Sharing Responsibility for Essential Learning Outcomes:
New Partnerships across Departments, Academic Affairs, and Student Affairs
Pre-Conference Workshops
Thursday, November 1, 2007 | 2:00 – 5:00 p.m.
(Pre-registration required: $100 for Members and $125 for Nonmembers)
Workshop 1: Gen X Faculty and Students: Promising Alliances
Many new faculty members feel stress in trying to excel in research, teaching, and service; maintain their health and happiness at home; and achieve tenure. Some perceive the dominant academic culture as antithetical to the values that drive their work, and they struggle with reward systems that seem designed by and for faculty from a bygone era. At the same time, many students find themselves adrift in new and diverse learning environments. They seek faculty to guide them toward engagement with and application of their college experiences. There is a promising alliance between young faculty and students in their desires to solve complex problems in the real world through collaboration and crossing of disciplinary boundaries. This workshop will highlight the values of Gen X faculty, expose tensions with traditional models of academic success, and explore steps to overcome the apparent oppositions between what we say we value and what we actually reward.
Cathy Trower, Research Associate, Harvard University, and Susan Walzer, Associate Professor of Sociology, Skidmore College
Workshop 2: Enhancing Student Success: Cross-Boundary Collaboration
Whether one works in academic affairs, student life, advising, administration, or information literacy, student success is the center of it all. No one group can help students achieve the advanced habits of mind and practice the skills needed to succeed in a global twenty-first century. To ensure student achievement among a growing and unevenly prepared student population, higher education institutions must be able to attract and retain those who understand the connections between cognitive and affective learning and who are willing to work across traditional boundaries. Participants will examine approaches to promoting and facilitating student success through high levels of collaboration that transcend departments, academic affairs, and student life.
Alma R. Clayton-Pedersen, Vice President for Education and Institutional Renewal—Association of American Colleges and Universities
Workshop 3: Teaching and Assessing Integrative Learning
The term, “integrative,” has been used as a catch-all term to describe anything from general studies to area studies to individualized major programs. But what exactly is an integrative learning experience, and how does it differ from traditional, discipline-based courses and learning experiences in terms of design, pedagogy and assessment? This workshop will offer participants definitions of key terms relating to integrative learning, lay out the challenges and benefits of integrative teaching, provide best practices for integrative course or co-curricular program design, and a hands-on opportunity to design an integrative learning experience. Participants will explore the primary traits of and challenges with assigning integrative work and generate models for assessing integrative work.
Carolyn Haynes, Director, Honors and Scholars Program, Miami University
Workshop 4: Advancing Learning Experiences in Residential Life
This workshop will help participants develop advanced learning experiences in residential life with particular attention on sustaining features of “living learning floors.” Topics will include the importance of having a living-learning steering group to maximize the collaboration between Academic Affairs and Student Affairs, the selection and role of a “Scholar-in-Residence,” and the reasons these living-learning communities succeed or fail. Participants will:
- Create a living learning floor
- Plan faculty support and involvement
- Create a job description for the Scholar in Residence
At the conclusion of the workshop, attendees will have strategies for advancing learning experiences in residential life, models of how these floors and the activities differ by disciplinary area, and a mechanism for sustainability. Data on a national Study on Living Learning will be provided.
Pearl Bartelt, Provost and Vice President from Academic Affairs, Jerry Kiel, Vice President for Student Affairs and Student Success, Eric Randall, Dean of the School of Science/Management/Technology, and Kim Kennedy, Director of Student Transitions, Edinboro University; and Virginia Coombs, Provost and Vice President for Academic Affairs, Keuka College
Sponsored by the American Conference of Academic Deans
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