91福利社

A message from the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning

From Beck Krefting, Director of the Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning:

This summer, the CLTL team has been working hard to prepare programming and events of interest to faculty and staff. The team consists of myself, the incoming director of the CLTL; Senior Administrative Coordinator Terri Mariani; and three student workers, Michael DeCarlen-Bumiller 鈥�23, Lila Norton 鈥�24, and Cheyenne Tanner-Cotman 鈥�24.

Forthcoming newsletters will spotlight team members and highlight creative ways of engaging learning, drawing from the rich pool of faculty and staff across campus. We are circulating an August newsletter because there are many opportunities for faculty and staff in the coming fall that will take some pre-planning and registration, and other events for which we hope you will save the date. Read on to learn more.

New Faculty Orientation

We are busy preparing for the arrival of new faculty. Orientation for new faculty will be held on Thursday and Friday, Sept. 1 and 2, in the Tang Teaching Museum鈥檚 Payne Room. If you鈥檇 like to take a peek at the , you are welcome to do so. Shortly thereafter, the New Faculty Learning Community will be up and running. A list of fall activities will be circulated among new faculty, posted to the CLTL website, and emailed to chairs and program directors at the start of the semester.

Teaching Support Network

We are happy to announce that the Teaching Support Network will now be offered as part of CLTL鈥檚 ongoing initiatives in the coming years. This highly successful program, originally funded by the Mellon Foundation (2018-2021), pairs faculty for one semester to engage in activities focused on pedagogical development. This could entail peer observations, exchanging course syllabi, reading and discussing pedagogical scholarship, sharing strategies for handling challenges in the classroom, assisting with course development, and so on.

The CLTL director will match faculty and invite all those participating to gather for a kick-off meeting on Wednesday, Sept. 21, from 4 to 5 p.m., in the Weller Room of the library. During the semester, participants should make time to meet with their co-mentor two to three times. The CLTL will provide lunch tickets to subsidize one of those meetings. A final wrap-up session will be held at the conclusion of the semester.

All efforts will be made to pair you with someone whose teaching schedule does not conflict with yours and whose pedagogical development activities align with your own.

If you are interested in participating in the coming semester, please complete this form on the CLTL website by Friday, Sept. 9.

Racial Justice Learning Communities

Two learning communities (LC) will run this fall in conjunction with the Africana Studies and the Humanities at Skidmore: Transnational Explorations in Social Justice grant from the Mellon Foundation. Please review the options available on the CLTL website and, if interested, contact the respective facilitator(s) directly by Friday, Sept. 9. Each LC begins the week of Sept. 19 and will involve commitments of approximately two hours weekly during the semester. Faculty and staff who participate in a learning community will be compensated $750.

Racial Justice Teaching Challenge

Winston Grady-Willis, professor and director of Black studies, and CLTL Director Beck Krefting, professor of American studies, are excited to announce the continuation of the Racial Justice Teaching Challenge (RJTC), in tandem with the Africana Studies and the Humanities at Skidmore: Transnational Explorations of Social Justice grant from the Mellon Foundation. The RJTC moving forward is consistent with prior iterations. However, we would like to invite professional staff working on projects or initiatives fulfilling the criteria to add their names and projects to our list. Staff members in a variety of offices are educating students and each other, and we would like to capture and document that work as part of the RJTC.

To learn more about the criteria for participating in this ongoing challenge and to signal your participation, please go to the CLTL website.

Mark Your Calendars!

Digital Collections Workshop with David Seilor, Visual Resources and Digitization Director

• Date: Friday, Sept. 16, from 2 to 3 p.m. in the Weller Room of the library
• Description: Lucy Scribner Library鈥檚 are derived primarily from analog materials contained within the , where both the College鈥檚 archives and rare book collections are housed. This workshop will include a detailed overview of the collections鈥� depth and scope; will provide attendees with useful tips and strategies for navigating and searching the collections; and will present some sample case studies for use of the material contained within.

Bridge Experience Brown Bag Lunch Series with Bridge Experience and Civic Engagement Director Eric Morser. More details about the fall series will be included in the September newsletter.

• Date: Friday, Sept. 23, from noon to 1 p.m. in the Weller Room of the library.
• Description: Are you teaching a Bridge Experience course and want to compare notes with other faculty across disciplines? Come share ideas, work through rough patches, and otherwise join a conversation around the rewards and challenges of teaching Bridge Experience classes.

Super Courses: Fostering Deep Learning with Ken Bain (rescheduled from last spring)

• Date: Tuesday, Sept. 27, from 3:30 to 5 p.m. over Zoom
• Description: Ken Bain, author of 鈥淪uper Courses: The Future of Teaching and Learning鈥� (2021), will conduct an interactive workshop on 鈥渄eep鈥� approaches and achievement in learning. He will challenge the way faculty think about pedagogy and help them develop specific strategies they may implement in their classes. The goal is to consider the foundations of Super Courses, which use researched-based elements to build a 鈥渘atural critical learning environment鈥� that fosters intrinsic motivation, self-directed learning, and self-reflective reasoning. This event is sponsored by a grant from the Mellon Foundation in support of pedagogical and curricular development at 91福利社(2018-2021).

Assessments to Foster Deep Learning with Ken Bain (rescheduled from last spring)

• Date: Wednesday, Sept. 28, from 1:30 to 2:30 p.m. over Zoom
• Description: Super Courses require assessments that motivate students to learn deeply and to take control of their own learning. In this more focused follow-up workshop, participants will begin to explore more effective assessment strategies and will emerge with concrete plans for implementing them in their classes.

Helpful resources

As you prepare for fall classes, here are some useful tips for course construction and teaching on the first day of class:

91福利社

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