The general purpose of this initiative is (a) to engage faculty in learning about teaching and (b) to encourage and support faculty engagement in the scholarship of teaching. This scholarship uses the growing literature on college teaching and faculty member’s own classrooms as a means to further all teachers’ knowledge of, and ability to practice, effective teaching. Key components of this program include: (a) An annual colloquium in which faculty will lead sessions on what they have done to learn about teaching, innovations in their teaching, and assessments of the results; and (b) a college-wide organization consisting of people committed to learning about teaching and to contributing to the scholarship of teaching and learning.

The Colloquium will be open to all faculty and teaching assistants in the College of Arts & Sciences. The first one will occur in January 2004. We expect approximately 40-60 faculty and graduate student TAs to attend, of whom one-third will be STEM faculty and students. We hope this program it will encourage participation in the full Learning Cycle: acquiring new ideas about teaching, trying them out in the practice of teaching, assessing the results, sharing the results with others, and reflecting on what else one could learn that would be helpful in teaching. The ultimate goal is to create a faculty culture that values learning about teaching.

Program Implementation

Implementation of this program requires support from senior university administrators and a group of faculty committed to good teaching who can do the initial planning and organization. The program requires a small budget to sponsor the annual colloquium. Future monetary needs include funds to provide cash awards to faculty who have made significant contributors to the scholarship of teaching.

A moderate amount of administrative time is required by the planning committee to organize the initial program. Once the program is operational, this time commitment will be reduced. Faculty participants in the program will need to spend some of their time as faculty members, not only teaching but learning about teaching. Then, when they are ready, they should spend some time either leading a campus workshop on what they have learned about teaching and/or writing something for publication on the scholarship of teaching.