Strategy/Project Name:
Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning Momentum Support
Momentum Area:
Purpose
Strategy/Project Description:
- Roadrunner New Faculty Academy: This is a year-long cohort program for all new full-time faculty joining Dalton State regardless of previous teaching experience. Monthly meetings focus on evidence-based teaching techniques centered on creating an inclusive and engaging classroom experience for all students. The program also encompasses mentoring and peer observations of teaching with confidential, tailored personal consultations to support new faculty in developing their teaching. Several aspects of this program work to support the needs of first-year students, including transparency in learning and teaching, holding equitable classroom discussions, classroom assessment techniques, use of teaching and learning technologies, and inclusive course design. One modification to this program that we planned for this year was to include an additional aspect of orientation to introduce our new faculty to the local area, economy, and community to allow them to understand more fully the context in which they teach. However, this part of the program has not yet been implemented because CETL currently has an interim Director and some projects have been put on hold until this temporary transition period has ended.
- HHMI Inclusive Excellence Grant: The Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 3 grant leadership team designed several initiatives that support student success. This grant work encompasses student success initiatives like our STEM-majors events, faculty development opportunities, and curriculum development-focused work like implementing CURES into our gateway freshman STEM courses. The newest faculty development opportunity for the 2024-2025 academic year, led by one of our CETL Faculty Fellows, builds on our previous Inclusive Teaching MOOC and Community of Practice with a focus on developing and implementing practical strategies for promoting inclusive teaching in the classroom.
- CETL Fellows Program: Faculty fellows offer programming to support faculty and staff professional growth and development, thereby promoting student success for all students on campus. Programs include workshops, faculty learning communities, book groups, online development opportunities, and peer observations.
- Culture & Belonging at Dalton State. This project, currently led by a CETL Fellow and an Impact of Culture on Teaching & Learning Committee, will work to capture the stories and experiences of our students, faculty, staff, and alumni at Dalton State to explore how our culture as a community informs teaching and learning. The goal of the project is to identify and describe barriers that students face here in being successful and allow us to create development opportunities around this. In addition, we will seek out connection stories—stories of students who were changed in one way or another by the connections they made with faculty and/or staff at Dalton State. Part of the initiative to increase a sense of belonging at Dalton State includes piloting a Relentless Welcome Challenge on campus. We introduced this initiative to faculty and staff at the August campus assembly, and approximately a week later we followed up via email with a call to participate.
Activity Status:
Evaluation/Assessment plan:
- Roadrunner New Faculty Academy:
- Assessment of participation in academy, including participation rate
- Assessment of faculty engagement, final reflections, and overall feedback
- KPI: Faculty participation rate in Faculty Academy (baseline: 87% participation in 2021-2022, 100% in 2022-2023, 71.4% in 2023-2024); Ongoing assessment with yearly evaluation
- Target: minimum of 80% participation
- Current status: Began in August with nine participants at New Faculty Orientation, with two more faculty joining by the first session in August for a total of 11 participants.
- HHMI Inclusive Excellence Teaching Fellows:
- Number of faculty participating in HHMI-Inclusive Excellence Development Programming and reflections on the benefit.
- KPI: Faculty participating in HHMI programming (baseline: 19 faculty participating in HHMI programming through CETL in 2023-2024); Ongoing assessment with yearly evaluation for the remaining four years of this grant funding.
- Target/Current Status: This program is not running in 2024-2025 as it has evolved into a Teaching Squares pilot that will run all year, and we aim to expand into next year. In teaching squares, each “square” is made up of four faculty, typically from different disciplines, who visit each other’s classes over the course of a semester and then meet to discuss what they have learned from their observations. We are also planning a repeat symposium to reassess what our faculty-centered needs and opportunities to grow are for the last three years of this funding.
- CETL Fellows:
- Year-end report detailing each Fellow’s contributions and reflections on the outcomes for faculty.
- Year-end reflection on diversity of programming
- KPI: Number of faculty offering faculty development programming as a CETL Fellow and number of programs offered (baseline: six fellows participating in the 2023-2024 year, covering the following areas: inclusive excellence, experiential learning, artificial intelligence, part-time faculty, and culture & belonging); Ongoing assessment with yearly evaluation.
- Target: Six Fellows participating during the 2024-2025 academic year, offering different areas and types of faculty development programming. Faculty participation target is 10 or more unduplicated faculty participating in programming offered by fellows.
- Current status: Six fellows were selected from applicants and began offering program beginning August 2024. All six have been involved in some capacity.
- Culture & Belonging:
- Action plan for Culture & Belonging project deliverables (podcast, storytelling videos, community event)
- Progress report towards planning, recording, releasing, and marketing content.
- Assessment of Relentless Welcome pilot, including participation rate
- KPI: Action plan developed by December 2024 and at least one deliverable by May 2024 (baseline: formation of Impact of Culture on Teaching & Learning Committee, fellowship, development of a plan for capturing culture and belonging at Dalton State); Evaluation at the end of the 2024-2025 academic year.
- Target: Action plan with detailed goals for deliverables going into spring 2025
- Current status: The Impact of Culture committee has held one meeting in the fall with plans to meet at least once more before the end of the semester. Progress on that project thus far has been slow, but we did successfully launch a pilot version of the Relentless Welcome Challenge this fall with 57 faculty and staff participating.
Progress and Adjustments:
- Roadrunner New Faculty Academy: We have a total of 11 new faculty members from across all four schools participating in this year’s academy. While we are only three sessions in, the engagement so far has been excellent with a 73% or higher attendance rate at each of the three sessions. The community introduction aspect of the program that was to be added this year is on hold while the director is in an interim status.
- HHMI Inclusive Excellence Grant: This program is not running in 2024-2025 as it has evolved into a Teaching Squares pilot that will run all year, and we aim to expand into next year. In teaching squares, each “square” is made up of four faculty, typically from different disciplines, who visit each other’s classes over the course of a semester and then meet to discuss what they have learned from their observations. We are also planning a repeat symposium to reassess what our faculty-centered needs and opportunities to grow are for the last three years of this funding.
- CETL Fellows: We have six Faculty Fellows contributing to CETL initiatives this year with topics in the following areas: Inclusive Excellence, Culture & Belonging, Mental Wellbeing, Teaching Resources, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (S0TL), and the Future of Higher Education. Four of the Fellows are currently leading learning communities, one is working on updating the CETL LibGuide and curating additional teaching and learning resources, and the last is leading the culture & belonging work as described below.
- Culture & Belonging: The Impact of Culture Committee has met once so far this fall and plan to meet again in November. Based on discussions in the last meeting, a few changes to the original project plans have been made and the timeline for deliverables was pushed back slightly to reflect these changes.
Plan for the Year Ahead:
- Roadrunner New Faculty Academy: We have one more session this fall with five sessions coming up in the spring. In addition to monthly sessions, the director (and/or one of the assistant directors) will be visiting classes to conduct classroom observations and offering individual consultations.
- HHMI Inclusive Excellence Grant: This program has evolved into a Teaching Squares pilot that will run all year, and we aim to expand into next year. In teaching squares, each “square” is made up of four faculty, typically from different disciplines, who visit each other’s classes over the course of a semester and then meet to discuss what they have learned from their observations. We are also planning a repeat symposium to reassess what our faculty-centered needs and opportunities to grow are for the last three years of this funding.
- CETL Fellows: Each of the Fellows are continuing to plan events and programs through the end of fall and spring. Tentative plans for the spring include guest speakers/workshops, new book groups/learning communities, continuations of the SoTL and Inclusive Teaching groups, etc.
- Culture & Belonging: We hope to finalize plans for a spring implementation of the Culture & Belonging project, and we will continue developing and improving on the Relentless Welcome initiative that was piloted this fall.
Challenges and Support:
The biggest challenge so far, which is an ongoing challenge, is with follow-through. We have six CETL Fellows this year, but they are not all contributing at the same level. We don’t often have difficulty finding interested faculty to serve as Fellows each year, and we are grateful for their efforts because we would not be a Center without them, but we continue to have one or two each year who struggle to meet the expectations of a Fellow, especially when course loads and other standard job duties take precedence. Because this has been a consistent challenge, something we can do to try to improve this is to re-evaluate our recruitment process to ensure the expectations are clear before faculty submit applications, as well as make sure that we are providing the appropriate support throughout the semester.\
A challenge that we may face while working on the Culture & Belonging project is not having the appropriate resources or technology to carry out all aspects of the plan. However, we will reach out to the campus community when a need arises because it is likely that most, if not all, needs can be fulfilled by sharing resources.
Contact email:
Primary Contact:
Dr. Alicia Briganti, Interim CETL Director
