SPOTLIGHT ON INNOVATION SERIES The US Department of Education has awarded the multi-million dollar First in the World grant to 24 colleges and universities that are innovating to solve critical challenges with access, recruitment, retention, and student success. At AI, we have interviewed each of the recipients to learn more about the projects these institutions are pursuing, how their approaches are unique, and what other colleges and universities can learn from these new efforts. Texas A&M – Corpus Christi already offers face-to-face supplemental instruction (SI) for many barrier STEM classes and has seen it boost retention and graduation. However, the number of students who took advantage of SI remained low in comparison to the number of students in the courses. Students frequently reported they could not attend face-to-face sessions due to schedule conflicts or jobs. Dr. Patricia Spaniol-Mathews, Executive Director for Programs for Academic Student Support, hopes to eliminate that obstacle by piloting an interactive online supplemental instruction program with the $3.3 million First In The World grant. It is an exciting opportunity because the online option will eliminate schedule barriers, increase the number of students who can benefit from supplemental instruction, and hopefully boost STEM retention and completion rates […]
Department chairs and program directors are busy people, and orienting adjunct faculty may not be top of mind. But adjuncts who are teaching online for the first time need support and information to hit the ground running. Here is a quick checklist of items to cover with first-time online instructors. by Teresa Focarile, Boise State University(who also wrote: “Adjunct Faculty: A Department Chair’s Guide to Orienting New Instructors“) Many institutions are expanding their online course offerings, and using adjunct faculty to do so. While these faculty members are often teaching from a master course and therefore are not responsible for developing the class, there is still important information about teaching online that needs to be shared with these new instructors in order for them to be effective online teachers, and to ensure they understand the expectations for teaching in your program (Larcara, 2011). Checklist Some items on this checklist might already be in place. For example, most institutions have a team that can get adjunct faculty up to speed on the functionality of the Learning Management System (LMS). In addition, many institutions have developed trainings (sometimes mandatory) for faculty who teach online. But if your institution does not have those kinds […]
Karen L. Dace is vice chancellor for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion at Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI). Previously, she served as Deputy Chancellor for Diversity, Access & Equity at the University of Missouri-Kansas City and Associate Vice President for Diversity at the University of Utah. She holds a tenured faculty appointment in Communication Studies and is an adjunct professor in Africana Studies at IUPUI. Dace had a joint faculty appointment in the Department of Communication and in the Ethnic Studies Program which housed American Indian Studies, Asian Pacific American Studies, African American Studies and Chicana/o Studies while at the University of Utah. She served Director of the Ethnic Studies Program with a faculty of 20-25 tenure-track scholars as well as Director of African American Studies at the University of Utah. As the Associate Vice President for Diversity at the University of Utah, the following offices reported to Dr. Dace: Women & Gender Studies Program; Ethnic Studies Program; American Indian Resource Center; Utah Opportunity Scholars; Center for the Study of Empowered Students of Color; Center for Ethnic Student Affairs; LGBT Student Center; and the Utah Math, Engineering and Science Achievement K-20 Consortium. As the campus’ first Chief Diversity Officer at the […]
August 4, 2011. Living-learning communities offer high potential for boosting the academic success and the education of the whole student, but they also present your campus with unique challenges because of the coordination they require between academic affairs and student services at your institution. The National Study of Living-Learning Programs (NSLLP) has begun documenting how living-learning programs influence the academic, social, and developmental outcomes for college students, as well as what characteristics are shared by those programs that show the greatest impact. This week, we interviewed two chief researchers from the NSLLP — Aaron Brower, vice provost for teaching and learning at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Karen Inkelas, associate professor and director for the Center for Advanced Study of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education at the University of Virginia. Brower and Inkelas suggest that while many institutions have organized living-learning programs, few offer a truly integrated, comprehensive, and immersive learning experience for the students. Here is their advice. Intentionality is Key “Depending on the goals you have set for the program, you really have to do the hard work (and the fun work) of thinking through how those goals play out in every interaction within the residential learning community.” […]
To meet the challenges facing higher education, we need to start finding leaders who don’t fit the charismatic stereotype. A recent program developed in the for-profit sector may provide a model for finding our colleagues who have enormous potential for leadership but who frequently remain invisible to us. Patrick Sanaghan explains. Several years ago, a corporate client with whom I had a long working relationship contacted me with an unusual request. He said, “I want you to find the leaders in my organization that we don’t know we have.” I was immediately drawn in by this counter-intuitive notion. This leader had built a robust and successful organization over twenty years and was smart enough to know that leadership didn’t reside only at the senior levels of his company. He had invested his money, time, and attention to developing distributed leadership throughout the organization, but he wanted to dig deeper. He told me, “I know we have really good leaders here, but they aren’t enough. We need more and better ones if we are going to stay competitive. I want you to help me find those leaders who are hidden from us.” Finding the “Stylistic Invisibles” I agreed to help with […]
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This article is an excerpt from Sue Ohrablo’s acclaimed book High-Impact Advising: A Guide for Academic Advisors, which you can find here. When working with students, advisors are likely to encounter students who blame others for the academic challenges they experience. It is the responsibility of the advisor to provide a sympathetic ear and refrain from judgment while creating a non-threatening environment. The advising session should be a safe place for students to express their concerns without fear of retribution or rejection. In such an environment, students are apt to be more candid in their assessments about faculty and peers. Scenario: The Hard Professor Advisors know the reputations of many faculty members, especially those who are considered “hard” or “demanding” by students. Although, in the back of our minds, it might be tempting to think, “Yeah, he’s a real hard-nose,” buying into that characterization of the faculty member does not provide the student any assistance. Instead, the advisor can add value by providing strategies to the student. For instance, a faculty member may be known to criticize students’ academic abilities by using what is interpreted to be a condescending tone when communicating with students. The faculty member may point out deficiencies […]
While executive and administrative leaders have had a longer history of working with coaches, there is growing awareness of the benefit to middle managers in higher education, as well. Mid-level academic leaders are often promoted to leadership positions with limited management experience and without the benefit of training and professional leadership development. Yet mid-level leaders face significant barriers to the use of coaching. To build leadership capacity at the mid level, it’s critical that senior leaders take action to address this coaching gap. To learn more, we turned to David Kiel, who worked for 15 years as a faculty leadership developer at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and is now a consultant to leadership development programs in higher education. Dr. Kiel has conducted extensive research on coaching in higher education, and the article that follows adapts and reworks material from an article the author published in the Journal of Excellence in College Teaching’s special issue “Coaching and Leadership in Academia,” James Sibley and Susan Robison, Editors, that came out in February 2018. The title of the original article is “In Search of Good Coaching for Mid-Level Faculty Leaders” (The full citation can be found in the reference section at the end of […]
with Sommer Browning, Marical Farner, Cynthia Hashert, and Jenny Filipetti (Auraria Library) We recently had the opportunity to visit the newly renovated Auraria Library. This unique tri-institution academic library is shared by the University of Colorado Denver, Metropolitan State University of Denver, and the Community College of Denver, and located in the heart of downtown Denver. The recent revitalization of the Auraria Library is impressive for several reasons. First, the library remained open – for all three institutions – during the multiple years of the renovation. Second, the library integrates a lot of the features discussed in The Library of the 21st Century. Notably, the library’s new learning space includes multimedia walls for collaborative learning. To learn more about the uniqueness of this library project – and what may be replicable at other institutions – we interviewed the panel of stakeholders responsible for this newly-renovated learning space. This article highlights the key takeaways from that interview. Participants at our 2017 Academic Planning and Revitalization Institute, an annual workshop that has highlighted innovative library design since 2007, will also get to discuss the project further with the library planning team, and will get to tour the facility. The Institute’s post-conference workshop on March 8 will also provide […]
With faculty and students both stressed during the pandemic, microaggressions may become more frequent in our online learning environment. Here are some practical strategies for mitigating the impact of microaggressions in online and remote classes. by Dr. Tasha Souza, Associate Director for Inclusive Excellence for the Center for Teaching and Learning, Professor of Communication, Boise State University Students are especially anxious right now given that their daily routine and expectations of college life have likely been completely derailed. Many have had to move, some to less safe and/or hospitable living environments, and all who were taking face-to-face classes have had to learn how to navigate a different learning and teaching space led by many instructors doing the same. When cortisol levels are high, we are less likely to self-monitor well and more likely to behave in ways that reveal and act upon our implicit biases. These biases can show up as written or oral microaggressions in online and remote spaces and can have a negative effect on the communication climate. Are you equipped to deal with them? When microaggressions occur in our learning environments, it is important that we respond in ways that maintain a supportive communication climate (Souza, 2017) […]
