The Faculty Development Digest highlights events and resources that may be of interest to faculty and other educators on campus. The Digest will be posted on the Faculty Resources site periodically throughout the year. If you have an item that you would like to suggest for inclusion in a future issue, please send the details to Director of Faculty Development Rachel Weir at rweir@allegheny.edu.
Demmler Awards
The Demmler endowment provides funding for faculty members who wish to pursue projects to develop innovation in teaching or in the curriculum. This year, preference will be given to projects that:
– advance innovation in inclusive teaching and/or
– advance the institutional goal of increasing enrollment and/or the College’s national profile as a liberal arts institution.
To provide maximum flexibility, proposals can be submitted at any time through June 2, 2023, for work that could take place any time through the Fall 2023 semester. Proposals will be reviewed by the Provost and Associate Provost with the goal of notifying applicants of the decision on funding within 10 business days of receiving the proposal. You can read the full description of this year’s call here. Applications should be submitted using this form.
Teaching Tools
Looking for a quick way to provide focused feedback to your students? Or perhaps a guided approach for peer review? Check out the TAG Feedback framework. As shown in the image below, the goal of TAG feedback is to give three specific forms of feedback and that’s it!
Too much feedback on an assignment can feel overwhelming, while vague feedback can leave students wondering what they need to do to address it. Using this approach can be a time-saver for faculty, while also providing students with a manageable number of focused, actionable next steps.
URSCA Updates
Summer Research and Scholarship. Allegheny College is now using a common application that all students participating in research, scholarship, and creative activities on campus and in the Meadville community will need to complete. In particular, all students who receive awards through the Office of URSCA or the Office of Community Engaged Learning, as well as students who are funded by grants received by faculty members, are required to complete this form in order to participate in summer programming. Links to program-specific application materials are embedded within the form, including the proposal template for the URSCA Student-Faculty Research Program. The Summer Research Program website is a one-stop shop for all of the information.
Scholars Symposium 2023. Watch for an email from URSCA Director Matt Venesky with information about the 2023 Scholars Symposium, including links to various forms for faculty and department/program chairs to complete (registration for Faculty Mentors wishing to participate in the Mentor Breakfast, links for departments/programs to register seniors participating in the Senior Project Poster Session, etc.). Please be on the lookout for these forms and pay attention to the various due dates that will be approaching as we end the semester.
AI-Writing Resources
Webinar.The GLCA-GLAA Consortium for Teaching and Learning invites you to a conversation on ChatGPT designed to help faculty think about the potential value of these generative AI programs, and not just their potential peril. Among other questions, they will be exploring how we can use AI to help deepen (rather than discourage) learning communities in our classrooms, and the ways that ChatGPT can improve student writing or problem-solving skills. Participants will work in groups with those who have more experience with AI to help everyone brainstorm possible approaches. Please join them for this webinar on Wednesday, March 29 at noon EST. Click here to register.
Using AI to Help Instructors. In their article Using AI to Implement Effective Teaching Strategies in Classrooms: Five Strategies, Including Prompts, the authors describe how instructors can leverage AI to help implement evidence-based teaching methods in their classroom. The five strategies they describe involve: generating multiple examples; generating explanations for different audiences; writing low-stakes tests; assessing student knowledge and identifying areas of confusion; and drawing connections between different course topics. Check out this blog post, written by one of the authors, for a quick overview with examples.
FCR Updates
The Foundation & Corporate Relations (FCR) office invites you to check out the grant opportunity below and to contact them early and often at fcr@allegheny.edu if you’re thinking about applying for a grant.
Humanities Faculty: Community-Engaged Course Development & Voter Education The Project Pericles’ Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program in the Humanities Grant provides $4,500 grants to design new or significantly revised courses in the humanities that incorporate community-initiated projects and voter education. There are multiple deadlines to apply. If you are interested, please complete the FCR office’s grant proposal endorsement form, indicating which deadline you are interested in.
Spring/Summer 2023 Events
Upcoming Events
- May 3 – Exploratory Advisor Training 1, 10:00am-3:00pm
A workshop for faculty serving as instructors for the pilot “advising labs” in Fall 2023 and Spring 2024 (LS 198 and LS 199, respectively). - May 11 – Exploratory Advisor Training 1, 10:00am-3:00pm
A repeat of the May 3 training. Exploratory Advisors need only attend one of these two trainings. - May 16 – Spring Educator Resource Institute (click this link to save the date)
- May 17 – Department Chairs Workshop
- June 9 – First Year Course Registration Training
- August 21 – Fall Educator Resource Institute (click this link to save the date)
- August 22 – Exploratory Advisor Training 2, 11:15am-4:00pm
The second in a series of two workshops for instructors of LS 198 and LS 199.
Past Events and Materials
- January 5 – Post-semester Course Reflection Session 2
To learn more about how to conduct a post-semester course reflection, check out this page. Also, stay tuned for news about another course reflection session following the end of the spring 2023 semester. - January 10 – Workshop on Using Google Storage with Canvas
To learn more about how to use Google Drive as your primary storage location for your Canvas materials, check out these workshop slides. Included in the slides is information about how to set up a folder system in your Drive and different ways to integrate your Drive files into Canvas. - February 3 – Virtual workshop on AI-Based Writing Systems
– Recording
– Slides
– Handout
See the Faculty Development Opportunities page for additional links to previous events.