Seattle U has moved to remote instruction through the Spring Quarter. More details and FAQs on the COVID-19 website.
The Chairs' Community of Practice is open to all current department chairs and chairs-elect, plus program directors and directors-elect who have faculty reporting to them directly (for example for performance reviews).
We gather twice per quarter.
Further details and how to register are available on the Community of Practice page here.
Facilitated by David Green
Thu, May 7 | 2:00–3:30 | Zoom link will be sent upon registration
Spring is often the time when faculty are preparing their files for promotion or tenure, or are reflecting on their work to date to help clarify their summer projects.
Yet depending on our career stage, our scholarly agenda can pose a variety of challenges. For many newer scholars, it can be hard to step back and identify exactly what it is we’re doing – and why it matters. For more seasoned researchers, in contrast, we often find our passions have shifted to new topics, or that we need to reinvent ourselves as scholars in somewhat different academic fields than where we began.
Difficulty in describing our research arc can affect our chances of winning grants, of being promoted, or simply of feeling in control of our own scholarship. It can lead us to take on projects that don’t exactly align with our expertise or intellectual curiosity, and to missing out on those that do.
In this session, we’ll provide a space for you to think through your own “Personal Intellectual Project”—the big-picture encapsulation of your different scholarly topics and agendas. For newer scholars, can you sense its form yet? Do you recognize the parameters you want to set to keep it manageable? For more experienced scholars, has your intellectual project evolved since you last considered it? What has changed and what remains the same? What projects might reignite your enthusiasm?
Through a structured process and through interdisciplinary conversation over Zoom, you’ll be better placed to advocate for yourself and your scholarship and will have a clearer vision of viable and enticing scholarly topics for the future.
»Registration link to follow
Optional Follow-up Session
Attendees who would like to check back in on this topic can do so in a later discussion and debrief.
Thu, May 21 | 2:00–3:00 | Zoom
Reimagining the “Impact Factor”: The Ignatian Research Paradigm
Co-sponsored by the Center for Jesuit Education, the SU Advance Program, the Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, and the Center for Faculty Development
Facilitated by Kristi Lee (College of Education) and Jen Tilghman-Havens (Center for Jesuit Education)
How can faculty scholarship contribute to the common good? How does Seattle University’s Jesuit mission invite a reimagining of research and scholarship in light of our distinctive place within the academy? This Faculty Learning Community will explore these questions in light of the university’s mission and through the directives of the SU Advance Program (an NSF-sponsored grant to examine pathways to promotion for women faculty in STEM and beyond).
Faculty will be inspired to reimagine their own scholarly agendas within an evolving mission-inspired paradigm. This three-part Thematic Faculty Learning Community will:
Participants will also receive a stipend of $100 upon completion.
The foundational work for this series was recently presented to a summit of the Jesuit universities on the West Coast.
All faculty will be invited to attend. We imagine this series being of particular interest to new faculty as well as faculty recently promoted to Associate or Full Professor.
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, this series is currently on hold until further notice!
To apply for the Ignatian Research Paradigm Learning Community, please complete this application form on Survey Monkey by Wednesday, March 18 at 12:00pm.
We will notify all applicants of their participation by Friday, March 20 at 5:00pm.
Please be sure to block off the three sessions in your calendar when you apply so that you are definitely available.
Any questions about the series can be directed to Kristi Lee (leekrist@seattleu.edu) or Jen Tilghman-Havens (tilghman@seattleu.edu).
*The application form for this series is separate from the registration form for other Center events.
One of our goals as a Center is to engage SU faculty in conversation around the deeper questions of academic practice, based on national and international research into higher education. Events are open to ALL SU faculty.
Download and print out our 20WQ What's happening flyer to post on your door or wall.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion
In this module of the series, participants will
It's important that participants attend all three sessions in the series and complete two short written assignments between sessions:
Lunch is provided at each session, with support from the Endowed Mission Fund.
The entire series is co-directed by David Green of the Center for Faculty Development and Jen Tilghman-Havens of the Center for Jesuit Education. They are atheist and Catholic, respectively, and both share a passion for this transformative educational approach.
Joining them in this module are Holly Slay Ferraro (Center for Faculty Development/Management) and Katherine Raichle (Center for Faculty Development/Psychology).
Twenty spaces are available.
Please apply for Winter Quarter's Ignatian Pedagogy Series by filling out this application form by [Applications are now closed].
We will notify all applicants of their participation by Friday, December 13.
Please be sure to block off the three sessions in your calendar when you apply so that you are definitely available.
If you have any questions about the Ignatian Pedagogy Series, please email faculty-development@seattleu.edu or call David Green (206-296-5386) or Jen Tilghman-Havens (206-296-2335).
How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching
Are you interested in finding out more about your students’ learning and adjusting your own courses as a result? How Learning Works, written by faculty developers from Carnegie Mellon University, is grounded in evidence from cognitive sciences, education, and psychology, and presents seven key principles that you can use to inform the design of your courses. Covering such topics as mastery, prior knowledge, motivation, and classroom climate, this book has gained an international reputation for its clarity, rigor, and practicality. In this four-session Learning Community, facilitated by Katherine Raichle (Center for Faculty Development), you’ll be able to increase your understanding of learning, plan concrete changes for your classes, and discuss the results of these changes with an interdisciplinary group of peers.
Over the course of this learning community, you'll:
This community is for any faculty member who would like to take a more research-based approach to teaching. Ideally, you would be teaching in Winter so that you can put new ideas into practice immediately and are therefore better able to contribute to group discussion and reflection. This will give everyone greater insight into the variability of teaching contexts and norms, and can lead to a deeper appreciation of disciplinary nuances in higher education.
How learning works: Seven research-based principles for smart teaching is 224 pages long, and the reading will be split across the four sessions to be manageable for participants.
The four dates in Winter Quarter are
»Registration is now closed.
Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership: A guide to implementing the transparency framework institution-wide to improve learning and retention
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI)
We know from decades of research that access to learning is inequitable for students, continuing an unjust pattern of underrepresentation and underachievement in higher education for specific groups of people. Faculty are often left feeling that addressing such huge discrepancies is beyond their control. Yet there are simple and immediate ways to create more equitable access to learning in your classes.
In this learning community, facilitated by Katherine Raichle (Center for Faculty Development), we will explore a simple and high-impact transformational approach to teaching – the Transparent Design in Learning and Teaching initiative in higher education (TILT). Put simply, TILT is an approach to teaching that helps students better understand how and why they are learning course content. Even tiny adjustments to teaching practices informed by TILT have been shown to bridge inequitable access to learning, enhancing learning for all students, while importantly benefiting underrepresented students in particular. Moreover, research has shown a lasting impact of TILT on student confidence, metacognitive self-awareness, sense of belonging, and persistence.
This is a hands-on and practice-oriented thematic learning community where we will learn about TILT and apply its principles to the design of assignments and teaching practices in our classes.
Over the four sessions, you'll learn how to:
This community is for any faculty member who is seeking to enhance their students’ learning and make their learning practices more equitably accessible to all students.
We will cover several selected readings, including sections of the book Transparent design in higher education teaching and leadership, a copy of which we will provide for you. The readings will be split across the four sessions to be manageable for participants.
The four dates in Winter Quarter are
»Registration is now closed.
The Chairs' Community of Practice is open to all current department chairs and chairs-elect, plus program directors and directors-elect who have faculty reporting to them directly (for example for performance reviews).
We gather twice per quarter.
Further details and how to register are available on the Community of Practice page here.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Sponsored Projects (OSP); facilitated by David Green and Jenna Isakson
Thu, Jan 23 | 1:30–2:30 | HUNT 100 | Coffee/tea provided
The “research on research” gives us good evidence on what helps faculty progress with their research, and in response, we’ve been launching Faculty Writing* Groups since 2007. [See below for our expansive definition of “writing.”] These groups provide you with camaraderie and accountability to achieve more in your scholarship. And they are intentionally interdisciplinary so that you remain the expert in your own field throughout.
This year, we are also organizing groups based on your career stage so that no one feels the need to mentor or to request mentoring within the group. This quarter’s launch is specifically for faculty who see themselves as being in the early career stage.
(We’ll be setting up groups in Spring Quarter for senior faculty.)
By the end of this session, you will be grouped with two or three other colleagues from across campus and will be ready to meet with your group independently and regularly to help you achieve more in your research – and with less stress.
Full details can be found by following this link to our webpage on Faculty Writing Groups.
»Registration is now closed
*"Writing:" When we say “writing,” we are using the definition from the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity: “Writing” means absolutely everything you do to lead to a final scholarly product – with the exception of reading secondary literature. So “writing” in this sense includes, for instance, IRB applications, interviews, lab work, studio work, computations, coding, analytics – as well as the more traditional aspect of writing a final product for publication. This is an expansive interpretation that works across academic fields.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI); Facilitated by Holly Slay Ferraro
Thu, Jan 30 AND Mar 12 | 2:00–3:30 | CASY 525 | Coffee/tea provided
Does your scholarship have an impact beyond your disciplinary community? Would you like to make a difference in the world by engaging in public discourse? The purpose of this workshop is to provide you, as a faculty member, with the tools that enable you to have a greater influence outside of your academic camps.
Op/Eds are opinion essays appearing in newspapers or magazines written by non-journalists. Highly regarded academics frequently write them (think Paul Krugman), and, when done well, they engage people in critical examinations of events and issues. Op/Ed writers have the power to challenge and rewrite oppressive narratives, to give voice to the marginalized and offer solutions to some of the most vexing issues impacting institutions and communities.
In this series, we’ll develop a small cohort of academics committed to making an impact through thoughtful public scholarship. Our goal is drafting op/ed pieces and working with experienced colleagues to move essays toward publication. We designed this workshop to amplify the voices of any faculty member who wishes to impact our world through public scholarship regardless of race, age, gender, etc. At the same time, we encourage the participation of voices that are typically and historically underrepresented in the media.
»Applications are now closed.
Facilitated by David Green and Holly Slay Ferraro
Fri, Feb 7 | 3:30–4:30 | HUNT 100 | Drinks and appetizers provided
Keeping on top of multiple research projects at different stages of development can be a challenge, especially when we’re doing so alongside a full teaching load and a raft of service commitments to the university, our own academic fields, and the community. So how do you maintain a bird’s-eye view of those projects in such a way that you keep to your planned timelines – and make those timelines manageable?
One method recommended by the National Center for Faculty Development and Diversity is the “Brunsma Research Queue” or BRQ – a practical, visual, and immediate means of keeping tabs on your progress and prioritizing your work.
In this one-hour session over drinks and appetizers, we’ll explore how to adapt the BRQ method to suit your own projects as well as how to replicate the BRQ in an electronic format.
Remember to bring along a list of your current scholarly projects so that you can try it out for yourself.
»Registration is now closed
Facilitated by David Green and Katherine Raichle
Mon, Feb 10 | 2:00–3:30 | STCN 210 | Appetizers, coffee, and tea provided
As faculty, we have been trained to be skeptics, which can influence our response to academic leaders: We may automatically ask “why?” questions and challenge the premise on which decisions or actions are based. So when we step into leadership roles ourselves, we shouldn’t be surprised to find that trust from our faculty colleagues isn’t immediately forthcoming.
At the same time, faculty discourse around university administration as “the dark side” means we can expect senior administrators to feel a degree of wariness toward us, too. Academic leaders can therefore find themselves in that uneasy “contact zone” between faculty and administration – a tricky, yet potentially productive and creative position to occupy.
How then do we demonstrate our trustworthiness as leaders such that our colleagues come to trust us? This question has arisen repeatedly in conversations with chairs and directors over the years, and in this session, we respond with a credibility framework – based on research in a range of fields – that can be adapted to thinking about how best to lead academic colleagues in your own unique context, as well as how to work productively toward trust with senior administrators.
*Workshops in the Faculty Leader Series are open to faculty who are department chairs, program directors with faculty reporting to them directly, and faculty associate/assistant deans. The registration form for this session is separate from other Center events.
»Registration is now closed
Optional Follow-up Session
Attendees who would like to check back in on this topic can do so in a later discussion and debrief.
Mon, Mar 9 | 2:00–3:00 | CASY 525 | Coffee/tea provided
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion (ODI); Facilitated by Holly Slay Ferraro
Thu, Feb 13 | 1:30–2:30 | Rolfe Room (ADAL Building) | Coffee/tea provided
When I completed my doctorate, I thought I was a scholar. But it was only when I had the courage to deviate from a safe, mainstream approach to my scholarship that I actually found passion for where I could really make a difference.
Stella Nkomo, University of Pretoria
Doctoral education has many things to recommend it. We read extensively. We write exhaustively. And we are socialized – quite thoroughly. Many of us have pursued research agendas determined early in our careers by our dissertation chairs or the departments in which we studied. But are they right for us today? And are they right for the kind of Jesuit institution Seattle University seeks to be?
The university’s ADVANCE grant from the National Science Foundation has prompted rich discussion on the breadth of research we already undertake at Seattle U and on the types of research we currently value. Our institutional landscape is shifting, opening up broader possibilities than the “traditional” research format.
In this panel discussion, we’ll hear from scholars who have chosen a variety of paths. Some have decided to do traditional discipline-based scholarship, while others have focused on the scholarship of teaching and learning or community-based research and activism. Many have been successful in winning tenure, some have become full professors, and some are living their best lives as non-tenure track faculty. Come and hear their stories and re-examine your own!
»Registration is now closed.
Facilitated by David Green
Thu, Feb 20 | 12:30–2:00 | HUNT 100 | Lunch provided
OR
Fri, Feb 21 | 12:30–2:00 | HUNT 100 | Lunch provided
With the high cost of higher education in the USA, many students and their families are understandably concerned about their career readiness on graduation, conscious that student loans will need paying off sooner, rather than later.
What students may not be aware of is the extent to which they build up a wide array of transferable skills before graduation – ones that employers and organizations are clamoring for. In some cases, they’ll also have artifacts to demonstrate those abilities, whether through written assignments, video presentations, creative works, or simply through evidence of their own advanced organizational processes. These skills can be intellectual, interpersonal, (intra)personal, creative, and technical.
In this session, we’ll share a pilot project that maps the skills that students already use in an entire major, and you will have a chance to try it out for one or two of your own courses. These “curriculum maps for skills” can serve two functions: first, they show current and potential students what skills they can expect to practice and develop during your course, and second, at the program level, they allow teams to gain an overview of an entire program and look for potential gaps that might be filled through only minor adjustments. In turn, these maps could become useful resources to add to programs’ web pages, particularly for programs where there is no direct, linear career target, such as many social science, humanities, and arts fields.
Bring along a copy of a syllabus or two so that you can test out the mapping process for your own classes. We particularly encourage department chairs and program directors to join us!
»Registration is now closed.
Optional Follow-up Session
Attendees who would like to check back in on this topic can do so in a later discussion and debrief.
Fri, Mar 13 | 12:15–1:15 | HUNT 100 | Lunch provided
