroom.
• Although professional development has often been viewed as supplementary within the academy, it actually plays a central role in faculty motivation and vitality across their careers.
• Without professional development opportunities, faculty are often isolated and unaware of beneficial, innovative pedagogical approaches.
• “One who dares to teach must never cease to learn” (Dana): Professional development provides opportunities for faculty to learn about learning, about teaching, about students, and about themselves.
• Professional development should not be an optional or occasional activity. Regular participation in professional development activities should be an expectation for all teachers.
• Professional development is the conscience of the professional academic. It makes teachers aware of what they do, asks them why, and challenges them to continually do it better.
• Professional development strengthens the affective, intellectual, and social aspects of academic life. It improves the academic experience at institutions for teachers and students.

During these times of very tight budgets, activities central to the success of teachers may be targeted for cuts. Professional development opportunities should not fall into that category, and those committed to teaching should be prepared with a set of reasons why.

Dr. Alan Altany is the director of the Center for Teaching, Learning and Scholarship at Georgia Southern University.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 25.6 (2011): 5.

After some reflection, I believe I know why students at my high school entered Room 10 and why I am writing about this some 25 years later. Mrs. H gave her students an academic punch in the arm and it hurt. Some students could not take the punch and went down for the count (transferred to another course). Those of us who survived learned how to navigate a tough course with a demanding teacher who had only our best interests at heart. My classmates and I never discussed it, but I think we were drawn to the course because we knew if we could survive “Hell’s Classroom,” we could take anything thrown at us in college.

I can honestly say that walking into Room 10 was one of the best decisions of my life. It amazes me that after all these years, and knowing now that my AP course was poorly designed and executed, I had an extraordinarily valuable experience in that class. I want students to value the courses I teach, and in my classroom I cultivate very different student-teacher interactions. However, my commitment to academic rigor and high expectations for students has been influenced by Mrs. H and Room 10. Most faculty aspire to high standards for their students, but I do not read much about rigor in the educational literature these days. It may be that many faculty think rigor is an implied part of the collegiate experience. However, documentaries such as Declining by Degrees and the recent book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses tell a different story. It almost seems that any mention of rigor or challenge has become “educationally incorrect” in the literature of scholars who promote the reform of higher education and place an emphasis on learning over teaching. Moving away from the traditional lecture format does not require one to abandon rigor or high expectations, although this is rarely addressed in reform-minded manuscripts.

My experiences in Room 10 have convinced me that my job is to provide what has been termed “productive discomfort” (Mrs. H’s academic punch in the arm). I want my students to wrestle with ideas that at times disorient them and other times make them want to know more about the world of chemistry. I strongly believe there is a need to push students to maximize their potential and learning capacities.

My commitment and approach are complicated by the number of students who are poorly prepared to perform at high levels or lack the study and learning skills needed to be successful. Hardly a day goes by without a student asking how to do better in one of my courses. A similar question to Mrs. H would have been answered with the admonition to do more of the problems at the backs of the chapters. That used to be my standard line, but I have realized that students truly struggling with the material often need a new way of approaching problem solving and concept mastery. One successful approach has been to encourage students to draw diagrams and sketches (external representations) to help organize information and ideas. This allows them to apply their creativity and right-brained skills to tackle more analytical tasks.

The most rewarding and meaningful experiences of my teaching career have been the success of students who once struggled but ultimately overcame their difficulties. In my mind, a student’s journey from failure to mastery (or struggle to success) is what higher education is all about, and the only way we can make this work is by setting the academic bar high, but not beyond reach, and then providing the necessary support and motivation. If I had to establish a marketing campaign around this idea, it would sound like the Home Depot slogan: You can do it (succeed in a demanding course) and we can help (by providing a supportive and instructionally diverse environment).

Now it’s your turn. What kind of “productive discomfort” (Mrs. H’s academic punch in the arm) do you provide your students? Please share in the comment box.

Dr. James Ricky Cox is a chemistry professor at Murray State University.

Reprinted from Lessons from Room 10 The Teaching Professor, 25.5 (2011): 6.

You will find that sharing your work with others before you submit it for review will streamline your writing process. This is because “others can quickly identify omissions and logical breaks that would take you weeks to figure out” (Belcher, 2009, pp. 7-8). So start a dialog with your readers. Stop imagining what your readers know; instead, find out what questions they have and answer them.

Share more drafts of your work, starting sooner, than you ever thought possible. Share progressive drafts of your work with readers with different levels of expertise: non-experts, experts, and Capital-E Experts. Ask non-experts for help first—as soon as a full manuscript is drafted. Non-experts include anyone who does not share a terminal degree in your discipline. Ask them for help with clarity and organization. Ask experts for help in the middle of your project. Experts include any scholar with a terminal degree in your discipline. Treat experts like non-experts or like Capital-E Experts depending on how well you know them and how far along your manuscript is.

Ask Capital-E Experts for help right before you send the manuscript to a journal. Capital-E Experts include the scholars you have cited the most often, the most heavily or both. Tell them how their work has informed yours. Ask questions about the intersection of your work and theirs. Request only 20 minutes of their time by instructing them to just run their eyes over your manuscript and tell you the biggest problems they see. Ask them what you should read and cite that you haven’t and where they think you should send the manuscript.

Listen carefully to these readers. Don’t be defensive and avoid saying words like “no” or “but.” Instead, try saying things that keep your reader talking such as, “Say more about that” or “How might I do that?”

Respond to each specific criticism. One reader will criticize the literature review, while another will find fault with the methods, and yet another will take umbrage with the findings. Think of each criticism as a hole in your rhetorical dam: The more holes you plug, the better your argument will hold water.

Finally, seek help from the editor of the journal in which you would most like to publish. It’s called “querying.” Send the editor an email that includes the title and abstract of the paper (attach the full manuscript). Ask the editor this question, “To what extent does this manuscript fit the direction you are trying to take the journal?” Let his or her response guide you in your decision to submit to this journal or to query another editor.

The most important thing to remember as a scholar is that you are not alone. You are part of a community of scholars and, to attain the highest quality of scholarship, you should let the community do some of the work.

Note: This article includes excerpts come from: Gray, T. (2010). Publish & flourish: Become a prolific scholar. Las Cruces, NM: New Mexico State University Teaching Academy. Available at http://www.teaching.nmsu.edu/

References
Belcher, W. L. (2009). Writing your journal article in 12 weeks: A guide to academic publishing success. Los Angeles, CA: Sage.

Boice, R. (2000). Advice for new faculty members: Nihil nimus. Boston, MA: Allyn & Bacon.

Tara Gray, PhD, is director of The Teaching Academy at New Mexico State University.

My current quest is cables—a technique that involves putting a small group of stitches in front of or behind another group of stitches, with the result looking, not surprisingly, like a cable. It’s not a difficult technique, except when you tackle a project that involves a variety of different kinds of cables. I’m not very visual, and so often rather than looking at the pattern that is emerging as I knit, I’m reading the instructions. The written instructions tell you when to put the stitches in the back or front, but they don’t help you see what you should be doing. If you put the stitches behind when they should be in front, the error isn’t immediately obvious. In my case, it was five rows later on a vest project that is knit in one piece—that means lots of stitches on the needle and lots of time involved in correcting the mistake. I was angry with myself, but all that ripping and reknitting was what it took to finally get me looking at the cable and figuring out once and for all when the stitches needed to go in back or in front. Now I know.

I thought about all that this morning when I was refiling some article resources and ran across a very old piece by John Chiodo, titled “Professors Who Fail May Be Our Best Teachers.” Chiodo wrote that he was in the process of developing a “philosophy of failure to help ensure the improvement of my teaching.” (p. 79) His piece is really about teachers needing to take risks, as in the need to try new and different approaches even though there is a risk they might not work. Teachers avoid failure by not taking risks and always doing what they know works. Ironically, this approach usually fails over time, but it’s not the kind of failure that is as easily noticed by the teacher.

Failure in the classroom is frequently a very private affair. The norm in collegial conversation and in published pedagogical scholarship is to share success stories. We do need to learn about what does work, but often there is more learning potential when we try something and it doesn’t work. The problem, of course, is that learning from failure is rarely a pleasant experience. It doesn’t make us feel good about ourselves.

In addition to not talking about the failure, teachers frequently rely on Freud’s pain/pleasure principle and ignore the failure. Lest you think I write not knowing whereof I speak, I had a dismal failure in an upper-division business course on conflict resolution and negotiation. It was the first time I had taught the course, and the students balked at everything I asked them to do. We got to study conflict up close and personal. The problem was, I couldn’t get any of the theories and research that we were studying to successfully resolve the conflict we were experiencing. My failure was made worse by the fact that I won a prestigious teaching award that semester. I lived in fear that students in this class would find out and either laugh or protest. When the semester ended, I walked away from that course. I never taught it again, and I never faced the lessons that were there to be learned. Thinking about my failure to confront this failure is now a source of regret and embarrassment.

We also deal with failure a bit like our students do. We respond personally, with lots of emotion and grand generalizations. The failure becomes a measure of our inherent worth as human beings, not the case of one activity, class session, or course poorly executed. To learn from failure, you have to be able to put it in perspective. That may be difficult at the moment, but a bit of distance and a good colleague can put a context around what happened and enable us to start thinking about what we might learn from the experience.

Most of us regularly work with students who experience failure—on an exam, a paper, maybe even in the course. We sit across from them, and I hear us giving them a whole variety of strategies they can use to deal with and learn from the failure. It is good and compassionate advice. Maybe the place to begin dealing with our own instructional failures is by listening to how we discuss failure with our students.

As for my knitting, now I’m trying to knit an I-cord (something that looks sort of like a rope) to go around the brim of a hat I’ve just finished. I read and reread the instructions, but I still don’t understand how to do it. At this point, I’ve spent more time criticizing the way the instructions are written than I’ve spent trying to figure out how this technique works. It’s a failure in progress and, so far, one with scant learning.

Reference:
Chiodo, John. J. (1989). Professors who fail may be out best teachers. Teacher Education Quarterly, (Winter), 79-83.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 25.4 (2011): 6.

The initiative is simply structured. As its director, I recruit four to six circle leaders shortly before the academic year begins. Early in the semester, the leaders select a topic and relevant reading materials, which I secure for the groups. Then we announce the topics to the campus community and provide contact information for the leaders. Faculty select which group, if any, they would like to join for the year. We don’t pressure them, but even so, about 50 percent are participating each year.

The leaders meet virtually or in person for the first meeting to decide on a schedule. Most groups meet to discuss the topic and reading material about four times a year. All teaching circle members participate in a concluding banquet during which groups summarize or creatively display the knowledge they have discovered and comment on its potential classroom applications. We make the banquet a social event and use it as a celebration of faculty united in lifelong learning.

The main costs associated with the initiative are the books and materials provided to participants, the banquet, and one nice dinner per group for one of their meetings. In the beginning, leaders were paid a $300 stipend; however, this was eliminated in the current year’s budget. We are proceeding with volunteer leaders who are willing to perform this as part of their service to the college. Although we have yet to face a shortage of volunteers, a small stipend for leaders is probably a necessity when beginning a program like this.

The goal of these circles is enjoyable scholarly exchange among peers. The groups have taken several different approaches. Sometimes the focus is on pedagogy; other times it has a topical focus, simply for knowledge expansion. I strongly encourage the leaders to pick topics about which they are passionate. When they do, conversation in the groups flows seamlessly. Some faculty have chosen to use their groups to find new teaching strategies, such as undergraduate research or active learning techniques. These groups offer participants a safe place to talk about the strategies and their efforts to implement them. Others have chosen academic topics such as Darwinism. In these groups, colleagues deliberate much as students would in a seminar.

The initiative has generated a number of benefits. First, it provides in-house faculty development. Faculty discover new pedagogical knowledge and share teaching experiences with each other. Their discussions and the banquet presentations encourage implementation of the ideas identified during the year.

Second, the initiative serves as a community builder across disciplines. Faculty emerge from their departments and offices to gather in homes or local restaurants to discuss topics of common interest. For example, one of our mathematics professors decided to challenge herself by joining a writing circle. The initiative provided an opportunity she may not otherwise have enjoyed.

Third, the initiative eases new faculty into the college community. It also gives them a chance to meet college veterans whose knowledge and experience can help them adjust to teaching this college’s students. The interaction also introduces them to our college culture.

Fourth, the initiative has assisted other college programs. For example, two of the six teaching circles this year have embraced the current Quality Enhancement Plan topic of reflective judgment. Not only will the participants learn how to apply this concept to their classrooms, but they will also be better able to speak about the topic to other faculty members within their departments.

Finally, the initiative provides peer incentives among professors to continue to improve. As faculty learn together they are challenged to make changes in their classrooms. Faculty participation in these circles offers evidence of ongoing interest in scholarship, and circle leaders can count this as a college service contribution.

Every campus needs faculty who are engaged in the intellectual life of the college. A teaching and learning initiative like this one is a great way to encourage that kind of engagement.

Dr. Michelle Freeman is an associate professor at Tusculum College in Tennessee.

Reprinted from The Teaching Professor, 25.2 (2011): 3.

There are currently about 40 facilitators at Century. Each receives a small stipend for leading faculty members in six two- to two-and-a-half-hour sessions. Participants are eligible for a small stipend as well once they have written and disseminated a report on their project.

Full-time and part-time faculty members are eligible to participate in this program, and in the past 10 years, approximately 200 tenured faculty members have taken part in it. Of those, three-quarters have participated four times or more, estimates Larry Litecky, president of Century College.

“That’s the way we’ve done much of our faculty development, and it has led to a fair amount of experimenting with new approaches,” he says.

2. Organizational Development at Century College
In addition to individual faculty, Century is taking a broader approach to improving student learning. The college is in the midst of developing a collective approach to professional development that will explore department and program strategies such as learning communities, intrusive advising, supplemental instruction, and student success courses—strategies selected from Achieving the Dream, a nationwide initiative aimed at improving the success of students of color, low-income students, and underprepared students.

“In some ways it’s more organizational development than traditional individually based faculty development,” Litecky says. To that end, the college has rewritten department chair and program director position descriptions to focus more on student success and less on some of the routine tasks typically such as scheduling and budgeting.

Reprinted from Kelly R. (2010). Century College Professional Development Strategies. Academic Leader, 26 (10), 8.

Redefine Teaching
A common outcry by some who resist scholarly production is, “My commitment is to teaching rather than scholarship.” Who would argue with such a contention? The argument is in the definition of the teaching environment. The faculty member who fails to teach outside the four walls of a university classroom closes too many teachable doors. Teaching and scholarly production are inseparable. Scholarly production is teaching outside room 231 and into the local, state, and/or national community. Once this notion is embraced, a faculty member is more inclined to gain an insatiable appetite to teach through scholarly production recognizing the value of distant learning.

Don’t Put the Cart Before the Horse
In the scholarly world, the cart involves the knowledge and skills required to publish. The horse involves the dispositions. It is the dispositions of the scholar that make or break the scholarship. Most faculty members hired have the knowledge and skills to successfully publish. Fewer have the dispositions to publish. In other words, talent is necessary but not sufficient. There must also be passion, initiative, persistence, perseverance, focus, determination, tenacity and the list goes on and on.

Write From the Heart
A failure to publish is often mind over matter. In other words, write about something that matters. A blind allegiance to publishing is often detected by a reviewer and reader. This indiscriminate type approach replaces the desire to champion a cause for a simple desire to obtain promotion and tenure. Scholarship undergirded by a sense of cause shows. It shows the breadth and depth of the scholar who longs for the message to become a means to affecting change and serving others.

Snobbery Alienates More Than It Cultivates
There are often arguments by academicians that scholarship should reflect research and that research must be either quantitative or qualitative in nature. The argument removes a most important scholarly role; a role assumed by scholars who choose to champion the research rather than conduct it. Qualitative and quantitative research is necessary but not sufficient. It is equally critical that scholars write expository, conceptual articles designed to translate the research into action. The acceptance of such a position will encourage not only more scholarly production among hesitant or disinterested researchers, but it will encourage the championing of the research.

You’re 90 Looking Back and Asking, “Did I Leave the World a Better Place?”
There are few tombstones that witness to a faculty members promotion and tenure. It is rare that someone giving a eulogy witnesses to the same. The question often asked is, “How did this person contribute to the quality of life among students and teachers?” A desire to leave the world a better place is a wonderful anecdote for procrastination, excuse-making, and a lack of commitment. Invariably, faculty members join the university to impact change. Very likely, there has never been a prospective faculty member who said, “I plan to get my Ph.D. because I have longed to be called professor.”

This article is written for one reason. Faculty members often suffer from the publish or perish syndrome; a syndrome that causes analysis paralysis and dispassionate scholarly production. In the first case, faculty members become immobilized from scholarly production for fear of failure. In the latter case, they become productive but the yield lacks heart and fails to champion a cause. We are here but a short time. If in this short time, faculty members who read this article produce scholarly work that affects change, improves lives, and helps the faculty member achieve promotion and tenure, then I will reflect back at 90 and say, “Job well done!” In this case, teaching will be integrated with scholarship for scholarship is an extension of our teaching.

Dr. Mark J. Cooper is a professor in the department of early childhood and special education at the University of Central Arkansas.

Goals
With any project, the first item to address is to plan your goals for the year. Whether these are personal or professional, it is always good to have them written down, either in time for your yearly faculty summary or in a spreadsheet to document your progress. It also never hurts to have more than one, as long as you can realistically accomplish them in the time frame.

In this article I will show you an example of how to build out your professional development plan. For the example I am using one of my goals for last year: improving my online instructional techniques.

Goals	Activities	Cost	Anticipated Results	Actual Results
IMPROVE ONLINE INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNIQUES

Activities
For each goal you identify, you will want to list the activities that will help you accomplish that goal. These might include taking that Word 2010 class offered at your institution or attending a workshop or conference. However, to fulfill your goals, you have to realistically look at all the opportunities available. Can they be accomplished by getting a faculty book group together, attending on- campus faculty development activities, or planning to actually read all those journals on your desk this year? Whatever the activities, there should be a list of activities that help you reach your goal.

Goals	Activities	Cost	Anticipated Results	Actual Results
IMPROVE ONLINE INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNIQUES	Attend on-campus session on using LMS
	Read Faculty Focus reports on online strategies
	Attend in-state conference
	Participate in faculty reading group

Cost
Ah yes, the all-important financial aspect. There might be federal, state or institution funds available to you. How much are the activities going to cost to help you meet your goals? Free is good, including things offered by your institution, online opportunities provided by other organizations, or books and journals you’ve wanted to get to anyway. If the cost is an out-of-pocket expense for you personally, write it down as such. If you are asking for travel and conference funds from your institution, better make sure you have a good handle on exactly what it going to cost.

Goals	Activities	Cost	Anticipated Results	Actual Results
IMPROVE ONLINE INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNIQUES	Attend on-campus session on using LMS	$0
	Read Faculty Focus reports on online strategies	$0
	Attend in-state conference	$75 (personal)
	Participate in faculty reading group	$200 (institution)

Results
Just as with any assessment plan, this is the area you want to think about in terms of anticipated results. Is student learning going to increase? Are your student evaluations going to improve? Are you going to secure that NSF grant? Are you finally going to webcast your lectures or learn to use some great new technology? What kind of measureable results can you show that justify your professional development? You can see my anticipated results in the chart below.

Goals	Activities	Cost	Anticipated Results	Actual Results
IMPROVE ONLINE INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNIQUES	Attend on-campus session on using LMS	$0	Improved course set-up
	Read Faculty Focus reports on online strategies	$0	Incorporate new strategies in online classes
	Attend in-state conference	$75 (personal)	Understand distance learners
	Participate in faculty reading group	$200 (institution)	Improve strategies for online learning

The final step of your professional development plan is where you document the results. Even if things didn’t turn out exactly as you had hoped, this last step helps complete the task and allows you to see if your strategies and activities truly helped you to reach your goal. Filling in the actual results column also will provide you with the feedback you need to reflect and plan for your next goal.

Goals	Activities	Cost	Anticipated Results	Actual Results
IMPROVE ONLINE INSTRUCTIONAL TECHNIQUES	Attend on-campus session on using LMS	$0	Improved course set-up	Student evaluations improved from 4.5 to 4.7 on course organization
	Read Faculty Focus reports on online strategies	$0	Incorporate new strategies in online classes	Incorporated wiki’s and blogs in course structure
	Attend in-state conference	$75 (personal)	Understand distance learners	Incorporated both audio and video recordings for online classes
	Participate in faculty reading group	$200 (institution)	Improve strategies for online learning	Improved organization and content of online courses.

There are several ways to set up your plan, from a simple chart or spreadsheet to using research backed project management models. One great example is the logic model found here on the Kellogg foundation website. However you document it, managing your professional growth is an important component of your career. Don’t let the availability of funds control where and what you have the opportunity to learn.

For many of us, there are both educational and professional goals to accomplish. And while you can highlight the results in your tenure notebook or add to your vitae, you’ll also experience the personal satisfaction of developing new skills and knowing that you’re working to become better at your profession.

Vickie Kelly, EdD is program director and assistant professor technology administration at Washburn University.

It is especially disconcerting when you expect a class to go well and then it doesn’t. That’s what happened to Cheryl Albers, a sociology professor at Buffalo State College. The class in question was an upper-level honors social science seminar that Albers had volunteered to teach. “I spent months excitedly designing a course I believed would be both challenging and engaging for the most select students on campus.” (p. 270)

Her syllabus for the course is included in an appendix, and it looks like a course any of us would love to take or teach. She started the semester with 17 students. After the second week when the first graded essays were returned, two students dropped. By the third week Albers was concerned enough to initiate a discussion of how the course was going. “To my bewilderment a third of the class expressed dissatisfaction with the grounding of the class in student directed learning. They wanted a more teacher directed experience—clearly not the reaction I anticipated while I was enthusiastically designing the class.” (p. 270-271)

What Albers had planned for the course was “a classroom environment focused on knowledge creation rather than the transmission of information where students felt part of an intellectual community that balanced support and control.” (p. 270) More specifically, students wrote essays (that were graded) and wrote letters to classmates commenting on the essays of classmates (and those were graded). They participated in what Albers called “open-ended seminars” where students led the discussion and brought to it questions prepared in response to class material, as well as in research/writing groups, with each team determining the focus of their study and methods of analysis. Does any of this seem out of line for an upper-level honors seminar?

But the students continued to resist her approach. The article includes a variety of written comments provided by students. Albers sought to understand this response by using a variety of approaches, all explained in the article. Here’s what she concluded. First off, “I underestimated the power of normative student and teacher behaviors operating in the wider institutional context.” (p. 278) Students didn’t see this as an opportunity. Instead, they resented the need to comply with what looked to them like a set of idiosyncratic expectations. Students find great comfort in being able to predict what teachers will require them to do. “It is a lot of work and an inconvenience to students when what occurs in a single class is significantly out of step with the expectations encountered throughout the majority of the institution.” (p. 278)

Second, instead of being the most receptive to change, honors students may be the most resistant. “Honors students are granted that designation specifically because they are skilled at understanding and enacting/exploiting the institutional and normative student role.” (p. 278)

It would be easy to digress at this point into a discussion of bright students, honors programs, and self-directed learning. It does need to be pointed out that not all the students in Albers seminar resisted her approach. Some understood what she was trying to accomplish and valued the experience. But a significant portion did not. And from this experience Albers and the rest of us can learn.

Reference: Albers, C. (2009). Teaching: From disappointment to ecstasy. Teaching Sociology, 37 (July), 269-282.

Excerpted from “Learning from Classroom Experiences.” The Teaching Professor, 24.5 (2010): 3.

In the recent seminar Building a Comprehensive Professional Development Program, Dr. Denise Swett, associate vice president of Middlefield Campus and Community Programs at Foothill College, outlined the steps undertaken on that campus to overhaul and improve its existing professional development programming.

Foothill College in Northern California set out to holistically redesign its entire professional development offerings because the existing programming was too sporadic, with infrequent and disconnected workshops. They noticed that recurring problems had begun to appear that demanded a more concerted approach.

Among the ongoing challenges they faced were cheating and plagiarism, growing numbers of military veteran students, drastic budget cuts, and workplace friction due to a multigenerational workforce. To address these issues, Swett says they decided, “Let’s not look at what has been done in the past. Instead, let’s look at what we need to do now and in the future.” This led to a systematic redesign of the entire professional development program, from the ground up.

The goal was to create a formalized plan that saw training as a continual activity that is valued highly by the college. This seminar explains all the practical concerns institutions will need to consider as they seek to revamp their own programming, including:

• Conducting an environmental scan
• Strategic planning
• Establishing a realistic timeframe
• What types of programs to offer
• Where to find the best presenters
• Ways to encourage participation
• Program evaluation

According to Swett, “the research consistently shows professional development leads to better instruction and improved student learning.” She also pointed out that enhanced professional development is especially important now due to decreased funding, changes in the composition of the student body, evolving technology and increased state and federal regulation.

To get busy faculty interested in attending professional development workshops, Swett says it’s critical to include them in the planning process and offer a wide range of topics. Classroom management strategies, dealing with disruptive students, and teaching with technology are all hot topics right now. Foothill College also offers health and wellness workshops and a support group for those dealing with issues around aging parents.

In an interview with Academic Leader, Mariangela Maguire, associate professor of communication and former academic dean at Gustavus Adolphus College, and Laura Behling, associate provost for faculty affairs and interdisciplinary programs at Butler University, provided advice for developing faculty leaders.

Reach out to senior faculty. “When asking for volunteers, we tend to go to the usual suspects. For instance, we have a mentoring program for our incoming tenure-line faculty. It had been going on for several years, and it was OK but not terribly dynamic. When I became academic dean, I realized that there were a lot of senior-level faculty who we assumed were disengaged, and we didn’t ask them to be mentors. So we changed that. It changed their perception because we were saying to them, ‘Remember, you are a senior faculty member, and you have an awful lot to offer incoming faculty. You’re the history of the institution. You’re going to help them understand the culture of this place.’ That, I think, was a powerful change that we made. Of course, you have to be careful—there are always difficult people you don’t particularly want mentoring your new faculty. But there are a lot of people who maybe don’t know that they’re valued any longer, and I think it’s important to reach out to them,” Maguire says.

Provide low-stakes leadership opportunities. Effective department chairs don’t take full responsibility for every bit of programming within the unit. There are low-stakes projects that could help faculty members become leaders. Leading a meeting with alumni from start to finish, for example, could help a faculty member learn how to work within budget, work with food services, reach out to stakeholders, and, most important, build confidence for future leadership roles, Maguire says.

Form groups thoughtfully. “Look for ways to group people together so that perhaps newer faculty can learn from more experienced leaders about how a small group can bring something to the larger department,” Behling says. “I think what that really requires is for the department chair or committee chair to be thoughtful, to really think about the ways that a group gets put together. We’re not just trying to complete a search, for example, but this is grooming the next generation of faculty. Sometimes that’s hard to do, and sometimes we’re pressed for time, and that’s the last thing we actually have time to do or even want to think about. But I think it does make a positive difference in the health of the department. This is an educational process with our colleagues rather than just with students,” Behling says.

Expect conflict. “I think you’re going to have more conflict because people are going to be more aware of issues, priorities, and processes. But I think it will be productive rather than unproductive conflict. It will be informed conflict. It will be sharing ideas and thinking up better solutions in these incredibly difficult financial times rather than people just being entrenched,” Maguire says.

Excerpted from “Developing Formal and Informal Faculty Leaders.” Academic Leader, 26.4 (2010): 7-8.