FACULTY ROLES IN HIGH-IMPACT PRACTICES

Conference Program and Resources

Thursday, March 25, 2010

2:00 – 5:00 p.m.
Pre-conference Workshops

Workshop 1: Structures that Advance High-Impact Learning Practices
High-Impact Practices (HIPs) such as first-year seminars, collaborative assignments, and community-based learning can demonstrably enhance student engagement, knowledge, and retention. Participants will explore how academic affairs and student affairs educators can work together to develop a coherent and developmental approach to HIPs. Participants will examine current research about HIPs and explore means of choosing practices compatible with their specific campus type, mission, and student population.
Ande Diaz, Associate Dean of Students and Director, Intercultural Center—Roger Williams University and William Keith, Professor of Communication—University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Workshop 2: Multimedia-Assisted Learning
Computer-and multimedia-assisted learning expands our understanding and construction of knowledge, allows the sharing of information worldwide and helps students advance in ways they could not otherwise experience. Multimedia technologies can also provide access to higher education to those for who distance learning is the only option. Participants will discuss a variety of ways for incorporating multimedia into the learning experience and address the challenges of time and resources to effectively incorporate multimedia approaches in their courses and professional development.
Ken Graetz, Director of Teaching, Learning, and Technology Services—Winona State University

Workshop 3: Connecting Faculty Learning, Commitment, and Agency to High-Impact Practices
This workshop, intended for faculty and academic administrators, examines the roles of learning, agency, professional relationships, and commitments in advancing faculty careers. Participants will gain awareness of a new framework for faculty development, concrete strategies for supporting professional growth in high-impact activities, and plan for their professional growth needs.
KerryAnn O’Meara, Associate Professor of Higher Education—University of Maryland-College Park and Aimee LaPointe Terosky, Affiliate Faculty, Higher Education Program—Teachers College, Columbia University

Workshop 4: Enhancing the Professional Experiences of Faculty
The roles of faculty and staff educators are becoming more demanding, as expectations for a college education are increasing to meet the rigors of a turbulent world. High-impact educational practices are essential in preparing students for twenty-first-century life, but how can we help educators promote this form of learning on our campuses? Faculty and staff learning communities are one among many ways to enhance professional experiences, improve teaching and learning, and advance student success. Participants will explore definitions of high-impact practice, the roles faculty and staff may play to advance these practices, and multiple campus practices that help faculty evolve and lead in these changes.
Carolyn Haynes, Director, Honors and Scholars Program, and Professor of English—Miami University and Michael Theall, President—Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education and Associate Professor of Teacher Education—Youngstown State University

Workshop 5: Supporting Deep Engagement of Faculty in New Approaches to Student Learning
As faculty members continue to learn more each day about new approaches to teaching and learning and advances in their own fields, how can they evolve their practices to reflect these new understandings? How can faculty help students deepen their understanding of specific areas of knowledge and integrate and apply that learning to the unscripted challenges of the day? Participants will examine model programs and strategies that encourage and advance faculty innovation in, leadership for, and engagement with active learning and new student-faculty collaborations.
Maria Maisto, President, Board of Directors—New Faculty Majority: The National Coalition for Adjunct and Contingent Equity and Karen E. Santos, Executive Director, Center for Faculty Innovation and Professor of Exceptional Education, College of Education—James Madison University

7:00 – 8:30 p.m.
Welcome and Overview of the Conference
Keynote Address                                                                       

Academic Excellence and Civic Engagement: Constructing a Third Space for Higher Education
Although many students and faculty agree that civic and community engagement are important, many also say they “don’t have time for it” in their crowded class schedules, their teaching loads, or their efforts to get tenure. In this keynote address, Nancy Cantor will argue that civic engagement cannot be an “extra,” but is essential for higher education in a complicated, fast-paced world. She’ll share her experiences with Scholarship in Action as it is evolving at Syracuse, where the university and many partners are making a “third space” for reciprocal learning, discovery, and innovation, addressing critical social issues in imaginative—and sometimes unconventional—ways.
Nancy Cantor, Chancellor and President—Syracuse University

8:30– 9:30 p.m.
Poster Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 1:  Creating Civic Professionals through a Capstone Internship Seminar
The goals of undergraduate liberal education include the development of intellectual literacy, critical-thinking skills, and a sense of moral and ethical responsibility to one’s community.  At the same time, professors are being called on to help students successfully navigate the work world prior to graduation.   How might these goals be effectively meshed?  In this poster, the facilitator will feature dimensions of a capstone internship in sociology.  The internship consists of 144 hours of pre-professional work experience in a career field of the student’s choice.  Through selected readings, speakers, guided class discussions, and targeted class assignments in an accompanying seminar, students: (a) uncover the socio-political dynamics of their internship organizations; (b) analyze internal and external structural inequities; (c) explore models of effective employee interventions through case study analyses; and (d) learn to understand and appreciate the role of “civic professionals”—those who understand the human context of their work and how it is connected to larger social purposes.
Susan J. Stall, Chair of Sociology, African and African American Studies, Latino and Latin American Studies, and Women's Studies Programs—Northeastern Illinois University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 2:  Intentional Learning Communities: Strategies and Practices in Higher Education
Numerous definitions of learning communities exist, but most center on a vision of faculty and students—and sometimes administrators, staff, and members of the larger community—working collaboratively toward shared, significant academic goals.  In an intentional learning community, faculty and students alike have opportunities and the responsibility to learn from and help teach each other.  The faculty member’s role shifts from delivering course content to designing learning environments and experiences and serving as facilitator, coach, and role model for learners.  This poster will feature an intentional learning community model and highlight practices Shenandoah University faculty have found to be effective.  The facilitators will also share personal experiences using the intentional learning community model and recommend strategies and practices for future use. 
Michelle Luttrell, Doctoral Candidate and Teresa Masiello, Doctoral Candidate—both of Shenandoah University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 3:  Got Game? Teaching College Skills to First-Year Students
Few first-year college students would compete for admission into a writing-intensive college skills class. Given this reality, an interdisciplinary teaching team created a first-year course titled "Cornerstone: Computer Games and the Lessons They Teach", which anchors students in their lived experience while requiring the necessary reading, writing, research, and analysis to build needed skills.  This poster will introduce participants in some of the transferrable techniques the teaching team uses, such as guided library database research, writing a National Enquirer article, service learning, and role-playing with heckling.  The facilitators will discuss how these creative activities foster intellectual and practical skills including inquiry and analysis, critical thinking, written and oral communication, and quantitative and information literacy.  Participants will also have a chance to discuss the broad applicability of these techniques across multiple disciplines and topics. http://guides.stlcc.edu/gotgame
Margaret Meyer Hvatum, Associate Professor and Information Systems Program Coordinator and Janice K. Hovis, Associate Professor of Library Services—both of St Louis Community College at Meramec

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 4:   Exploring Academic Inquiry and Cultural Identity through the Local Environment
The Tulane InterDisciplinary Experience Seminars (TIDES) are designed to introduce first-year students to college-level academic inquiry as well as the cultural and historical characteristics of the New Orleans region. This poster will address how the presenters have integrated an environmental service learning experience into the course to help meet these objectives. TIDE 162, Flora and Fauna of Louisiana: Cultural Identity Formation in the South, introduces students to the region by examining how local flora and fauna have played a role in the formation of a cultural identity specific to the South and to Louisiana. The course also introduces students to public service by pairing them with a local nonprofit environmental agency working to protect Louisiana’s wetlands. The poster will include the course syllabus; the objectives and goals of the TIDES program; information on course activities; and student reflections and feedback on their experience. The information will be useful to faculty interested in engaging students new to service learning in a course structure designed to foster inquiry, cultural awareness, and public service.
http://tides.tulane.edu
http://tulane.edu/cps
Sarah Andert, Internship Program Coordinator and Agnieszka Nance, Assistant Director—both of Center for Public Service, Tulane University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 5:  SOAR 4: The First Year of a First-Year Learning Community
Scholars on a Roll (SOAR 4) is a new learning community at UDC that has the the goal of improving student retention and success for first year students who have been placed into developmental English and math.  In SOAR 4, four courses—English, math, sociology, and freshman orientation—are linked together through integrative assignments.  The program also has a common theme, which for this year is “From Broke to Bread,” as well as a common reading.  Working with members of the first-year experience committee and the counseling and advisement center, the faculty meet regularly to discuss students, coordinate assignments, plan trips, and conduct assessments.  An early alert system has been established and the 42 students in the cohort are monitored through designated advisors.  The program has a final capstone project that reflects the learning goals of all of the courses.  In this poster, the facilitators will highlight program successes (capstone projects, student portfolios) and plans for improvement.
Arlene King-Berry, Professor of Education; Helene Krauthamer, Professor of English; LaVerne Blagmon-Earl, Professor of Math; and Walter Redmond, Professor of Sociology—all of University of the District of Columbia

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 6:  Building, Promoting, and Supporting Successful Online Learning Communities
This poster session will highlight experiences and reflections on pertinent issues related to online learning communities and strategies for fostering meaningful online discussion in undergraduate- and graduate-level courses.  The poster will draw on practical experiences with online collaboration from an accredited teacher education program, and participants will have the chance to talk about how techniques can be generalized to many other areas.  The main purposes of sharing such reflections are to: (a) explore ways to develop, implement, and assess pedagogical strategies used to promote effective online learning communities/collaboration; (b) describe methods to enhance online discussion techniques to maximize learning; and (c) reflect on the collaborative experiences from the perspective of professors and students.
Jennifer Lauria, Assistant Professor of Childhood Education and (contributor, not attending) Stephen Preskill, Chair and Professor of Education—both of Wagner College

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 7:  Thinking About Thinking: Critical Thinking in a First-Year Program
Tools that foster critical thinking can be considered high-impact practices because they provide students with a skill that adapts to any classroom and any course of study.  Western Kentucky University successfully made critical thinking the core of its first-year program in 2008, thus giving first-year students a foundational skill for success.  In this session, facilitators will: (a) explain and illustrate the curricular revision process; (b) provide copies of a critical thinking guide and essay that is used for assessment; (c) discuss and illustrate how critical thinking skills are adapted to other classrooms; and (d) highlight data that describe students’ response to the critical thinking emphasis.
Sharon K. Buzzard, Director, First-Year Program and Steve C. Wiegenstein, Visiting Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies—both of Western Kentucky University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 8:  Can You Engage Me? Developing Students Committed to Learning and Doing
Through a poster presentation that incorporates video, this session will highlight a model for first-year seminars that seeks to engage students in a transdisciplinary topic that has a social justice focus and an experiential component.  The facilitators will present data and discuss whether developing a commitment to one's education and developing a commitment to one's community are intertwined.
Nancy McHugh, Associate Professor and Chair of Philosophy and Miguel Martinez-Saenz, Assistant Provost for First Year Experience—both of Wittenberg University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 9:  Incorporating Service Learning into a Variety of Psychology Courses
This poster will summarize how three psychology professors from the same institution incorporated service learning into six different courses (child development, adolescence, abnormal psychology, child abnormal psychology, and two separate research courses).  Participation in service learning varied from 2 to 35 students per course.  Students provided both direct service (e.g., tutoring, mentoring, co-leading therapy groups) and program evaluation to nine different non-profit agencies. Materials provided in the poster session will include course syllabi, service learning assignments, and samples of students’ work (journals, projects, and papers).  The facilitators will describe challenges and successes they experienced in incorporating service learning and share testimonials from the non-profits about the impact of the service on their agencies.
Stephanie A. Little, Associate Professor of Psychology and Faculty Coordinator of Service Learning and Mary Jo Zembar, Professor of Psychology—both of Wittenberg University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
Poster 10:  The LEAP Campus Action Network
Designed to champion the value of undergraduate liberal education for all students, AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative engages the public with core questions about what really matters in college and promotes a set of essential learning outcomes as the preferred framework for educational excellence.The Campus Action Network (CAN) component brings together colleges, universities, and organizations that are committed to liberal education, helps them to improve their efforts to ensure all students achieve essential liberal education outcomes, and highlights campus practices that work.Participants are invited to visit this poster to learn more about the LEAP vision, campus exemplars, and action plans developed during a CAN pre-conference workshop.
Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, Vice President, Office of Education and Institutional Renewal and Director of CAN—AAC&U

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
Poster 11:  Faculty Characteristics, Department Culture, and Participation in a Campus-Wide Undergraduate Research Conference
A growing body of evidence exists to demonstrate the benefits of undergraduate research as a high-impact practice that can foster student progress and success.  As a key part of undergraduate research, campus conferences are becoming more commonplace to showcase faculty–student collaboration.  This poster will feature a study that explored conference participation based on faculty characteristics and department culture, with the goal of understanding faculty motivation and increasing faculty participation.  The facilitators used data from more than 350 research projects, representing the scholarship of more than 600 mentored students, to analyze factors related to faculty engagement and participation over an eight-year period.  This research, while conducted at an urban comprehensive institution, has implications for a broad range of institutions—for anyone wishing to establish an undergraduate research conference, for institutions that would like to broaden participation beyond the natural sciences, and for those interested in increasing faculty participation as research mentors.
Susan L. Holak, Associate Provost for Institutional Effectiveness; Warrick J. Bell, Coordinator of Institutional Research and Assessment; Kristen Lindtvedt, Library Multi-Media Specialist; and (contributor, not attending) William J. Fritz, Provost and Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs—all of City University of New York College of Staten Island

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
Poster 12: Service by the Numbers: Service-Learning Projects in Undergraduate Mathematics
Service-learning in the mathematics curriculum provides a rich opportunity for students to learn mathematics while contributing to their communities.  This session will describe five different projects that can be incorporated throughout the undergraduate curriculum.  Examples of mathematics service-learning experiences that will be discussed include tutoring and afterschool programs (pre-service teaching), designing solar cookers for women in Africa from parabolic surfaces (algebra), environmental data monitoring and analysis (statistics), building ramps for the elderly through Habitat for Humanity (geometry–slopes and angles), and designing transportation routes (discrete/combinatorial math) for Meals on Wheels.  Mathematics service-learning projects can be a mechanism for effectively translating seemingly abstract principles such as algebra, geometry, and trigonometry into practical applications.  Through service-learning experiences, students are able to see renewed value in their education by meeting community needs, applying knowledge to real-world situations, and effectively “making a difference.”
Joanne Caniglia, Faculty Associate of Service Learning and Associate Professor of Mathematics Education—Kent State University Kent Campus and Elene Contis, Director of Creative Scientific Inquiry Experience Project and Professor of Chemistry—Eastern Michigan University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
Poster 13:  High-Impact Approaches to Faculty Development
Faculty members often participate in faculty development in isolation—grouped with similar faculty from similar institutions and discussing specific discipline-related topics that are sometimes only tangentially related to student learning.  We believe that there are better models: models that incorporate diverse views, diverse institutional types, and interdisciplinarity.  Unfortunately, faculty and administrators frequently don't know how this can be done, or how high-impact faculty development is being accomplished at other schools.  This poster will showcase how the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities statewide center for teaching and learning developed a way for faculty members across the state to come together—at low cost—to discuss teaching and learning issues.  This model can be easily adapted by others to create low-cost, high-impact ways to promote faculty development among large multicampus institutions, state systems, or independent colleges or universities working collaboratively.
Thomas I. Wortman, Assistant Director, Center for Teaching and Learning—Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
Poster 14:  Creating a Web of Interlocking Initiatives: High-Impact Practices in General Education
This poster will feature the results of a survey of faculty members teaching general education courses in an urban historically black university (HBCU).  The objective of the survey was to inform the design of a faculty development module aimed at advancing the use of high-impact practices (HIPs) more intentionally across multiple points in time, thus creating a coherent web of interlocking student success interventions.  The findings were summarized in a HIPs–general education program map.  The analysis of survey results and an interpretation of the map assisted in building faculty awareness of HIPs by: (a) clarifying the purposes of HIPs in the context of general education outcomes, (b) capturing faculty perceptions about the value of HIPs, and (c) focusing limited resources by identifying specific target areas for faculty development and curricular enhancements.  Attendees will receive the survey instrument, the map, and the curriculum for the HIPs faculty development module.
Enrique G. Zapatero, Director, Center for the Enhancement of Teaching, Learning, and Advising and Alexei G. Matveev, Director, Quality Enhancement and Critical Thinking Studies—both of Norfolk State University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
Poster 15:  Active-Engagement Classroom Strategies: Joyful Experiences and Hard-Learned Lessons
Research shows that high-impact practices such as collaborative assignments, learning communities, and a focus on quantitative reasoning and communication are all beneficial to student learning.  However, these faculty-intensive practices are being touted just as our student populations are becoming more diverse, especially in their varied levels of problem-solving expertise, and just as budget cuts force us toward larger class sizes, bigger workloads, and greater numbers of contingent faculty.  The physics department at Oregon State University has managed these conflicting pressures by implementing a curriculum development model that features shared ownership of the curriculum and a culture of explicit experimentation with active-engagement classroom strategies.  This poster will feature some of the joyful experiences and hard-learned lessons from twelve years of experience with a reformed curriculum at the upper-division level and now, two years of experience scaling up practices to large enrollment lower-division course sequences.
Corinne A. Manogue, Director of the Paradigms in Physics Project; (contributors, not attending) Henri Jansen, Chair, Department of Physics; and Dedra Demaree, Assistant Professor of Physics—all of Oregon State University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
Poster 16:  Faculty Engagement in Service Learning and Community-Based Research: A Seven State Snapshot
In what ways are higher education faculty involved in service learning and community-based research? What specific elements do faculty members identify as challenging in the use of these high-impact practices?  How are faculty personally and professionally affected by the use of service learning and community-based research?  The Western Region Campus Compact Consortium explored these questions and more as part of its Faculty Engagement Survey, launched across seven states and 47 campuses in Spring 2009.  This poster will highlight findings from the study and allow participants to explore how to deepen and broaden faculty use of service learning and community-based research on campus and beyond.
RaeLyn Axlund, Director of Research and Assessment—Washington Campus Compact and Tanya  Renner, Professor or Psychology—Kapi’olani Community College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 17:  Tackling Large-Scale Problems Through Sustained Interdisciplinary Undergraduate Collaboration
This poster details the Water and Health Task Force Project, a semester-long interdisciplinary project uniting faculty and students across four courses based in geology, environmental science, public policy, and communication arts.  Each course had discipline-specific goals and objectives, but all students participated in shared field trips, readings, and guest lectures around the topic of water and public health.  The culminating experience was the formation of “task force” teams, comprised of 4-5 students enrolled in each of the four courses.  Each task force: (a) identified and researched a regional or global water and health issue; (b) proposed strategies to ameliorate the problem; and (c) developed a public communication campaign about the issue.  This poster will highlight the successes and challenges of an intensive interdisciplinary project from the perspective of faculty and students.
Vesta Silva, Assistant Professor of Communication Arts and Director of Speech—Allegheny College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 18:  Research for Good: Understanding the Impact of Affordable Housing and Community-Building Through a Capstone Experience
For the past five years, seniors in sociology at CSU-Channel Islands have been charged with providing research labor on a sociological question of their choice to area non-profit agencies.  This poster session will report the results of one such project involving collaboration with a regional economic development corporation that develops affordable housing for farm worker families.  This work extended a 2006 project, where students interviewed families shortly after moving into new homes.  In 2009, students conducted more extensive interviews with the families about their day-to-day lives since moving into the community.  Questions centered on such topics as community organizing, children's grades, and family health, and students were able to make preliminary observations about the power that decent housing has to transform lives.  Beyond the extended example of this Capstone project, the poster will also look at best practices in building partnerships with area agencies and how best to help students make connections between what is happening in their community and academic research.
Elizabeth Hartung, Professor and Chair, Sociology and Anthropology—California State University-Channel Islands; Maricela Lemus, Teacher—Oxnard Unified School District; and Lazaro Enriquez, Corrections Services Officer—Ventura County Probation Agency

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 19:  Using a Theoretical Research Proposal in Biology to Promote Higher-Order Cognitive Skills
Most undergraduate curricula are structured so that students learn through courses focused on specific topics.  Though some courses may build on one another within a curriculum, students aren’t often given opportunities to synthesize information across courses in their discipline.  At the same time, many courses cover topics for which there is an excess of content, which can result in student learning being limited to lower-level skills such as knowledge, comprehension, or perhaps application.  In this poster, the facilitators will highlight their experiences with using a theoretical research proposal as an approach to promote the analysis, synthesis, and evaluation of information in biology.  In addition to promoting higher-order cognitive skills, this approach has helped students to obtain other skills including learning how to ask scientific questions, developing a logical proposal to address a real problem, writing effectively about science, and reading and critically reviewing the scientific literature.
Jennifer S. Stanford, Assistant Teaching Professor and Laura E. Duwel, Assistant Department Head of Biology—both of Drexel University

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 20:  Original Research in the Undergraduate Science Classroom and Beyond
Original research by undergraduate students serves multiple objectives in the pursuit of new understandings of the natural world and in the training of the next generation of both scientists and non-scientists alike.  In two diverse life science areas, genomics and environmental studies, multiple institutions are using real-world questions and problems as a context for science education.  In this poster session, three faculty representing different types and sizes of colleges/universities will illustrate three successful models for engaging groups of students in projects that involve them in interdisciplinary, real-world scientific issues and questions.  The facilitators will highlight the transformative impact on students, faculty, and institutions.  Participants will have the opportunity to engage in conversation about the ideas and explore practical projects that would be feasible at their own institutions, regardless of the student population, institutional classification, budgetary issues, or work load demands.
Louise Temple, Professor of Integrated Science and Technology—James Madison University; Diane Husic, Professor and Chair, Department of Biology—Moravian College; and David Dunbar, Associate Professor of Biology—Cabrini College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 21:  Streamlining the Integration Process Within Learning Communities
The development of a learning community curriculum can be extremely time- and energy-consuming, causing some faculty and even administrators to view it as prohibitively “expensive.”  In order to successfully begin and then sustain a learning community program, this obstacle must be overcome.  Administrators can support faculty using visual models and collaborative exercises that both enhance and streamline the experience of integrating interdisciplinary learning communities.  Integration includes developing a theme, determining assignments and activities, and perhaps even assessment.  This poster will take participants through the process of integrating an experimental learning community for the purpose of understanding how to implement the process at their own two-year or four-year institutions. 
Alison C. Jameson, Director of Learning Communities and Faculty Development and Larissa Verta, Associate Academic Dean—both of Lehigh Carbon Community College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 22:  Engaging Non-Traditional Students in Civic Engagement Programs: Benefits and Barriers
This poster will focus on student participation in a certificate program in civic engagement, one mechanism for integrating civic learning into undergraduate education at the University of Alaska Anchorage.  In particular, the facilitators will address enrollment in the certificate.  Whereas UAA’s introductory course and many service learning courses have proven popular, no students have yet graduated with the certificate.  The poster will highlight demographic data about the students who have taken the introductory course and examples of syllabi.  They will also highlight findings from focus groups conducted with graduates of the course regarding their experiences of the course, its impact on their decision to continue with the certificate (or not), and its impact on their broader educational and civic development.  Finally, they will identify trends and draw conclusions about how to improve the course and make the certificate option more attractive for a non-traditional student population.  The facilitators will also incorporate participant experiences and thoughts into a larger discussion about engaging non-traditional students in realizing civic learning outcomes in undergraduate education.
Tracey Burke, Associate Professor of Social Work; Tara Smith, Associate Professor of English as a Second Language; and (contributor, not attending) Diane Hirshberg, Associate Professor of Education Policy—all of University of Alaska Anchorage

Models and Assessment - What Works?
Poster 23:  Assessing the Learning Styles of Students
Learning styles are characteristics of how students prefer to learn.  They originate from both biological and experiential conditions that make each student unique in the way he or she learns.  Students who perform poorly in a conventional setting may suffer from a mismatch of learning and teaching styles. Tactile/kinesthetic learners, for example, may not respond well to learning by listening or by reading, while global learners might be turned off by an analytic, step-by-step presentation.  Such mismatches might unnecessarily subject students to high levels of academic stress.  This poster will present findings from a project that profiled students’ learning styles at Zayed University–United Arab Emirates.  The main differences in learning profiles between Emirati and American students will be presented.  The poster will also highlight the findings of pilot research examining the relationship between instructional mismatch and student levels of academic stress.
Tofi M. Rahal, Associate Professor— Zayed University

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
Poster 24:  Academic and Student Affairs Collaboration: Supporting the Core Curriculum and High-Impact Practices
This poster will provide information regarding the collaboration of academic and student affairs with science faculty and students.  This collaboration is designed to promote Fairfield University’s strategic goals of integration in the areas of the core curriculum and high-impact practices.  A signature area of collaboration lies with what the university terms “cluster courses,” two thematically linked core courses taught to the same subset of first-year students by two faculty members.  Through the poster and a variety of media, the facilitators will provide information on: (a) the administrative collaboration supporting these programs; (b) the core science cluster’s common residential learning community, enhanced programming, and impact on students’ participation in related campus initiatives; and (c) the core science program review and preliminary assessment of outcomes.
Elizabeth H. Boquet, Dean of Academic Engagement; Kraig Steffen, Associate Professor of Chemistry; and James Biardi, Assistant Professor of Biology—all of Fairfield University

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
Poster 25:  Faculty Development to Support Undergraduate Research as a Transformative Experience for Students
The University of Central Oklahoma (UCO) is a public, metropolitan, predominantly undergraduate institution with a total enrollment of 16,000.  UCO’s mission is to help students learn “by providing transformative experiences so that they may become productive, creative, ethical, engaged citizens and leaders.”  UCO aims to be a “learning-centered” institution, a fact reflected in its emphasis on research, creative and scholarly activity as the basis of the core curriculum.  To reach this mission, extensive faculty development is required.  This poster will highlight efforts undertaken by the college of mathematics and science, the office of research and grants, the faculty enhancement center, and academic affairs to create a meaningful and cohesive undergraduate research experience by supporting faculty development.
William Radke, Provost and John Barthell, Dean, College of Mathematics and Science—both of University of Central Oklahoma

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
Poster 26:  Engaging Faculty and Students in Writing-Intensive Learning: E-Portfolios and Guided Reflection
The use of e-portfolios is emerging as a best practice for promoting integrative learning and assessment in higher education.  Although there is a body literature on the benefits of e-portfolios for student learning in terms of fostering integrative learning, developing technological skills, promoting knowledge in a social context, enhancing self-understanding and deep learning, and the documentation of career skills, there is a dearth of information about strategies for faculty development toward realizing these outcomes.  This poster will describe practical strategies for involving and preparing faculty to use e-portfolios for maximizing student learning.  The poster will also inform faculty about ways to develop writing prompts for reflection to enhance integrative and deep learning.
Sandra Mahoney, Director of Assessment and Student Development Services and Jon Schamber, Professor, Department of Communication—both of University of the Pacific

Friday, March 26

8:00 – 9:00 a.m.
Concurrent Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 1:  Developing Student Research Communities to Deepen the Undergraduate Research Experience
Although supporting undergraduate research is a priority at many liberal arts institutions, these experiences are often limited to student-faculty interactions with students serving as assistants.  While such experiences are beneficial for students, they do not always translate into a wider appreciation and excitement for scientific inquiry.  In this session, the facilitator will review two strategies used to generate student research communities, highlight essential learning outcomes supported in these collaborations, and share student perceptions regarding the effectiveness of these communities.  Participants will: (a) explore ways to modify these strategies for use at their institutions; (b) share their experiences developing, using, and assessing similar approaches; and (c) consider how these experiences cultivate the essential learning outcomes and principles of excellence presented by LEAP.  Particular attention will be paid to extending the range of students participating in such programs, increasing the diversity of students’ roles, and working with limited resources to enhance the student research experience.
Aimee C. Knupsky, Assistant Professor of Psychology—Allegheny College

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS2:  Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices: Catalyzing Institutional Change
How does an institution motivate and sustain significant change in undergraduate education?  To address this question, the facilitators will discuss a recent restructuring of core academic units and programs designed to engage both students and faculty in high-impact practices and improve teaching and learning.  Critical to the conversation are the reward mechanisms that will enlist growing numbers of faculty members as partners in long-term institutional change.  At Rutgers-New Brunswick, these mechanisms included social capital provided through faculty learning communities and faculty “deanships” that contributed to thinking-outside-the-box about rewards.  From their own experiences, the facilitators will draw some conclusions about how campus leaders can initiate and sustain faculty involvement and about the “ingredients” necessary for successful cultural change.  Participants will have the opportunity to discuss their own examples of successful faculty community-building.
Justine Hernandez Levine, Director, Undergraduate Research Program; Rick Ludescher, Professor and Cook Campus Dean; and Carla Yanni, Professor of Art History and Assistant Vice President, Undergraduate Academic Affairs—all of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick Campus

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 3:  Designing Faculty Orientation Programs to Encourage Adoption of High-Impact Practices
Effective new faculty orientation programs can meet many institutional goals, including anchoring faculty in the campus mission; integrating new faculty into the fabric of the institution; and encouraging faculty to adopt high-impact practices.  The good news for faculty developers is that the Millennial generation of faculty will arrive on campus greatly predisposed towards adopting high impact practices that foster engaged learning.  In this session, the facilitator will discuss designs for faculty orientation programs that encourage and support the adoption of such practices.  Participants will discuss strategies to ramp up faculty orientation programs through a focus on the next generation of service learning, undergraduate research, and honors programs.
Linda Beane-Katner, Director of Faculty Development—Saint Norbert College

Models and Assessment -What Works?
CS 4:  Strategically Integrating Service Learning into Academic Units (pdf)
For years, engagement professionals have supported faculty in integrating service learning into individual courses while concurrently working at the institutional level to advocate for engaged scholarship.  However, without department-level buy-in, “engagement” remains an individual act instead of a shared cultural norm.  The Engaged Department Initiative is a nation-wide effort spearheaded by Campus Compact to assist academic units in strategically utilizing engaged pedagogies, such as service learning, across their curricula.  In this session, facilitators will lead a practice/strategy discussion that will illustrate how an engaged department process can help an academic unit incorporate one such high-impact practice—service learning—into its curriculum.  Using experiences and lessons learned from two academic units at the University of Vermont, participants will gain an understanding about the process and identify action steps for use at their own institutions. 
Kate Westdijk, Program Coordinator and Kelly A. Hamshaw, Program Assistant—both of the Office of Community-University Partnerships and Service Learning, University of Vermont

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 5:  From Language to Culture Change: Aligning Faculty Work with Engaged Learning
Many institutions have embraced engaged learning in their documents and promotional materials, but moving from such language to comprehensive adoption of practices, policies, and cultural change presents a series of institutional challenges and opportunities.  Critical to such a transformation is re-thinking traditional definitions of faculty roles and work.  In this session, the facilitators will explore strategies and issues associated with moving engaged learning to the center of faculty work.  In particular, facilitators and participants will examine: (a) expansion of mainstream pedagogies to include engaged learning experiences; (b) re-conceptualization of the faculty role as engaged teacher-scholar; and (c) re-definition of the faculty workload to include a full array of high-impact experiences. 
Jeffrey M. Osborn, Dean, School of Science—The College of New Jersey and Elizabeth L. Paul, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs—Stetson University

LEAP Featured Session
Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 6:  Enhancing Faculty Roles in Undergraduate Research and 21st Century General Education
AAC&U’s Liberal Education & America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative articulates principles that challenge educators to use a set of essential learning outcomes as a framework for the entire undergraduate educational experience, connecting school, work, and life.  More specifically, LEAP asks educators to teach the arts of inquiry and innovation, recommending that all students have the opportunity to use the tools of research, analysis, design, and creation.  In this session, the facilitators will discuss how to integrate undergraduate research into a revised general education program, describing challenges and opportunities they faced throughout the process.  Participants will consider how they might accomplish similar goals at their institutions and brainstorm about how to nurture a campus culture that connects mentoring of undergraduates in research to institutional expectations of faculty.
Nancy Mitchell, Director of General Education and Laura Damuth, Director of Undergraduate Research—both of University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 7:  Engaging Faculty and Students in Writing-Intensive Learning
Few would argue today about the importance of strong writing skills for students’ long-term success or about the efficacy of writing as a teaching tool throughout the disciplines.  What remains more hotly contested is the best way to institutionalize this high-impact practice and support faculty members through the additional labor that writing-intensive pedagogies entail.  In this session, the facilitators will engage faculty members and administrators in a discussion of practical strategies for increasing writing-intensive courses throughout the curriculum while preventing faculty burnout and/or exploitation.  In the process, participants will learn about a set of activities undertaken at the University of the Pacific: (a) departmental retreats to articulate learning outcomes for writing in different disciplines, (b) faculty development workshops on key aspects of assigning and responding to student writing, (c) a speaker series on writing in and across the disciplines, and (d) the employment of undergraduate students as writing mentors both in the disciplines and in nine sections of a required first-year seminar series.
Cynthia Dobbs, Assistant Dean of the College; Jeff Becker, Assistant Professor of Political Science; and Renee’ Mills, Undergraduate Student and Writing Mentor—all of University of the Pacific

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 8:  Faculty Perceptions and Practices for a Learning-Centered Campus: Preliminary Findings from a National Study
There is little question that high-impact practices are a vital part of the future of higher education and that these practices will represent key facets of institutional change and transformation in the coming years. Yet campus leaders who want to increase the breadth and depth of high-impact practices can face faculty resistance on the grounds that these pedagogies: (a) take additional (already scarce) time, (b) are not valued (or not valued enough) in tenure and promotion, and (c) do little to advance scholarship.  To begin to accurately address these issues, this session will feature data from a pilot survey of nearly 300 faculty members across 5 campuses to better understand the realities of faculty perceptions and practices with regard to high-impact practices.  Specific topics will include pedagogical innovation; the culture of teaching and learning across institutions and disciplines; engagement in high-impact pedagogies vis-à-vis promotion and tenure processes; and faculty job satisfaction, commitment levels, and mental well-being.
Ashley Finley, Director of Assessment for Learning—AAC&U

9:15 – 10:15 a.m.
Plenary                                                                                                    

The Role of Faculty in the Engaged Campus and High-Impact Practices
How are faculty members effectively incorporating innovative high-impact practices into their teaching, research, scholarship, and service to advance student learning, self-authorship, and personal and social responsibility?  What kinds of support do teachers want and need to develop and use engaging high-impact practices?  These panel members will share their expertise and experiences and engage the audience in conversations about approaches to high-impact practices they are finding successful.
Phyllis Worthy Dawkins, Associate Provost and Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs—Dillard University and President-elect— Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education; Robert Mathieu, Professor of Astronomy and Co-director, Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning—University of Wisconsin-Madison; and Alexander C. McCormick, Director, National Survey of Student Engagement, Center for Postsecondary Research—Indiana University

Moderator: Alma Clayton-Pedersen, Vice President of Education and Institutional Renewal—AAC&U

10:45 a.m. – Noon
Concurrent Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 9:  The Future of the Academic Profession
Twenty years ago, the Carnegie Foundation published Earnest Boyer’s Scholarship Reconsidered: Priorities of the Professoriate.  Over the past two decades, the composition of the faculty has changed dramatically. We know much more about how students learn—especially about “high impact practices”—and our institutions are being called upon to be more fully engaged with the pressing needs of both local and global communities.  During the same period, research pressures have been ratcheted up—escalating traditional standards of excellence—while resources are being seriously cut.  What are the professional responsibilities of faculty in this new and rapidly changing context?  Can we think of academic excellence in a new way?  Participants will discuss these critical issues and brainstorm what they can do to support faculty and advance student achievement in these challenging times.
William M. Plater, Chancellor’s Professor on Public Affairs, Philanthropic Studies, English and Informatics—Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis;and Lorilee R. Sandmann, Professor, Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy—University of Georgia
Moderator: R. Eugene Rice, Senior Scholar—AAC&U

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 10:  "Next Generation" Service Learning: University–Community Collaboration (pdf)
Too often, university–community service learning projects are initiated solely by faculty and/or students and fail to engage the community perspective in ways that broaden student understanding and generate mutually beneficial outcomes.  University–community collaborations allow students and faculty to engage the "big" social issues from a variety of perspectives and paradigms, both theoretical and practical. This session will provide participants with models and methods for transforming traditional unilateral (professor- or student-initiated) service learning into dynamic university–community collaborations, providing students and faculty with opportunities for greater interdisciplinary, cross-cultural high-impact learning.  After learning about several collaborative models involving Christopher Newport University's Center for Service Learning and Social Entrepreneurship, participants will select an issue or current project on their campus and work through a scenario in which a community partner collaborates in the design and planning of the service learning activity.
Roberta Rosenberg, Director of the Center for Service Learning and Social Entrepreneurship and Professor of English; David L. Cleeton, Dean of the College of Social Sciences; and Joseph W. Luter, III, School of Business—all of Christopher Newport University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 11:  Who Am I? Who Are You? Using Identity to Help Students Find Their Place in the World
Recent studies show that undergraduate students want their coursework to focus on big questions and personal development, while faculty want to focus on improving students’ critical and ethical thinking capabilities.  To meet these disparate goals, the workshop facilitators—two professors and a student preceptor—designed a learning community linking two general education courses around the theme of identity.  In this session, the facilitators will demonstrate activities from this community that ask students to approach big issues first through their own experiences, then explore relevant texts in order to gain critical perspectives and larger contexts for their own conclusions.  Posing as students, participants will practice interviewing, being interviewed, and collaboratively reaching small conclusions related to big questions.  The facilitators will also present assessment data demonstrating student engagement and critical and ethical thinking and lead discussion on how these activities can be implemented in courses at all levels, even when team teaching is not possible.
Christine Sorrell Dinkins, Associate Professor of Philosophy and Katherine Janiec Jones, Associate Professor of Religion—both of Wofford College

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 12:  A New Generation of Students and a New Focus on Active Learning (ppt)
Drawing on the experiences of faculty and administrators at Drexel University, this session will use group exercises and group discussions to analyze common characteristics of Millennial students and explore ways to reduce generational tensions through the use of active learning pedagogies.  While not all members of the Millennial generation are “typical” in terms of their behavior and worldviews, Sax (2003) and Wilson (2004) discuss several behavioral patterns of Millennial students that can impact teaching techniques and classroom management.  At Drexel, the areas most frequently expressed in both positive and negative terms by faculty involve Millennials’ High Performance Self-Expectation, Desire for Structural Clarity, and Technological Connectedness for Instant Communication.  The manner in which faculty respond may create tensions in the classroom and result in friction and missed opportunities for positive learning experiences for students.  In this session, participants will explore how understanding Millennial student characteristics in the context of active learning can maximize student engagement.  Specifically, the session will target high-impact practices such as service learning, first-year and capstone courses, involving students in undergraduate research, and engaging them in collaborative activities.
Activity (pdf)
Barbara G. Hornum, Director, Drexel Center for Academic Excellence and Associate Professor of Anthropology and Antonis J. Asprakis, Assistant Director, Drexel Center for Academic Excellence—both of Drexel University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 13:  Preparing Faculty for the Engaged Campus: High-Impact Practices in Faculty Development
High-impact educational practices depend on having faculty with the commitment, knowledge, and skills to implement them effectively.  Just as higher education practices have evolved to include varying approaches such as learning communities, common intellectual experiences, and collaborative practices, the field of faculty development has grown in many of the same ways.  This session will draw on innovative practices emerging out of the national Faculty for the Engaged Campus (FEC) initiative, which is designed to strengthen community-engaged career paths in the academy.  Participants will learn about how several campuses have implemented innovative, competency-based faculty development activities that are focused on community-engaged scholarship and that incorporate high-impact practices shown to be effective with students.  The session leaders, who are members of FEC, will facilitate discussion and activities aimed at having participants leave with ideas and models to consider using on their campuses.
Lynn Blanchard, Director, Carolina Center for Public Service—University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Matthew Countryman, Associate Professor of History, Associate Professor of American Studies, and Faculty Director, Arts of Citizenship—University of Michigan; and Sherril Gelmon, Professor of Public Health—Portland State University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 14:  Faculty and Staff Learning Communities and High Impact Practices for First Year Students
This session will focus on the development and evolution of a faculty and staff summer workshop on first-year experiences designed to help them integrate specific high-impact practices—including diversity and global learning—into learning communities for first-year students. The session will highlight integrated, active learning projects created for classes developed in the workshop and a high-impact practices faculty and staff learning community, designed as a follow-up to the summer workshop. Various members involved in the project will discuss each aspect, and time for audience participation will be provided throughout the presentation and at the end.
Bridget M. Newell, Associate Provost for Diversity and Global Learning; Barbara S. Smith, Director of the First Year Program; and Peter Ingle, Director of the Learning Coalition—all of Westminster College

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 15:  Crossing Borders:  Engaging Faculty in Interdisciplinary Experiential Learning
All undergraduates at Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) complete interdisciplinary research projects, tackling real problems for organizations at home and abroad.  Faculty members from all disciplines advise student research projects in WPI’s global network of project centers.  They must adapt to new roles as mentors and managers of the learning process while helping students negotiate cultural challenges and work across disciplines.  Accordingly, WPI has developed a system of faculty development and support that combines workshops, team teaching, a term of academic preparation activities, and a network of on-campus support mechanisms.  This interactive session will engage participants in four 15-minute “acts.”  Act one will focus on bringing together faculty from different disciplinary traditions to work as a team.  Act two will involve group brainstorming of activities to help faculty members adapt to new roles.  Act three will focus on non-academic challenges, while act four will allow participants to discuss high-impact practices in their own institutions, and share ideas for preparing and supporting faculty involvement.
Richard Vaz, Dean, Interdisciplinary and Global Studies and J. Robert Krueger, Assistant Professor of Geography and Director of Environmental Studies—both of Worcester Polytechnic Institute

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 16:  Learning Communities: Crossing New Borders, Conquering New Horizons
Colleges, and especially community colleges, are increasingly challenged to ensure that underserved and first-generation students receive the support they need to achieve their educational aspirations.  Learning communities have proven effective in helping students develop basic college skills and integrate and apply learning to real-life experiences in meaningful ways.  This hands-on workshop will help participants address the challenges of: (a) creating and sustaining a learning community, (b) assessing student success in such a learning environment, and (c) guiding colleagues toward adopting innovative teaching and learning strategies.  Specifically, participants will learn how to successfully integrate diverse disciplines into a learning community context while incorporating global education to facilitate students’ critical thinking, cultural understanding, and preparation for the complex and unscripted challenges they will face throughout their lives.
Karen Malouf Ostlund, Professor of English; Donald R. Cusumano, Professor of Psychology; and Thao X. Dang-Williams, Dean, Division of Humanities and Social Sciences—all of St. Louis Community College

12:15 – 2:00 p.m.
Luncheon Plenary  

Faculty-Led Innovation for Academic Excellence, Inclusion, and Student Achievement
Hurtado and Milem will share research findings on the learning experiences of students and professional activities of faculty and will discuss the implications of these findings for integrating high-impact learning practices into the undergraduate experience. They will explore how active learning helps students accomplish their educational goals and discuss the kinds of support faculty need to create engaged and inclusive learning environments.
Sylvia Hurtado, Professor of Higher Education and Organizational Change and Director, Higher Education Research Institute—University of California-Los Angeles and Jeffrey Milem, Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Education—University of Arizona

2:15 – 3:30 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 17:  Creating an Integrative Learning Environment through a Peer Teaching Fellows Program
Disciplinary learning for all students can be enriched by focusing beyond traditional classroom settings, creating inclusive learning environments, and fostering supportive connections among students, faculty, and administrators.  In this session, the facilitators will present a model of a Teaching Fellows (TF) program that enriches students’ disciplinary learning by focusing beyond traditional classroom settings.  The TF program creates sustainable cultural shifts in student perceptions, engagement, and involvement related to learning, where learning becomes less individualistic as students gain cultural capital through their interactions.  Teaching fellows do not focus on tutoring content; rather they cultivate understanding of subject-specific discourse and inquiry, model out-of-class engagement, and help students direct their own learning.  During this session, an administrator, a faculty liaison, and two teaching fellows will provide an overview of the program, including implementation and assessment.  Video clips of TF sessions will demonstrate the learning model and will be followed by a TF-led discussion and role-plays of specific scenarios.  Participants will brainstorm about ways to apply this model to their own institutions.
Susan M. Pliner, Associate Dean, Teaching, Learning and Assessment; Kristy L. Kenyon, Assistant Professor; Brian Monaco, student; and Katherine Cottrell, student—all of Hobart and William Smith Colleges

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 18:  “Reacting to the Past” and Engaging the First-year Student
 “Reacting to the Past” (RTTP) is an engaged pedagogy consisting of elaborate games, set in the past, in which students are assigned roles informed by classic texts in the history of ideas.  Now in use at more than 250 institutions of higher learning, RTTP advances a variety of learning outcomes including interdisciplinary knowledge, critical thinking and cognitive complexity, ethical decision-making, civic- and global-mindedness, and the ability to take seriously the perspectives of others.  This session will focus on the use of RTTP in first-year courses to facilitate student development in several areas, and a brief video showing first-year students engaged in an RTTP course will be shown.  The facilitators will share data from a spring 2009 survey of faculty users and discuss how learning is facilitated with this pedagogy, especially among first-year students.  Facilitators and participants will also discuss how administrators can support the use of this high-impact practice among faculty.
Gretchen K. McKay, Assistant to the President for Special Projects, Associate Professor of Art History, and Director of the Center for Faculty Excellence—McDaniel College; Judith Shapiro, President and Professor of Anthropology Emerita—Barnard College; and Paula K. Lazrus, Assistant Professor in the Institute of Core Studies—St. John’s University

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 19:  International, Cross-Institutional, Community-Based Learning Communities
Institutions of higher education frequently seek strategies for creating learning environments that provide the greatest opportunity for international and intercultural student interactions.  In this session, the facilitators will present a hybrid model of synchronous and asynchronous educational delivery—a cross-institutional, team-taught, learning community that embeds community-based experiential learning and integrated student team projects.  Specifically, participants will learn about an Intercultural Business Communication course, co-taught by professors at universities in Athens, Greece and in New York City.  Students from both campuses are situated within a common learning community with international, community-based learning experiences designed to develop global perspectives and intercultural competence.  The facilitators will discuss campus perspectives on the model (from professors, IT personnel, and students); outcomes assessment; and successes and challenges.  Participants will actively explore ways in which this model can be successful and sustainable on their own campuses.
Devorah Lieberman, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs and Jeffrey Gutkin, Director, Academic Computing—both of Wagner College; and Eileen Hoesly, Faculty Member and Registrar—Hellenic American University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 20:  Researching, Supporting, and Funding Faculty Development Initiatives: A Synergistic Approach
Colleges can no longer simply accept that faculty development improves student learning.  Rather, a scholarly approach is needed to understand the impact of these programs.  Staff, faculty, and administrators from across Carleton College are currently investigating effective models of faculty development and teaching, learning, and support needs.  Early findings indicate that when colleges can provide evidence that faculty development programs are succeeding, then (a) the types of pedagogy these programs promote become accepted practice; (b) faculty members see more value in participation; and (c) outside funding for faculty development becomes more attainable.  In this session, participants will design action plans for researching the impact of faculty development programs at their colleges.  Session facilitators will provide participants with examples of the types of research methods they have used to evaluate faculty development programs and student learning needs.  These include a biography of a syllabus; textual analysis of student written work; student-collaborative time allocation and space studies; college-wide surveys; and interview strategies for faculty, staff, and students.  The participants will consider the strengths and shortcomings of these methods and their application to other schools.
Gudrun Willett, Project Director and Evaluation Specialist, Writing Program and Science Education Resource Center (SERC) and Ellen Roscoe Iverson, Evaluation Director, Science Education Resource Center—both of Carleton College

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 21:  Faculty Communities of Teaching Scholars
In this session, the facilitators will introduce Xavier University’s Faculty Communities of Teaching Scholars (FaCTS) initiative, designed to support faculty in planning and implementing innovative curricula and/or pedagogical projects.  The outcomes of the initiative include enhancing scholarly teaching practices, encouraging faculty involvement in the scholarship of teaching and learning, and ultimately enhancing student learning.  The FaCTS theme changes each year.  The first theme encouraged faculty members to plan, implement, and evaluate projects designed to enhance students’ global awareness, and preference was given to projects that incorporated service learning.  FaCTS participants attended an intensive summer seminar as well as monthly meetings during the academic year.  The facilitators will share details on the first year of projects as well as preliminary assessment data.  Participants will discuss ways to incorporate parts of this initiative into their faculty development programs.
Elizabeth Yost Hammer, Director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Marguerite Giguette, Associate Vice President for Academic Affairs—both of Xavier University

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 22:  Fostering Social Responsibility: Pedagogies That Matter
If educating students for personal and social responsibility is a necessary component of college learning in this global century, what practices and pedagogies accelerate student learning in these areas?How can faculty weave ethical questions into courses to illuminate unexamined assumptions, encourage engagement with urgent questions of the day, and offer opportunities for “moral rehearsals” where values are practiced and refined? This session will draw upon innovative curricular designs and pedagogies emerging from two AAC&U projects: Shared Futures: Global Learning and Social Responsibility and Core Commitments: Educating Students for Personal and Social Responsibility.Research findings from Core Commitments about practices that help promote students’ moral formation will also be shared.
Michelle Loris, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences—Sacred Heart University; Norah Shultz, Dean of the College of Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences and Jeff Shultz, Professor of Education and Assistant Provost for Special Projects—both of Arcadia University; and Caryn McTighe Musil, Senior Vice President and Director, Core Commitments—AAC&U

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 23:  High-Impact Practices and the Preparation of Educators in a New Era
Accompanying the accelerated transitions in the economy, culture, and polity in the 21st century are increased demands for global competitiveness and increased urgency to re-envision our notions of educational excellence.  The need to cultivate K-12 teachers with the knowledge, skills, and dispositions necessary to help all students succeed is thus fundamental and urgent.  Committed to preparing educators for this new era, a living-learning community (LLC) entitled “Aspiring Teachers at UMBC” was created for undergraduates interested in pursuing teaching as a profession.  Drawing upon such experience, the facilitator will outline: (a) processes of design, implementation, and resource management; (b) strategic changes in the program, curriculum, and assessment; (c) uses of data and technology to leverage change and increase efficiencies in policymaking and teaching practice; and (d) organizational learning through an emerging Community of Practice formed by LLC advisors across campus.  Through discussions of lessons learned, the facilitator will invite participants to share their institutional experiences, re-examine the promise and challenges of high-impact practices, and re-envision frameworks for preparing learners and educators for the new era.
Yi Huang, Accreditation Coordinator, Assessment Director, and Associate Professor—University of Maryland Baltimore County

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 24:  Creating a First-Year Experience to Introduce Students to Undergraduate Research
There has been increased national emphasis on undergraduate research and first-year programming as high-impact practices for students.  In light of this, Virginia Tech’s College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences created a unique student experience that combines these two high-impact practices to help students take advantage of all that a Research I institution offers, early and often in their academic careers.  Session facilitators will discuss the creation of the college’s comprehensive Undergraduate Research Institute, as well as an Intro. to Undergrad Research course for first-year and transfer students.  The course introduces students to the concept of undergraduate research, exposes them to available resources, and fuels their curiosity for future research experiences.  Facilitators will engage participants in active discussions of: (a) the creation of “first-year appropriate” undergraduate research experiences, (b) course logistics/assignments, (c) assessing student learning with AAC&U’s VALUE rubrics, and (d) creating and investing in such high-impact practices in times of significant financial uncertainty.
Diana Ridgwell, Director of Student Development and Director of the Undergraduate Research Institute, College of Liberal Arts and Human—Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University

CS 25:  Institutionalizing “Hurricane-Strength” Undergraduate Research Programs (pptx)
Undergraduate research is among the most effective deep learning opportunities available for undergraduates.  Yet campus leaders face faces many barriers in trying to institutionalize this practice and its sustainability is threatened by the current economic storms.  In this session, the facilitators will discuss how to build programs that can endure the winds of change and challenges common to institutions of all sizes.  Specifically, the facilitators will discuss: (a) faculty-initiated curricular and institutional structural changes that sustain undergraduate research; (b) faculty development for undergraduate research initiated and led by faculty members; (c) overcoming barriers to undergraduate research such as faculty work load, tenure and promotion review, and resource allocation; and (d) formal assessment of faculty development in undergraduate research.  The issues will be discussed from the context of a liberal arts college curriculum/faculty development initiative, an NSF-funded Council on Undergraduate Research (CUR) outreach program on institutionalizing undergraduate research, and a university-based NSF-sponsored interdisciplinary research experience for undergraduates focused on the social aspects of hurricanes.
Sandra K. Webster, Faculty Development Officer and Terri Lenox, Associate Professor of Computer Science—both of Westminster College; John F. Mateja, Program Officer, Course, Curriculum and Laboratory Improvement Program—National Science Foundation; and Naomi Yavneh, Associate Dean of the Honors College and Director of Undergraduate Research—University of South Florida

4:00 – 5:15 p.m.
Concurrent Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 26:  Performing Arts and Community Exchange: Merging Social Activism, Performance, and Teaching
Performing arts students in the capstone course, “Performing Arts and Community Exchange,” learn how to use movement and theater as tools for social change as they identify, approach, and construct workshops for community sites.  The course is designed so that students develop an understanding of the history and theory of community-based arts and the ability to think critically about issues of race, class, and aesthetics inherent in community-based arts practice.  In this session, the facilitators will take participants through several of the exercises used in the course, discussing the goals and structures along the way.  They will also share a model for assessing the course’s learning outcomes and the degree to which the students’ service is valuable to the community.  Through discussion, hands-on exercises, and video, session participants will gain skills in, and a context for, a creative pedagogical process that is rooted in community-based arts.
Amie Dowling, Assistant Professor of Performing Arts—University of San Francisco

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 27:  Outcomes-Based Internships as a High-Impact Practice
As discussed recently in media outlets and among internship professionals, internships are widely perceived to be essential rites-of-passage from college life into the professional world.  However, there is increasing recognition that access to internships is restricted for students who lack economic resources and is determined by class-specific factors.  This topic is timely given the state of the economy and especially in light of recent AAC&U-commissioned survey findings, in which employers endorse faculty-evaluated internships and community-based learning experiences as helpful in preparing students for success after college.  In this session, the facilitators will: (a) discuss the situation facing working-class and first-generation students, who are traditionally underserved in terms of internship experiences; (b) assess the implications for internships as a high-impact practice; and (c) present a new model for internships that addresses the key issue of access for currently underserved students. Participants will discuss potential applications of this model to their home institutions as well as potential barriers. 
Nicholas Rowland, Assistant Professor of Sociology; Thomas L. Shaffer, Academic Internship Coordinator; and Wes Culp, student—all of Penn State Altoona

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 28:  Faculty as Institutional Agents in Promoting Latino STEM Degree Attainment
This session will share findings from ethnographic case studies conducted as part of a larger study that assessed the role that Hispanic-Serving Institutions (HSIs) play in awarding STEM baccalaureate degrees to Latinos.  The research question addressed in this portion of the study is the role of institutional support and institutional agents at HSIs in promoting Latino student educational aspirations and attainment in STEM fields.  The findings underscore the role that faculty play in Latino student achievement of STEM degrees.  In this session, the facilitators will report on the forms of support provided by faculty to Latino STEM majors that enable them to successfully navigate their undergraduate experiences.  The findings provide concrete examples and strategies that other institutions can adapt, and participants will also complete an exercise to demonstrate the importance of institutional agents.
Brianne A. Dávila, Research Coordinator and Roseanne Macias, Research Assistant—both of the Center for Urban Education, University of Southern California

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 29:  Developing Faculty Learning Communities to Support High Impact Practices
This interactive session will focus on the approach taken by Temple University’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) to support faculty in the university’s newly implemented general education program. The TLC has embarked on the university’s most sustained faculty development effort to date—year-long faculty learning communities that center on two general education themes: globalization and sustainability.  Goals for the faculty learning communities include faculty sharing and learning about best teaching practices, including such high impact practices as experiential and collaborative learning.  The session will take place in two parts: (a) a description of the models and outcomes for the FLCs piloted in 2008-09 and (b) a case study where participants will consider various approaches for developing FLCs on their own campuses.  Participants will brainstorm solutions for common questions and challenges.
Pamela E. Barnett, Associate Vice Provost and Director, Teaching and Learning Center; Kate Wingert-Playdon, Associate Professor of Architecture; and Stephanie Fiore, Associate Professor of French and Italian—all of Temple University

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 30:  Libraries and Librarians: Supporting and Catalyzing High-Impact Practices and Faculty Innovation
As campuses adopt and strengthen initiatives to pursue high-impact practices, libraries and librarians are key partners in supporting and catalyzing faculty adoption and curricula integration.  This session will identify strategies for leveraging campus investments in libraries for faculty development and engagement through best practices.  Specifically, the facilitators will share strategies and examples of library support of institutional initiatives across the spectrum of high-impact practices, from first-year experiences to undergraduate research to diversity/global learning to capstone experiences.  The session will utilize a “jigsaw” method to examine the cases and collaboratively define best practices for faculty–librarian collaborations in support of high-impact initiatives.
Lisa Hinchliffe, Coordinator for Information Literacy Services and Instruction—University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and Debra Gilchrist, Dean of Libraries and Institutional Effectiveness—Pierce College

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 31:  Supporting Faculty in Developing Undergraduate Research as a High-Impact Practice (ppt)
Many institutions are being intentional in building and sustaining undergraduate research programs as a high-impact teaching and learning practice for both faculty development and student engagement. This session will focus on several aspects of undergraduate research, starting with its role in providing research skills to prepare students for the global STEM workforce.  The discussion will include an example of how a grass-roots initiative in one STEM discipline is leading to national-level change in establishing undergraduate research as a graduation requirement.  The presentation will feature different models of undergraduate research, including their strengths, challenges, effectiveness, and assessments, with examples from a variety of institutions.  Finally, the facilitators and participants will discuss issues related to sustaining programs, including building shared responsibility among stakeholders, infrastructure support, and securing ongoing resources within departments.
Vijendra (VJ) Agarwal, Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Gubbi Sudhakaran, Chair and Professor, Department of Physics—both of University of Wisconsin-La Crosse; John Mateja, Program Officer, Division of Undergraduate Education—National Science Foundation; and Beth Cunningham, Provost and Dean of Faculty—Illinois Wesleyan University

LEAP Featured Session
Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 32:  Learning Communities: What Works for a Diverse Student Body at an Urban Community College
This session will describe the use of learning communities as one of several high-impact learning strategies currently being implemented at Queensborough Community College-CUNY.  Queensborough is an urban community college serving a diverse student population, many of whom are underserved.  The session will include the discussion of a successful learning community model that links a no-credit developmental reading course with a credit-bearing Introduction to Psychology course.  The presenters will highlight successful lesson plans and assessments.  The session will also highlight the efforts of the institution to increase the number of learning communities offered and expand other high-impact learning activities.  Additionally, the presenters will host a question and answer session that will offer suggestions for creating successful high-impact learning activities while avoiding common pitfalls.
Margot A. Edlin, Assistant Professor of Basic Educational Skills; Jeffrey Jankowski, Associate Professor of Psychology; and Susan Madera, Acting Administrative Coordinator of High Impact Learning Activities for Freshman Academies—all of Queensborough Community College-CUNY

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 33:  CES4Health.info: Peer-Reviewing and Publishing Diverse Products of Community-Engaged Scholarship
Peer-reviewed journal articles are essential for communicating the results of scholarship to academic audiences, but they are not sufficient for disseminating the results of community-engaged scholarship (CES).  CES requires diverse products for dissemination to reach and benefit community members, practitioners, and policymakers.  These products—such as training manuals, policy briefs, and instructional DVDs—are usually not peer-reviewed, published, or disseminated widely.  As a result, they are often perceived by faculty review, promotion, and tenure committees as being of lesser importance, quality, credibility, and value.  CES4Health.info directly addresses these challenges by providing an innovative online mechanism for peer-reviewing, publishing, and disseminating diverse products of CES.  In this session, the facilitators will: (a) describe how and why CES4Health.info was developed; (b) explain the peer review process and criteria; (c) share user, author, and reviewer feedback; and (d) explore with participants how CES4Health.info can further support community-engaged faculty and advance the field of CES.
Sarena D. Seifer, Executive Director—Community-Campus Partnerships for Health and Sherril Gelmon, Professor of Public Health—Portland State University

5:30 – 7:15 p.m.
Open Forum 
Creating Partnerships to Address Urgent Social Issues
Public health is a matter of urgency to us all, regardless of community, discipline, or profession. But what role and responsibility should academic institutions take in the face of such challenges as pandemic flu or health care reform? This forum will bring campus and community leaders together to discuss new ways to engage undergraduate students and faculty across the disciplines to learn about these “big questions” and build and sustain partnerships for healthy communities.
Convened by AAC&U’s Educated Citizen and Public Health initiative and Community-Campus Partnerships for Health                                                                                               

Saturday, March 27

8:00 – 9:00 a.m.
Concurrent Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 34:  Strategies to Promote Successful International Service Learning
When engaging students in real-world learning experiences such as community-based research, service learning, and study abroad, many kinds of challenges can arise, including increased opportunities for misunderstanding and clashes due to differing cultural values and expectations.  The session facilitators will draw on their work to support both faculty and students in efforts to create meaningful, genuine, and constructive international service learning relationships with various community agencies.  Specifically, the session will focus on helping students learn how to better navigate the rocky terrain of expectations that, even if realistic, often do not apply to the international context in which students find themselves.  Together with participants, they will discuss strategies to promote successful international service learning, including the development of institutional infrastructures, a comprehensive orientation, and identification of service learning activities that draw on students’ existing strengths and abilities.
Tanya Renner, Professor of Psychology—Kapi'olani Community College; RaeLyn Axlund, Research and Assessment Director—Washington Campus Compact; and Lucero Topete, Director—Instituto Cultural Oaxaca

LEAP Featured Session
Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 35:  Five Cardinal Experiences: Integrative, High-Impact Practices for Student Success
High-impact practices are not new to Otterbein College, but until recently, they have not been organized in a coherent framework.  In the last year, Otterbein has sought to systematically embed high-impact practices in both the curriculum and co-curriculum through “Five Cardinal Experiences”: (a) community engagement, (b) internships, (c) international and intercultural experiences, (d) undergraduate research, and (e) leadership experiences.  These high-impact practices are made visible in a long-standing Integrative Studies program—an innovative core curriculum that underscores commitments to global learning, aligns itself with the AAC&U LEAP Essential Learning Outcomes, and showcases horizontal (e.g., linked courses) and vertical (first-year seminar, capstone) integration.   As a result, it is expected that all students will engage in at least three high-impact practices during their undergraduate career.  In this session, the facilitators will offer insights into Otterbein’s larger institutional vision and the change efforts that have put it into action.  Participants will discuss how their own institutions can embed a significant number of high-impact practices into the educational experience.
Abiodun Goke-Pariola, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs; Chris Musick, Executive Director for the Center for International Education and Global Engagement; and Tammy Birk, Assistant Professor of English; Joan Esson, Assistant Professor of Chemistry—all of Otterbein College

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 36:  Igniting Selflessness: Fostering Community in the Classroom and Beyond
Helping  students develop an other-centered orientation not only can lead to greater fulfillment and a more positive world, but also can result in a better education for, and better work from, each student.  In this session, the facilitators will examine how to shift students’ focus away from the self: (a) within the classroom, (b) at the departmental level, (c) across campus and (d) in the larger community.  Participants will learn how to build a “safe haven” classroom environment in which students both nurture and challenge each other, with pedagogical strategies aimed at helping students engage in each other’s work. They will also address challenges related to fostering community at the departmental level, across campus, and into the region beyond.
Susan Nuernberg, Chancellor's Assistant for Strategic Planning and Professor of English; Richard Douglas Heil, Professor of Radio-TV-Film; Tracy Slagter, Assistant Professor of Political Science; and Grace Lim, Instructor of Journalism—all of University of Wisconsin-Oshkosh

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 37:  Developing, Implementing, and Improving Interdisciplinary, Community-Based Research (pdf)
Research has demonstrated that courses that involve students in interdisciplinary, community-based research are beneficial for student learning and engagement, as well as for creating valuable partnerships with local community members.  However, there are many challenges associated with developing, implementing, and improving such courses.  Session leaders from Cabrini College will demonstrate how they have used various assessment tools (e.g., pre- and post-tests covering both content and attitudes, student focus groups) to demonstrate the effectiveness of interdisciplinary, community-based research and to refine and expand the college’s offerings of such courses.  Participants will examine how they might apply such protocols, whether they are developing new courses or improving existing ones, to ensure that students are receiving the maximum benefit from these unique learning opportunities.
David Dunbar, Associate Professor of Biology; Melissa Terlecki, Assistant Professor of Psychology; and Caroline Nielsen, Assistant Professor of Biology—all of Cabrini College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 38:  Donning as a High-Impact Practice:  Who, What, and How?
Recent studies suggest that the capacity for engaged learning is enhanced when institutional pedagogies promote a truly transformational experience for students—one that focuses at once on students’ intellectual development as well as their personal, moral, and civic development.  The related growing body of literature that points to students’ yearning for interpersonal connectedness suggests that the development of connections with faculty, sustained over time, may be central to providing these transformational and engaged learning experiences.  In this session, the facilitator will:  (a) provide an overview of the tradition of donning (a system of academic advising) as a high-impact practice that supports engaged student learning; (b) discuss recent findings regarding the impact of donning from both student and faculty perspectives; and (c) outline the institutional supports and partnerships with offices across campus necessary to support effective donning.  Participants will discuss ways in which the practice of donning may be modified or adapted for use as a high-impact practice at their own institutions and share strategies for developing transformational learning experiences and fostering students’ interpersonal connectedness.
Nance Roy, Director of Health Services—Sarah Lawrence College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 39:  Turning Scattered Efforts into High-Impact Programs: Undergraduate Research and Capstones
During the past 14 years, faculty and staff at the United States Air Force Academy (USAFA) have developed undergraduate research and capstone programs that have proven to be true high-impact practices. What existed as haphazard and scattered efforts across departments in 1995, generating only $2 million in external funding, have now grown into a $50 million, undergraduate-only, richly interdisciplinary research enterprise. Consistent with the conference theme, this session will engage participants in a dialogue: (a) summarizing key components of the USAFA strategy and soliciting other components from session participants that have consistently delivered high-impact results; (b) sharing lessons learned and challenges that have been overcome; and (c) exploring ways in which session participants can develop research and capstone programs that have similar high impact at their own institutions.
Rolf C. Enger, Director of Education; Rex Kiziah, Permanent Professor and Head, Department of Physics; and Aaron R. Byerley, Associate Dean for Curriculum and Strategy—all of United States Air Force Academy

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 40:  Imagining America’s Tenure Team Initiative on Public Scholarship
As part of Imagining America’s Tenure Team Initiative, the facilitators spent one year learning about different campus-based approaches to supporting publicly engaged scholars within faculty rewards systems. In this session, they will share gleanings and seek recommendations related to this work.They will first frame the session within the larger context of higher education, addressing budgetary pressures and the impact that these pressures may have on programs that develop publicly engaged research and practice. They will then address notions of “excellence,” particularly as relate to doctoral programs in the cultural disciplines of the arts, humanities, and design.Finally, they will share lessons learned from Imagining America regional meetings held in collaboration with Campus Compact and discuss connections to a new national study about the aspirations and career decisions of graduate students and early-career publicly engaged scholars.Participants will be asked to share their perspectives on the evolution of the Tenure Team Initiative and how best to advance tenure and promotion policies that support the work of public scholars, especially in the cultural disciplines.
Timothy K. Eatman, Assistant Professor of Higher Education—Syracuse University and Director of Research—Imagining America and Julie Ellison,Professor of American Culture, English, and Art and Design—University of Michigan and Founding Director Emerita—Imagining America
Sponsored by Imagining America:Artists and Scholars in Public Life

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 41:  High-Impact Practices and the LEAP Vision for Excellence (ppt)
AAC&U’s Liberal Education and America’s Promise (LEAP) initiative advocates for the importance of an engaged and practical liberal education for all students. The LEAP vision is built on three fundamental ideas: (a) there is a set of broad and essential learning outcomes important for work, life, and citizenship in the 21st century; (b) higher education needs new principles of excellence to ensure that students achieve these outcomes; and (c) there are a set of “high-impact” teaching and learning practices that educational research shows have a positive impact on student achievement of these outcomes.This session will provide an overview of the LEAP initiative, including the outcomes, principles of excellence, and practices at the heart of the LEAP vision. Participants will also learn about the latest educational research on why high-impact practices work and who has access to them, and new findings from national surveys of employers that show support for focusing faculty attention on these practices.
Debra Humphreys, Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs—AAC&U

9:15 – 10:45 a.m.
Concurrent Sessions

Aims and Purposes of High-Impact Practices
CS 42:  Lessons Learned from Carnegie Classified Community-Engaged Institutions
To what extent have higher education institutions become “engaged”?  To what extent has the academy fulfilled hopes that it can be a vigorous partner in the search for answers to our most pressing social, civic, economic, and moral problems?  Going beyond the usual discourse that it is critical for higher education institutions, faculties, and students to become publicly engaged with communities in mutually beneficial partnerships, the session facilitators will review a large-scale study of the nature and extent of institutionalization of engagement in higher education.  Participants will explore findings related to: (a) leadership for engagement within higher education institutions, (b) faculty roles and rewards and faculty development related to community-engaged scholarship, (c) service learning and curricular engagement, and (d) community-campus partnerships.  Participants will learn more about the subjects of the study—campuses classified by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching as community-engaged institutions—including high-impact strategies used by these institutions in the above four areas.
Lorilee R. Sandmann, Professor, Lifelong Education, Administration, and Policy—University of Georgia; John Saltmarsh, Professor of Higher Education—University of Massachusetts-Boston and Director—NERCHE; Dwight E. Giles, Jr., Professor of Higher Education—University of Massachusetts-Boston and Senior Associate—NERCHE; KerryAnn O'Meara, Associate Professor of Higher Education—University of Maryland, College Park; and R. Eugene Rice, Senior Scholar—AAC&U
Sponsored by NERCHE: New England Resource Center for Higher Education

Faculty Development and Engagement in High-Impact Practices
CS 43:  Innovative Approaches for Mentoring Prospective and New Faculty for High-Impact Practices
New faculty experience a number of significant opportunities and challenges as they begin their academic careers, which can affect their engagement in developing and using high-impact practices to foster student learning.  Mentoring is one powerful means through which institutions can help prospective and early career faculty develop into successful teachers, scholars, and citizens of the campus and the wider community.  Given the range of areas in which early-career faculty seek support, how has mentoring evolved to better address the realities of academia as experienced by a new generation of scholars?  In this interactive workshop, participants will learn about new approaches to mentoring that foster the development and use of high-impact practices among graduate students preparing for faculty careers and among early career faculty.  Participants will: (a) explore the role of academic leaders and of faculty at early, middle, and later stages of their careers in developing mentoring strategies; (b) discuss adaptations for different types of institutions; and (c) share their own experiences and successes with mentoring aspiring and early career faculty.  The session will draw extensively on research and practices developed by the facilitators through national initiatives sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
Ann E. Austin, Director, Global Institute for Higher Education and Professor, Higher, Adult, and Lifelong Education—Michigan State University and Mary Deane Sorcinelli, Associate Provost for Faculty Development and Professor, Educational Policy, Research and Administration—University of Massachusetts Amherst

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 44:  Cultivating Cognitive Complexity with E-Portfolio Assessment of a Cross-Disciplinary Program
Recent scholars of teaching and learning urge faculty to transcend disciplinary silos and help students reap the intellectual and ethical benefits of using multiple lenses for understanding and solving problems.  Yet the traditional culture of the academy, rooted in specialized departments, is often notoriously at odds with this goal.  In this session, the facilitators will: (a) provide an overview of the current scholarship on cognitive complexity, (b) describe the process and emerging outcomes of a three-tiered assessment effort (freshman-level, mid/upper-level, and capstone e-portfolios) aimed at fostering integrative thinking across genres and disciplines, and (c) invite participants to evaluate samples of student work and explore how e-portfolios can help integrate teaching and learning roles for both students and faculty.  Participants will then critique the effectiveness of this longitudinal assessment model, considering its adaptability to their own contexts in view of existing and potential constraints and opportunities.
Arlene F. Wilner, Professor of English; Timothy C. McGee, Associate Director for Faculty Development; and James O. Castagnera, Associate Provost—all of Rider University

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 45:  Using Authentic Assessments to Determine Student Learning in High-Impact Practices
Recent studies have shown that student participation in certain high-impact practices results in higher levels of student achievement and personal development.  In this session, the facilitators will: (a) briefly describe an interdisciplinary learning community model grounded in several high-impact practices, (b) introduce an authentic assessment tool that is based on students’ reflection on their practice and that is used by faculty to gauge student learning as a result of participation in this learning community, and (c) share data from the assessment instrument.  Participants will engage in an activity which provides a framework to advance their own efforts to assess the efficacy of high-impact practices and use already existing reflective practices to assess student outcomes.
Jo Ann Burkhardt, Director, Teacher Education and Mary Ann Studer, Associate Dean of the McMaster School for Advancing Humanity—both of The Defiance College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 46:  Building Service Learning into Sequenced Courses Across the Major
Rather than stand-alone courses with service learning components, how can faculty design a model that provides for increasingly meaningful service commensurate with student capabilities and community partner needs, while contributing to the advancement of the institution’s mission?  In this session, the facilitators will: (a) describe the processes for creating a service learning model of using a single community partner across the major; (b) discuss the challenges and the lessons learned as a result; and (c) share assessment results.  Participants will be guided as they explore ways in which a similar model might be developed for their own disciplines and will receive sample syllabi, assessment tools, and other information to enable them to continue this development after they return to their own institutions. 
Mary L. Lo Re, Associate Professor of Finance; Janice C. Buddensick, Assistant Professor of Accounting; and Frank DeSimone, Assistant Professor of Marketing—all of Wagner College

Models and Assessment - What Works?
CS 47:  Assessing and Expanding High-Impact Student–Faculty Research at Smaller Institutions
How can administrators with limited resources and faculty with limited time make improvements to, or think critically about, their own broad approach to student–faculty research and its rich potential for student learning?  This session will draw upon the experiences of faculty from three divisions at Wittenberg University who have created opportunities for undergraduate research and have also undertaken an assessment of university-wide efforts in this area.  Session participants will apply the lessons and questions raised by the presenters to their own campuses as they: (a) think through the place of student–faculty research in fulfilling their own institutional missions and (b) identify resources in place on their campuses to foster this research as well as relevant individual and institutional barriers.  Participants will work through case studies to assess the benefits of approaching student research in a college- or university-wide context rather than department by department, and discuss related issues such as equal access to opportunities among students of all backgrounds.  The workshop will be informed by selected current research on the topic and emphasize pragmatic and promising practices.
Ty F. Buckman, Associate Professor of English and Faculty Development Administrator; Margaret Goodman, Professor of Biology; and Michael Anes, Associate Professor of Psychology—all of Wittenberg University

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 48:  Implementing an Institution’s Strategic Plan through High-Impact Practices
How can an institution align its mission with faculty roles and educational programs to best prepare students for informed service and progressive leadership in their communities?  This highly interactive, hands-on workshop will demonstrate how La Salle University took the key points of its strategic plan and established a developmental model to help students meet goals of service and leadership.  The model encompasses four coordinated initiatives: (a) a City/Region component where students explore the institution’s urban location; (b) a two-year university-wide Essential Question on economic justice; (c) a series on science and technology to facilitate cross-disciplinary academic integration; and (d) a service learning faculty cohort to help students address the systemic nature of inequality.  Specifically, the facilitators will share how the support of faculty in high-impact practices (Kuh 2008) helped to establish new collaborations among faculty, administrators, and students, and thus began to realize the vision outlined in La Salle’s strategic plan.  The workshop will help participants brainstorm concrete activities to actualize their own missions and strategic plans.
Louise C. Giugliano, Director of Service Learning; Marjorie Allen, Chair, Integrative Studies Department; and Heather McGee, Philadelphia Center Community Coordinator—all of La Salle University

Supporting Faculty in High-Impact Practices
CS 49:  Evaluating Institutional Policies as a Support to Faculty High-Impact Practices
Policies often arise from the desire to institutionalize or improve practices and initiatives.  Administrators often attempt to use institutional policies to support faculty in their use of high-impact practices; however, not all policies produce this intended outcome.  This session will highlight the frequent disconnect between institutional policies and high-impact practices.  The presenters’ research uses data from faculty members and chief academic officers at 45 institutions and evaluates the extent to which faculty members’ practices and perceptions align with the intent of particular administrative policies.  Particularly, the research examines policies aimed at fostering support for: (a) first-year seminars, (b) faculty development, (c) addressing diversity, and (d) assessment.  In this discussion, the facilitators will examine the effectiveness of specific policies and recommend strategies for improving their effectiveness. Participants will share relevant information from their own institutions, discuss contextual issues that influence policy effectiveness, and consider ways to improve the implementation of institutional policies.
Kadian L. McIntosh, PhD Candidate and Graduate Research Assistant and Patrick T. Terenzini, Distinguished Professor and Senior Scientist—both of The Pennsylvania State University

11:00 a.m. - Noon
Plenary       
How Teachers Need To Deal with the Seen, the Unseen, the Improbable, and the Nearly Imponderable
Many teachers walking into classrooms or other teaching venues typically focus on issues of content and authority—Do I know my material well enough? Will I be able to cover all the topics I want to cover in the time available to me? Will I be able to handle all the questions that might be asked? They often fail to see other important variables that affect the quality of student learning even more than teacherly expertise and authority. Gregory will discuss a more nuanced and comprehensive vision of teaching and learning variables: variables that are seen, unseen, improbable, and nearly imponderable.
Marshall Gregory, Harry Ice Professor of English, Liberal Education, and Pedagogy—Butler University

LINKS

About the Conference:
  Overview
  Planning Committee
 

Conference Features:
  Brochure (pdf)
  Highlights
  List of Attendees
  Program (pdf)
  Resources
  Schedule at a Glance
  Workshops

Call for Proposals:
  About the Call

About Registration:
  Information
 

Hotel Details

Faculty Podcasts:
  2010
  2009
  2006
 

Past Meetings:
  2009
  2006