Center For Teaching Activities: 2003 - 2004

New developments 

Laurie Ramsey became Richard O'Connor's Co-Director for the Center for Teaching.  Richard will be in charge of the parts of the job concerning the Lilly Foundation grant, budget management, grant-writing, fund-raising, research on teaching and learning, and several committee engagements.  Laurie will be in charge of organizing events for the Center, publicity, receiving email inquiries, receiving and compiling grant requests, and setting up Board meetings.  Together they will make decisions, troubleshoot, run advisory committee meetings, and lead discussions among faculty members.

 
Advent semester 2003
Events offered by the Center for Teaching f or new faculty members:

New Faculty Orientation, August 22. 

Mentoring program, matched new teachers with experienced ones, as appropriate.

First-week workshop for new faculty, September 5.

Luncheon in September focussed on grading. 

Luncheon talk by Eric Hartman (Assistant Dean for Campus Life)--the profile of Sewanee students today, October 17

Luncheon in October focussed on discussion classes.

 
Events offered for or by Lilly fellows:

Catered luncheon discussions about their efforts in offering and/or retooling courses to address service learning (Yasmeen Mohiuddin, Jim Peters/Bill Danaher, Bran Potter)

Luncheon discussion by Sid Brown (Religion) on Values and Research

For college and theology faculty:

Luncheon discussions at McClurg: 

1) Sid Brown (Department of Religion)--"Please, Convert to Environmentalism, Not Buddhism," October 2
2)  Greg Jones (Duke, Dean of Theology)--dealing with controversy on campus, October 16
3)  Trudy Cunningham (Consultant on Admission and Advising)--learning differences among our students, October 31
4)  General discussion of grading essays and papers, November 13

Calls for issues that we need to address, suggestions taken for spring semester activities

 

Innovative Teaching Initiatives, grants awarded to:

Jennifer Michael--the Humanities sequence from students' perspectives

Pradip Malde--

Jim Peterman--

 

Faculty grants awarded this semester, requests ranging from $550 to $7000:

1)  trips for two faculty members to sites in France and Japan to prepare to teach 1) WWII material, 2) Asian theatre
2)  preparation of teaching materials for two new courses
3)  trip with students to work in another university's science lab
4)  work-study aid on a project for a new course
5)  orientation workshop for supervising teachers in the Teacher Education program

 

Richard's fundraising and grant-writing efforts: Integrative Learning Proposal submitted to Carnegie

Richard attended the AACU and PKAL conferences

Ongoing research on teaching: How students connect material across courses and outside of class

Participation on the following committees:  Strategic Planning

   

Easter Semester 2004
For new faculty members:

Two luncheon discussions at McClurg:  issues facing new faculty members, one luncheon for members arriving in January, another including all of the class of 2003

 

Events offered for or by Lilly fellows:

1) Catered luncheon talk by Chris Conn, "From Classical Theism to Christian Theism: What Christianity Tells us about God," February 20
2) Catered luncheon talk by David Haskell, "Food for Thought: A Summer Program in Ecology and Sustainable Agriculture," March 15

  

For college and theology faculty:

Luncheon discussions at McClurg:

1)  Frank Hart and Ben Szapiro showed how they use of new technologies (via Smart Board) in their Physics classes, February 19
2)  Renegotiating a syllabus or a course in mid-stream, March 10
3)  A study by Richard O'Connor on how Sewanee students carry learning out of the classroom and do or don't connect and discuss classes, April 1
4)  Pete Smith offers connections between teaching and performance, April 23

Afternoon workshop offered by Laurie Ramsey on grading with the Excel program, February 10

Afternoon workshop offered by Kim Kelley on plagiarism, April 8

 

Innovative Teaching Initiatives, grants awarded to:

Pamela Macfie--retooling Shakespeare courses as "page and stage"

Helen Bateman--use of technology in Human Development course

Peggy Bonds--use of Smart Board and polling techniques in one experimental section of Spanish 203/comparison with another section using traditional teaching methods

 

Faculty grants awarded this semester, requests ranging from $900 to $9000:

At the spring meeting of the advisory board, faculty grants awarded this semester included:

1) student interns and some technological support for retooling a math cours
2)  attendance at a teaching conferenc
3)  support for learning data-collection techniques and a trip to a research and teaching station, preparation for wildlife management course and Biometric
4)  guest appearances of actors in an acting cours
5)  possible support for writing test items in Classic
6)  work-study support for new course in Art History

Addressing and solving the problem of accessibility to gradebooks--Center for Teaching facilitated an order for 14 gradebooks.  Print Services will produce these for faculty members in the future.

 

Research and Assessment Activities

The Center for Teaching conducts research locally to assist evaluation and facilitate teaching and learning. Some of the work is ongoing. The following reports or summaries are available upon request from Co-Director Richard O'Connor:

1) Incorporating Research in Teaching: a summation of student responses and faculty experiences on integrating faculty research with teaching (Easter Semester, 2003)
2) Discussion Classes and Student Scripts: a survey and analysis of student attitudes towards discussion classes (Easter Semester, 2003)
3) Student Intellectual Life Project: an ongoing, in-depth study of the academic careers and intellectual development of grauating seniors (initiated Easter semester, 2003, continuing)
4) Do Students Connect Courses? a survey of 260 students conducted near the end of the Advent Semester, 2004
5) "Work Hard, Party Hard?" How Academic and Social Life Interrelate: ethnographic research on student work and social patterns done in collaboration with Beth Christian, Chris Honeycutt, Shawn Means, Aimee Rogers and David Zeman, in progress