Details and FAQs on the COVID-19 Response website.
The Center for Faculty Development offers a number of programs and events which may be specifically useful for late-career faculty.
Co-sponsored by the Center for Jesuit Education and 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 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
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
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 Holly Slay Ferraro and David Green
Tuesdays | 2:00–3:00 | Zoom link will be provided upon registration
Wednesdays | 11:00–12:00 | Zoom link will be provided upon registration
Come together with fellow faculty as a “community of practice” for small-group conversation about whatever’s on your mind.
Maybe you want to talk about self-care and health or life–work balance while isolated at home; perhaps you’re interested in sharing new work routines you’ve developed or how you’re supporting your students to do the same; or maybe you simply want to pick up some binge-watching or reading-for-pleasure recommendations to help you wind down at the end of the day.
A community of practice (Wenger, 1998) is an informal gathering of individuals in similar roles who are spread out across an organization, rather than in frequent contact with one another. We’ve been using this model with department chairs since 2011; now that we are less frequently in contact due to the COVID-19 crisis, the model now applies to faculty in general, too.
In the community of practice model, you – as participants – decide what topics are important to you right now, and we organize you into small groups based on those interests.
The Center for Faculty Development's role is simply to facilitate the process and to collate any notes for distribution – if you decide to keep any.
We’ll run a few of these sessions and then get your feedback on whether they’re working for you. If they are, then we’ll keep them going for the rest of the quarter. You’ll need to register to receive the Zoom link, but you don’t have to register for every session.
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 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 small-group 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.
Be sure to have a copy of your up-to-date CV with you for the session.
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
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Center for Faculty Development, and the Center for Digital Learning and Innovation; facilitated by Holly Slay Ferraro
Mondays: May 11 and June 1 | 12:45–1:45 | Zoom link will be sent upon registration
Your courses focus on race, gender, sexuality, or other issues where students encounter new ideas that run counter to master narratives. And now you’re teaching during a global pandemic, an environment where race, gender, class, and more are thrust onto the national stage. Perhaps you feel overwhelmed as you contemplate teaching polarizing content during this time of crisis.
In this Community of Practice, we will share questions and ideas with others who are also teaching hot-button topics. A Community of Practice (Wenger, 1998) is an informal gathering of individuals in similar roles who are spread out across an organization, rather than in frequent contact with one another. The Center for Faculty Development has been using this model with department chairs since 2011; this model is particularly beneficial now since faculty are less able to meet and share best practices.
Our explorations could range from opportunities to challenges faced at every stage of the teaching cycle. Through a community learning approach, we could extract lessons on how to manage resistance, communicate across differences, and integrate current events.
Using the strategies we co-create in this Community of Practice, you will be better able to prepare your students for discussing hot button topics themselves by pushing them to learn and grow in a way that’s appropriate for living through a global crisis.
Co-sponsored by the Office of Sponsored Projects and the Center for Faculty Development; facilitated by Holly Slay Ferraro, David Green, and Jenna Isakson
Thu, May 14 | 4:00–5:00 | Zoom link will be sent upon registration
What happens to our scholarly and creative efforts when our lives have been significantly disrupted?
Clearly there is no single “right” answer to this question: individual contexts require individualized strategies and orientations to help us find our own balance in an unbalanced world.
Perhaps for you, scholarship pales into insignificance compared to supporting your students, caring for relatives and for yourself, and/or home-schooling your children; it’s a luxury you need to let go of. Or maybe time spent on scholarship provides you a welcome reprieve from email, social media, and the news – a chance to get comfortably lost in ideas and projects. Alternatively, you may be someone for whom scholarship is a form of healing, enabling you to think and write your way through the present trauma to new realizations and a deeper appreciation of what matters to you most.
Whatever your stance – and whatever your discipline, career stage, rank, or research funding – we invite you to join us for this happy-hour conversation to share and explore the myriad approaches to scholarship that are enabling you to stay grounded in the age of COVID-19.
In addition to creating a space for you to share with colleagues, staff from the Office of Sponsored Projects and Center for Faculty Development will be on hand to reflect on “nuts-and-bolts” approaches to addressing the challenges associated with timelines and/or research funding when so many factors are beyond our collective control.
Outside the session, we’ll share a few resources that provide contrasting perspectives on scholarly productivity in a time of crisis as well as resources for managing a sponsored project through this new environment.
Remember to bring your own beverages and snacks!
Co-sponsored by the Faculty Ombudsperson, the Center for Faculty Development, and the Center for Community Engagement (CCE); facilitated by David Green and C. McKenna Lang
Fri, May 15 | 2:00–3:30 | Zoom link will be sent upon registration
The arrival of COVID-19 presents us with unprecedented stresses that tax our cognitive capacities and flexibility – just at the point when we need them the most. Faculty and department chairs are reporting that this global crisis means more emailing, more rapid communications than ever done before, and more virtual meetings.
Our channels of communication have necessarily shifted and now bring with them new stressors. Research tells us that email has a negativity bias: if we think our message is positive, it’s received as neutral; if we think it’s neutral, it’s read as negative (Goleman 2013). Meanwhile virtual meetings sap our energies and concentration more swiftly than happens in person (Jiang, 2020).
Under these circumstances, it’s not surprising that we may be experiencing greater communication challenges. At the same time, this transformational moment may be providing an opportunity to connect in new ways and to acknowledge our shared humanness.
So how do we resolve our inevitable miscommunications? How do we connect with colleagues compassionately to deepen understanding and move forward constructively? How do we bridge differences to increase learning and respect?
In this session, co-sponsored by the Faculty Ombudsperson, Center for Faculty Development, and Center for Community Engagement, we’ll experiment with using Marshall Rosenberg’s model of nonviolent communication (also called “compassionate communication”) – a four-stage process for engaging with one another to rebuild trust through listening empathically and expressing ourselves honestly. Rooted in social justice, NVC prioritizes respect for differing worldviews. While the model appears straightforward, it requires practice and care – as well as asking us to unlearn our cultural norms in communication. The rewards can be significant, and when effectively used, this carefully developed communication method can lead to smoother and more productive teamwork.
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, May 29 | 2:00–3:00 | Zoom
Co-sponsored by the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, the Center for Faculty Development, and the Wismer Professor for Gender and Diversity Studies; Facilitated by Holly Slay Ferraro and David Green
Fri, May 29 | 3:30–5:00 | Zoom link will be sent upon registration
As we’ve entered into the COVID-19 crisis, some professors have expressed concerns about rigor being sacrificed for flexibility and care for students. Others have announced gratitude for the current turmoil unveiling the problems of rigor.
Rigor has as many meanings as professors who seek to instill it into their courses. For some, it means creating challenging courses where few, who exhibit extraordinary effort, can be successful (in terms of high grades). For others, rigor is the creation of courses that stretch students to consider perspectives they have not considered before taking the course. For others still, rigor is a pretext for perpetuating discrimination and inequality. For them, the word is synonymous with academic hazing designed to replicate taken-for-granted disciplinary biases and prejudicial assumptions.
In this candid conversation, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, Center for Faculty Development, and the Wismer Professor for Gender and Diversity Studies create space for frank and honest dialogue on rigor. We begin the discussion with a brief look at the research on rigor and open it to faculty perspectives and concerns.
Retirement planning
Click here to see a bibliography of resources pertaining to aging and retirement (compiled by Jacquelyn Miller, 2015).
