lwhitena

Faculty Development Digest – February 2026

By February 9th 2026

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development

Spring ERI: Now that we’re into the spring semester, this is a good time to remind you that the spring Educators Resource Institute (ERI) will be taking place on Monday, May 11. This is a departure from previous years for a great reason! In case you missed it, we will be having Dr. James Lang run our morning sessions. We will also have copies of his book available for sale. I’m also looking for ideas for the afternoon sessions. If there’s a session you’d like to run or there’s something you want to learn about, let me know!

UPDATE: Faculty Travel & ASC funding process changes: In case you missed the many announcements, I have written directions for faculty travel funding and ASC-funded travel funding. I am keeping this as a living document and adding information as it becomes available. If you missed the Oracle training at the last faculty meeting (or don’t remember), let me reiterate a few important things:

  • Please make sure you’re using the correct account numbers! The “default” goes to your department and to your chair. Please take the time to enter the correct accounts for faculty travel and ASC funding, which are in the directions.
  • If Oracle is not letting you add the correct account number, send in a job ticket through WebHelp and make sure you select “Oracle” as the topic. Tell them which account you’re trying to access and what it’s for. ITS has been wonderful about resolving this issue quickly.
  • If you are a department chair who is asked to approve something for Faculty Travel or ASC, please don’t! Ask your faculty person to check the account number and we’ll go from there.
  • When in doubt – job ticket through WebHelp

Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Updates from the Library

UPDATED: Celebrating Allegheny authors: Pelletier Library and CREATE are planning the first annual Allegheny Authors Celebration for this spring (Friday, March 27, 4-5pm) to celebrate and honor faculty and staff who have published their work in 2025.  We want to make sure that we’re not missing anyone, so if you published your work in 2025, please fill out this form. If you have questions, please reach out to Dean of the Library Tressa Snyder (tsnyder@allegheny.edu).

Data Bites: Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning: Friday, Feb. 20, 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE Lab: Join Betsy Garloch, Instructional Design & Scholarly Communications Librarian, for a session on ways to increase accessibility, engagement and comprehension in digital content and assignments. Lunch is provided. Fill out this form to RSVP.

Merrick Archives and Special Collections Events:

(1) President’s Day Archival Showcase: Monday, February 16th from 4-5pm, Merrick Archives and Special Collections will host a pop-up exhibit on the college’s collection of American presidential manuscripts, autographs, and ephemera. Stop by the Reading Room to see a range of archival material from John Adams to Abraham Lincoln to William McKinley. College Archivist Chris Anderson will give a brief talk about the collection beginning at 4pm. The Merrick Archives is located on the 3rd floor of the Pelletier Library. For more information contact merrick@allegheny.edu.

(2) Black Box Out of the Vault Event: Join Associate Dean Dom Turner and College Archivist Chris Anderson on Thursday, February 19th at 4pm for the 2026 Merrick Archives Black Box showcase. The event will feature archival materials on early Black students at Allegheny College between 1885 and 1915.The event will spotlight students: William C. Jason (Class of 1888), Mary Ellen Lovena Allen (1892-1893), Minnie Bertha Pratt (1892-1894), Don S. Goodloe (Class of 1906), Dennis A. Bethea (Class of 1907), and Ethel Mae Gillespie (Class of 1915). The showcase includes original artifacts, publications, photos, and more. The event is co-sponsored by the Well and the Pelletier Library. The showcase will take place in the Reading Room of the Merrick Archives, located on the 3rd floor of the Pelletier Library. For more information contact merrick@allegheny.edu.

From Student Success

New book for developing your student advising skills: Hacking College: Why the Major Doesn’t Matter — and What Really Does is available as an unlimited-user title ebook. It is also a DRM-free book, which means you can download the entire book to your device / computer without needing DRM software like Adobe Editions. Consider checking it out to brainstorm ways to best help students tailor their academic experience at Allegheny according to their interests and aspirations. This book may be especially useful for advising students who have not yet decided on a major.

From Global Education

Student information sessions: The Global Education Office will be offering information sessions for students interested in studying away. You can find the dates and locations here. 
The deadlines for Fall 2026 and the Academic Year 2026-2027* study away applications are as follows:
January 15, 2026 – DIS Stockholm & Copenhagen- Deadline passed
January 31, 2026 – This requires a priority application. Select programs are considered priority applications due to early deadlines or limited spaces that fill quickly. Deadline passed
  • Australia: James Cook University
  • Costa Rica: Ecological Resilience Studies in Atenas (SFS)
  • France: Internship in Paris (BU)
  • Ireland: University College Cork
  • Japan: Keio University
  • Spain: All Programs

February 20, 2026- All other programs

*select programs

From the Center for Career and Professional Development

CCPD newsletter: The Center for Career & Professional Development reminds you to peruse their most recent email update to faculty & staff about student opportunities — if any of the opportunities there seem right for a student you know, recommend it to the student and help them connect with the CCPD!

From the Office of Student and Community Development

Save the date: The Office of Student and Community Development, with support from the Stackpole Hall Foundation, is pleased to announce that Dr. Thema Bryant will speak on campus on April 23, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. in the Tillotson Room of the Tippie Alumni Center.  Dr. Bryant is a former President of the American Psychological Association and a recognized leader in advancing the field of psychology and advocating for mental health equity. Dr. Bryant’s work may be of interest to classes across a wide range of disciplines. There is a limited opportunity for her to speak with or engage in a class session. While this visit occurs near the end of the semester, faculty interested in collaborating are encouraged to contact Dom Turner, Associate Dean of Student and Community Development, for more details at dturner@allegheny.edu or ext. 2723. More information about Dr. Bryant’s work can be found here.

Book club: There is also an associated book club related to Dr. Bryant’s visit! You can find the flyer here, which has the dates, and contact either Anne Butcher or Dom Turner for more information.

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Getting students to read: The GLCA ran a webinar on Jan. 29 by Dr. Chris Hakala (Springfield College) called “Getting Students to Read”. Chris has provided several resources as part of the event: a recording of the webinar (passcode: &*Hef=H7 ); slide deck; the Wake Forest Workload Estimator, which helps you figure out how much work you’re asking your students to do; and a book recommendation.

Assignment design for student success: Instructional Design Librarian Betsy Garolch has made this great guide for flexible teaching strategies. Check it out!

3 tips for more efficient formative assessment: This brief article by Marcus Luther on Edutopia has some suggestions for working in formative assessment in your courses. I like the last one best, which asks students “how confident are you in what you just did” and uses one of my favorite pedagogical tools – the sticky note.

Book chat – The Science of Learning Meets AI: This podcast (Tea for Teaching) features an interview with Lew Ludwig (Dennison) and Tod Zakrajsek (UNC Chapel Hill) about their new book that is focused on faculty using AI to efficiently support teaching practices based on the science of learning. Listening time is 46 minutes, and there is also a transcript available.

New book on faculty writing: Allegheny’s Director of Writing, Professor Alexis Hart, passed along information about a new open-access book called Becoming an Expert Writer: A Holistic Guide to Writing for Publication by Dana Lynn Driscoll. If you’re working on a writing project that you’re aiming to have published, this book might help you out.

Upcoming Opportunities

Canvas drop-in sessions with Betsy Garloch: There are three more drop-in sessions prior to Spring Break! Tues. Feb. 10 (12:30-1:30 pm), Mon. Feb. 16 (2-3 pm), and Tues. Feb. 24 (3-5 pm). Come ask Betsy your Canvas questions in the CREATE lounge, or just pop in to say to her!

Pub101 for Authors: An introduction to writing an open textbook: If you’re interested in learning how to write an open-access textbook, this series of workshops by the Open Education Network might be for you! Workshops take place on Wednesdays from Mar. 25 through May 15, from 2-3 pm Eastern. To get the member information to register, please contact Tressa Snyder (tsnyder@allegheny.edu) and then register by March 18.

ASC Grant Applications: The Academic Support Committee (ASC) reminds faculty that the spring semester deadline for ASC grant applications is February 15. All full-time continuing faculty are eligible to apply for funding of up to $3500 per year to support projects related to teaching or research. Requests for sabbatical or pre-tenure leave funding should also be submitted as ASC grant applications. The application form and additional details can be found on this page. Please contact ASC Chair Teresa Herrera or Director of Faculty Development Lisa Whitenack with any questions.

Teaching with AI webinar series: CREATE will be hosting a watch party for the AAC&U webinar series “Teaching with AI”. The live, four-part virtual workshop series will run on Mondays from 2-3 pm from Feb. 2 through March 2 (skipping 2/16). There is no need to RSVP. We hope to see you in the CREATE lab for some of these webinars! If you have questions, please contact Director of Faculty Development Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)

Upcoming Data Bites: In case you missed it above, let’s repeat it here –  Friday, Feb. 20, 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE Lab: Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning. Join Betsy Garloch, Instructional Design & Scholarly Communications Librarian, for a session on ways to increase accessibility, engagement, and comprehension in digital content and assignments. Lunch is provided. Fill out this form to RSVP.

Demmler awards: In case you’ve misplaced the email, the call for Demmler proposals went out in an email on Jan. 13. You can find a pdf of the email here. Please note that proposals are due February 27, 2026.

Free webinar on creating & maintaining boundaries in academia: NCFDD is hosting a free webinar called “How to Create and Maintain Healthier Boundaries” on Thurs. Feb. 19, 2-3 pm Eastern. You can read more about the webinar and register for it here.

Faculty Development Digest – January 2026

By January 19th 2026

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development

Faculty Travel & ASC funding process changes: In case you missed the many announcements, everything financial has shifted to Oracle. This includes purchases and reimbursements for travel and ASC awards. Note that the pre-approval process for faculty travel funding and ASC awards have not changed, only the reimbursement part. I have written directions for faculty travel funding and ASC-funded travel funding, and I am in the process of also getting those up on the faculty funding website. I am also continuing to work with ITS to figure out some special cases (per diem, travel advances, etc.), so thank you in advance for your continued patience.

Faculty Development office hours: I will be in my CREATE office on Mondays from 1:30-3:00 pm and on Thursdays from 10-11:30 am. Please stop by if you need anything!

CREATE reminder: Please don’t forget that we have coffee, tea, cider, hot chocolate, and snacks available in CREATE at any time! We also just received an order of oat milk creamers for those who are dairy-free.

Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Updates from the Library

Celebrating Allegheny authors: Pelletier Library and CREATE are planning the first annual Allegheny Authors Celebration for this spring (date TBA) to celebrate and honor faculty and staff who have published their work in 2025.  We want to make sure that we’re not missing anyone, so if you published your work in 2025, please fill out this form. If you have questions, please reach out to Dean of the Library Tressa Snyder (tsnyder@allegheny.edu).

Upcoming Data Bites: Friday, Feb. 20, 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE Lab: Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning. Join Betsy Garloch, Instructional Design & Scholarly Communications Librarian, for a session on ways to increase accessibility, engagement, and comprehension in digital content and assignments. Lunch is provided. Fill out this form to RSVP.

Research Desk Reminders: Research Librarians are experts with citations. Please remember that in addition to assisting with all things research, Pelletier librarians are excellent resources for citation help, assisting with understanding different styles (MLA, APA, Chicago, and others), formatting bibliographies, identifying the right citation for specific sources, using citation management tools like RefWorks, and avoiding plagiarism. We can help you correctly cite books, articles, websites, and other sources. Please refer students to the Research Desk in Pelletier Library for this assistance, or appointments can be made here.

Spring 2026 Research Desk Hours: The Research Desk (located at the front entrance of Pelletier Library) is staffed 3:00 pm – 9:00 pm Monday – Thursday, with additional hours throughout the day. In addition to dropping in during posted hours, you may schedule a research appointment with a librarian here.

Research Librarians & Class Visits:  Research librarians are available to collaborate with and support faculty in designing class sessions to help students develop the information literacy and/or research skills they need for their courses. Use the “Request a Library Session” button on our Research Instruction Classes page to schedule a class.

From the Center for Career and Professional Development

CCPD newsletter: The Center for Career & Professional Development reminds you to peruse their most recent email update to faculty & staff about student opportunities — if any of the opportunities there seem right for a student you know, recommend it to the student and help them connect with the CCPD!

From the Office of Student and Community Development

Save the date: The Office of Student and Community Development, with support from the Stackpole Hall Foundation, is pleased to announce that Dr. Thema Bryant will speak on campus on April 23, 2026, at 4:00 p.m. in the Tillotson Room of the Tippie Alumni Center.  Dr. Bryant is a former President of the American Psychological Association and a recognized leader in advancing the field of psychology and advocating for mental health equity. Dr. Bryant’s work may be of interest to classes across a wide range of disciplines. There is a limited opportunity for her to speak with or engage in a class session. While this visit occurs near the end of the semester, faculty interested in collaborating are encouraged to contact Dom Turner, Associate Dean of Student and Community Development, for more details at dturner@allegheny.edu or ext. 2723. More information about Dr. Bryant’s work can be found here

Faculty Training & Help with Oracle:

ITS is holding regular training and office hours for Oracle in Murray 117 through the end of February. Please visit us Tuesdays & Fridays 9 am – 12 pm or Wednesdays & Thursdays 1-4 pm. You can also submit tickets through the Web Help Desk. They’d really like to help you! If you have further questions, please contact Katrina Yueng (kyeung@allegheny.edu)

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Teaching in turbulent times: Given what’s happening in the U.S. and the rest of the world right now, here are several resources that you might find helpful for your teaching: The POD Network clearinghouse of several resources, Teaching During Turbulent Times (Northwestern), Teaching in Turbulent Times Toolkit (University of Oregon, Office of the Provost), Teaching in Turbulent Times (UVA, Teaching Hub), and the GLCA resource page for navigating difficult discussions.

Attendance, motivation, and student choices: This Teaching in Higher Ed podcast episode is called “Rethinking student attendance policies for deeper engagement and learning”, and is about student autonomy and attendance and is related to a paper called “Choosing to learn: the importance of student autonomy in higher education.” (Cullen & Oppenheimer, 2024). This is a 47-minute listen, but you can also find a transcript available if you would rather read.

A professor’s framework for meaningful, joyful, and sustainable work: This article by Julie Sochacki has a couple of quick tips to start your semester (and year) off on the right foot, including setting boundaries, giving yourself your best chance to stay well, and reminding yourself of the joy in your work.

Collaborative notetaking: In The Chronicle of Higher Ed, Beth McMurtrie talks about using collaborative notetaking as a strategy for better classroom discussions

What to do when students struggle to work independently: This article by Beckie Supiano was published in 2024 as part of a series on teaching Gen Z, but it’s something I’ve been thinking about based on my own recent experiences. This article dives into the “whys” and offers some ideas on how to potentially shift your teaching strategies.

Upcoming Opportunities

Upcoming antideficit mindset workshop: We are offering Part 2 of the antideficit mindset workshop on Friday, Jan. 30, from 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE lab. We’d love to see you there if you have previously attended Part 1 at the Fall ERI! Please RSVP at this link by Friday, Jan. 23, so that we can prepare materials and order lunch for you. If you have any questions, please reach out to Tim Chapp (tchapp@allegheny.edu), Brad Hersh (bhersh@allegheny.edu), or Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu).

Teaching with AI webinar series: CREATE will be hosting a watch party for the AAC&U webinar series “Teaching with AI”. The live, four-part virtual workshop series will run on Mondays from 2-3 pm from Feb. 2 through March 2. There is no need to RSVP. We hope to see you in the CREATE lab for some of these webinars! If you have questions, please contact Director of Faculty Development Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)

Upcoming Data Bites: In case you missed it above, let’s repeat it here –  Friday, Feb. 20, 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE Lab: Accessibility/Universal Design for Learning. Join Betsy Garloch, Instructional Design & Scholarly Communications Librarian, for a session on ways to increase accessibility, engagement, and comprehension in digital content and assignments. Lunch is provided. Fill out this form to RSVP.

Demmler awards: In case you’ve misplaced the email, the call for Demmler proposals went out in an email on Jan. 13. You can find a pdf of the email here. Please note that proposals are due February 27, 2026.

Writing accountability groups: WAGS (for untenured faculty) will meet every Weds. from 11 am – 2 pm, as well as a handful of full Saturdays (Jan. 31, Feb. 21, Mar. 28, & Apr. 18). Please contact Chris Normile (cnormile@allegheny.edu) if you have questions about WAGS. The writing accountability group for tenured faculty will meet every Friday from 1:30-4 pm. Please contact Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu) if you have questions about the tenured group. All writing accountability groups meet in the CREATE lounge.

Free webinar on creating & maintaining boundaries in academia: NCFDD is hosting a free webinar called “How to Create and Maintain Healthier Boundaries” on Thurs. Feb. 19, 2-3 pm Eastern. You can read more about the webinar and register for it here.

Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).

Faculty Development Digest – December 2025

By December 9th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

Faculty Travel & ASC funding process changes: In case you missed the announcement, as of January 1, financial things will be shifting fully to Oracle. This includes purchases and reimbursements for travel and ASC awards. While this means no more paper receipts or travel expense reports (woooohooo!), it does mean following a brand new process. Once I have finished my Oracle training this week, I will be writing a step-by-step process document to help guide you through it. Note that the pre-approval process will not be changing, only the reimbursement part.

COACHE working groups for Spring 2026:  We are looking for 17 faculty to join a COACHE working group for the Spring 2026 semester and continue to work with colleagues on developing and discussing potential action steps from the faculty responses to the COACHE survey. If you are interested, please fill out this form by Wednesday, December 10. We anticipate 5 meetings across the semester, including the kickoff meeting on Thursday, Jan. 15, from 4:30-5:30 pm.  Participants will receive a stipend for their work.

ICYMI: Are you interested in integrating Community-Engaged Learning into a new or revised course in an upcoming semester?  The Community Impact Hub (CIH) is pleased to announce a call for applicants to participate in the Spring 2026 Community-Engaged Learning Faculty Development Cohort.  Participating faculty will receive a $500.00 stipend.  HERE is the application and additional information.  If you have any questions, please contact Lauren Paulson (PI, CIH): lpaulson@allegheny.edu or Colin Hurley (Director, CIH) churley@allegheny.edu.

Winter break rest & recharge: Please don’t forget to take a little bit of time over winter break to do whatever you need to do to recharge. The University of Colorado offers these five tips for making that happen.

Allegheny Awesome: Chris Normile, Assistant Professor of Psychology, shares a mock-trial activity he implements in his Legal Psychology course. He writes:

“During the semester, my students participate in a mock trial that allows them to apply many of the concepts we’ve covered. Earlier in the semester, they learn the basic structure of a trial, including opening statements, direct and cross-examination, re-cross, closing arguments, and the role of the jury. For the mock trial, students choose roles (defendant, attorneys, witnesses, jurors, expert witness), and I serve as the judge (dressed in a gown and everything). We use a fictional homicide case, and students prepare by studying their roles and developing questions for testimony. The Friday before trial, the lawyers meet with witnesses from both sides to ask them questions to help prepare for the case.

On Day 1, we hear opening statements and the prosecution’s witnesses. Day 2 is devoted to the defense’s case and closing remarks. On Day 3, the jury deliberates and reaches a verdict. Before they announce the verdict to the class, I meet with the jurors to debrief their process. I ask them how they evaluated evidence, what they focused on, and how course concepts shaped their interpretations. It’s always interesting to see how psychological principles show up naturally in their reasoning. Sometimes their background knowledge influences the weight they assign to certain types of evidence, which leads to good discussions about bias and real-world jury decision-making (which we emphasize later in the semester). This activity gives me a clearer sense of how students are thinking, and it helps them connect course material to legal procedures in a concrete and memorable way. In the past, students have told me it’s one of their favorite activities in the class, and this year was no different.”

Thank you for sharing this, Chris! If you are interested in learning how to do something like this in your course, please reach out to him.

Updates from the Library

Library Resource Showcase: Hathi Trust Digital Library Collection. The HathiTrust Digital Library provides access to a collection of millions of books and journals digitized from libraries around the world. Materials are dated from 1500 to the present, and cover subjects typical of any large North American research library. Items in the public domain — more than a third of the collection — are fully available for everyone, and items held in copyright are full-text searchable. Allegheny users receive enhanced service by logging into Hathi Trust. Please contact a Librarian at researchinstruction@allegheny.edu for further assistance or information using Hathi Trust or any other resource.

Call for Spring 2026 Course Reserves: Please see the steps below for submitting books, videos, or audio materials to Course Reserves for the Spring 2026 semester: Fill out the Course Reserves Google Form and indicate if the item is already part of our library collection or if you will be stopping by with a personal copy. -OR- Stop by Pelletier and speak with Kirsten Hauser about placing Pelletier items or personal copy items on course reserves. If you have any questions, please feel free to email libraryservices@allegheny.edu

Resource on getting off on the right foot this spring: Jumpstart the spring semester with practical ideas to engage students and energize your classroom. CREATE’s Kick Start Spring guide offers ready‑to‑use activities that make participation easy and meaningful from day one.


From the Center for Career and Professional Development

CCPD newsletter: Faculty and staff have recently received an update from the Center for Career and Professional Development about opportunities available to students. All of these have been vetted by the CCPD, and in this most recent edition, ALL of the opportunities are connected to Allegheny alums who are eager to help our current students! Our hope is that you will recognize opportunities that might be good for students you know, and encourage them directly to apply. Often, the best motivator for students is when a trusted advisor or mentor tells them they’d be good at something and encourages them to give it a try!

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Joy in the classroom: This article by Beckie Supiano is about restoring joy in the classroom and includes a discussion about working together with her students for rebuilding what was broken. There’s also an option to listen to this story instead of reading it.

Classroom activity comparing Wikipedia, GenAI, and traditional encyclopedias: Professor Katherine Holt from the College of Wooster wrote about an activity they do with their history students to build information literacy skills. This sounds like an easily adaptable activity for folks looking to teach about AI literacy and information literacy in their own disciplines.


Upcoming Opportunities

International Education Conference: The International Conference on Re(imagining) and Re(forming) Education: Navigation the New Educational Frontier, hosted by the Department of Education at Forman Christian College (Pakistan), will be Feb. 13-14.  The abstract submission deadline is December 25.

Council of Undergraduate Research (CUR) Grant Dialogues: CUR and the National Grants Management Association (NGMA) are joining forces to bring you a reimagined Grant Dialogues—a two-day virtual professional development event, February 10-11, designed to help you confidently navigate today’s complex funding landscape. Early-bird registration ends on Friday, December 12.

American University in Bulgaria & Fulbright Science of Disinformation Symposium Call for Proposals:  AUBG’s Center for Information, Democracy, and Citizenship is hosting an online symposium on February 6 and is currently accepting proposals until December 19.  More information here.

Two faculty development opportunities from the Office of the Provost: As a reminder, the Office of the Provost sent an email on December 1 detailing two different opportunities: the CIC Faculty Leadership Academy and the NCFDD Faculty Success Program. If you lost the email, you can find a PDF of it here.

Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).

Faculty Development Digest – November 2025

By November 5th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

Big News!! If you attended the official ribbon-cutting for CREATE in October, you might have heard a few references to support for publishing faculty research, scholarship, and creative activities. The CREATE Faculty Publishing Award is now live! The CREATE Faculty Publishing Award is designed to support full-time faculty members in their pursuit of publishing artistic and scholarly works such as books, articles, monographs, collections, or other items. By providing financial assistance to cover essential publication production-related expenses (such as indexing, copyright permissions, translation costs, etc.), this grant aims to facilitate the dissemination of innovative research and creative projects across various disciplines. You can find the guidelines and links to application materials on the CREATE Faculty Publishing Award website. Applications are accepted on a rolling basis and will be reviewed by the Academic Support Committee (ASC).

MORE Big News!!! This one has been a year in the making, and I am just so dang excited to tell you about this! If you have been looking ahead to May’s calendar, you may have noticed that the Spring Educator Resource Institute (ERI) is a day earlier than it usually is – mark your calendars for Monday, May 11. This is because we will be welcoming Dr. James Lang to Allegheny (in person!) to run two workshops during the morning sessions of the ERI. Some of you may be familiar with his work already. He is the author of Small Teaching and several other books on pedagogy. His most recent book is Write Like You Teach: Taking Your Classroom Skills to a Bigger Audience. At the ERI, Dr. Lang will run a workshop based on his most recent book, as well as one based on Small Teaching that incorporates discussion about AI. I cannot speak highly enough about the Write Like You Teach workshop; I took it at a conference last November, and it inspired me to write a popular-press book based on my LS 105 course (book in progress!).

RSE week is 1 month away! Please do not forget that Reports of Student Experience (RSEs) are to be completed by students during the week of December 1. Even though students complete them electronically, please set aside time during class for students to complete these. If you are new to RSEs or just need a refresher, please refer to this page for more information.

Spring 2026 Book Club: I’m working on finalizing details for this, but please look for an announcement in next week’s faculty meeting agenda.

Take a break: We’ve got about a month to go this semester! Need a few moments to step away from all of the things? Check out this live cam of puppies or this one of kittens. Looking for something outside? I spent a few minutes this morning watching this live cam from a watering hole in Likipia County, Kenya, and got to watch a giraffe and some sort of other small hoofed mammal.

Allegheny Awesome: Shannan Mattiace, Professor of Political Science and International Studies, shares a new alternative to essays that she is implementing in her Latin American Politics (POLSC 235) this fall. She writes, “I really took Meghan O’Rourke’s words in the NYTimes this summer that the college essay is dead. In lieu of the essay, I asked students to do research and craft an argument on a topic in Brazilian politics (see assignment here). On the day the assignment was due, all students submitted a list of Works Cited to Canvas. They then came to my office to present their argument in 2-3 minutes, followed by 15 or so minutes of questions from me and responses from them. The conversations were really illuminating, in my view, because I got to ask students why they made certain choices regarding their argument and their sources. I often have so many questions about their essays that remain unanswered (and unasked oftentimes as well). I found that I understood my students’ thinking much more in this intimate oral exam setting than in the written essay. Students seemed to come alive when talking about their research, often sharing specific quotes and insights that they seemed genuinely interested in and excited to share with me.” Thanks for sharing this, Shannan!

If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Updates from the Library

Data Bites:  Please join us for “CREATE Faculty Publishing Award Funding” on Friday, November 7, 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE lab, with a FULL LUNCH! Fill out this form to RSVP. This session will provide updates on the new CREATE Faculty Publishing Award process and guidelines. We will be showcasing all publishing opportunities currently available to Allegheny Faculty.

Merrick Archives Veteran’s Day Showcase:  Join us in the Pelletier Library atrium on Tuesday, November 11th, 4:00-5:00pm, for a Veteran’s Day Civil War Flag Showcase. Archives and Special Collections Librarian, Chris Anderson, will give a talk on the Allegheny College student regiment that fought for the Union during the Civil War. The original 1861 regiment flag will be on display and a selection of Allegheny College-related Civil War artifacts and original letters by soldiers will be showcased in the Merrick Archives reading room. In addition, Allegheny student Z Leaf will showcase several items from his personal collection of military memorabilia.

Updates to DSpace Submission Process: The process for submitting Senior Projects has been updated.  Students will no longer fill out two forms, the process has been streamlined to allow students to complete one form. The following slide deck explains to faculty the changes that will be implemented by late November. Here is the slide deck that explains the process to students. Please share the student instructions with students that you are working with.  Also, continue to instruct students to visit the library’s Senior Projects Submission site for the latest instructions and guidelines. Feel free to contact Brian Kern (ext. 3792; bkern@allegheny.edu) if you have questions or concerns. We are excited to provide a more streamlined and user-friendly process.

Canvas Help: Instructional Design Librarian Betsy Garloch will have more Canvas Conversation drop-in sessions this month: Mon. November 10 from 9-9:30am and Tues. Nov. 18 from 3-4pm in CREATE.

From Student Success

Viewing All Advisee Information: Every advisor has access to advisee information at-a-glance via the Informer report Comprehensive Advisee Information w/ Midterm Grade. To access this report:

  1. Go to https://informer5.allegheny.edu/ and log in with your Allegheny username and password. 
  2. Search for the report by typing part of the name in the Search box and then click on the report name to open it.
  3. In the pop-up box, enter the current term (25/FA) and the future term (26/SP) and click Run. This should generate a list of all of your students. If you click on the title at the top of a column, the results will be sorted by that column.

Using this report, you can see the following kinds of information for your advisees:

  • Students’ registration letters (Column “Letter Group”)
  • Students’ midterm grades (Column “Current Courses Midterm Grade”)
  • Students’ final grades (Column “Current Courses STC Grade”)
  • Number of credits registered for in the next term (Column “Future Term Credits”)
  • Total number of credits transferred in from credit by examination (AP, IB, etc) or from other colleges (Column “Completed Transfer Credit”).

For a general overview of how Informer works, check out this summary created by ITS.

Transfer Credit and Advising: As noted above, advisors can view advisee transfer credit totals in one place using the Informer report Comprehensive Advisee Information w/ Midterm Grade. This total includes credit by examination (AP, IB, etc) and credit from other colleges, and is visible in the Completed Transfer Credit column. If one of your students has a large number of transfer credits, this may affect their course plans in two key ways:

  • Credit Requirement: Transfer credits may count toward the 128-credit graduation requirement, reducing the number of Allegheny credits a student needs.
  • Other Degree Requirements: Transfer credits may count towards major, minor, and distribution requirements,  which could impact course planning and timeline discussions.

As a reminder, general guidelines for advising students regarding their financial aid in their senior year are available on this page.

From the Office of Inclusive Excellence

Upcoming lecture: Monday, November 10th at 5pm, Dr. Joe-Joe McManus will be speaking in Tippie on his book “A Brother’s Insight.” There will be a reception afterwards and the opportunity to meet Dr. McManus and grab a copy of his book. This event is part of the Stackpole Hall Foundation. Books will be provided by the Office of Student and Community Development. Here is a flyer with more information.

Google Meet Update

Waiting Rooms: Waiting rooms, similar to the waiting room feature in Zoom, have now been updated to Google Meet. You can read more about how this works here.

From Global Education

Teach in Rome: Allegheny’s sponsored program, John Cabot University (JCU), is inviting applications for visiting professor positions for Summer 2026. The course stipend of $5,200 is intended to cover travel and accommodation in Rome. Interested faculty should email their CV and resume to summerteaching@johncabot.edu. Applications will be considered on a first-come, first-served basis, and only candidates who fit course needs will be contacted. Questions may be directed to Dean Stefano Arnone (sarnone@johncabot.edu) or VP of Academics Mary Merva (mmerva@johncabot.edu). More details can be found on this flyer.

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Parking lot & post-it notes: This article by J. Muthoni Mwangi in Faculty Focus describes how to use the idea of a “parking lot” for questions shifted their classroom from low to high participation.

The case for slow teaching: Pamela Scully in The Chronicle outlines how she has moved her teaching to be “minimalist” in terms of LMS use. While I do not agree with her entire her shift personally, I think that there are some interesting things to think about in the article.

For department chairs: NCFDD has published a free “Chairs Survival Guide” that may be worth a look.

Grading group projects: Lauren Vicker & Tim Franz have an article in Inside Higher Ed called “4 Ways to Better Grade Team Projects“, which could be handy as final projects & the end of the semester nears. Note that the website for this article has some messed-up formatting, so navigating to the article will be weird.

Ungrading and assessing student learning: This article by Keegan Lannon in Inside Higher Ed wrestles with how best to assess student learning when you’re not using letter grades for assessment.

AI has joined the faculty: This article in The Chronicle is an interesting look at the variety of ways faculty are or aren’t using AI in their work, and the rationale behind it.

Upcoming Opportunities

Mellon Higher Learning – 2026 Open Call for Concepts: The Mellon Foundation has announced its 2026 Higher Learning Program Open Call for Concepts, inviting proposals from four-year, non-profit liberal arts institutions. The program “supports inquiry into issues of vital social, cultural, and historical import, encouraging projects that engage teams of scholars and/or students and have a visible, enduring impact at the institution.” The principal investigator (applicant) must be faculty in the humanities or humanistic social sciences.

This round focuses on two themes—“Unruly Intelligences” and “Normalization and Its Discontents”—with grants of $250,000–$500,000 (for up to four years). Further information on the themes can be found at the Open Call website linked above. Each institution may submit up to three applications. An initial “registration” is due by December 1, with full proposals due in February. 

To ensure appropriate coordination and support in advance of the December 1 registration deadline, interested faculty should email provost@allegheny.edu and fcr@allegheny.edu no later than November 21 to indicate their intent to apply. Please indicate on which theme your application would focus, and 1-3 sentences summarizing your idea. 

The Provost’s Office and FCR will follow up with interested faculty by November 25. Please note that the email is sufficient notification at this time; a grant endorsement form is not required for the registration. 

Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).

Faculty Development Digest – October 2025

By October 13th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

CREATE news: Starting next week, we will have a selection of cozy, autumn-themed beverages in the CREATE kitchen. Come visit us for hot cider and hot chocolate!

Midterm grading guide: If you misplaced the email that Lisa sent with some ideas for midterm grading strategies, you can find that guide here.

Sabbatical/Pre-Tenure Leave Reports: If you had a sabbatical or pre-tenure leave during the 2024/25 academic year, please remember to submit your leave report using the form on this page. For fall one-semester leaves, reports were due by March 31. For spring one-semester leaves and two-semester (fall/spring) leaves, reports are due by October 31. Questions can be directed to Lisa Whitenack  (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)

Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Updates from the Library

Data Bites:  Please join us for “Faculty Toolbox: Talking and Teaching about AI in the Classroom” on Friday, October 17, 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE Lab, with a FULL LUNCH! Fill out this form to RSVP.  Join Lisa Whitenack and Doug Anderson for an interactive session on ways to talk and teach about AI in the classroom. This continues the conversation held at the Fall ERI session (you are welcome to attend this new session even if you did not attend the first session).

Canvas workshops: Doug Anderson will be offering a workshop on getting to know Canvas Commons on Tuesday October 21 from 10-11 am in the CREATE lab. There will also be a workshop on setting up your course in Canvas on Tuesday, October 28 in the CREATE lab. If you’re already thinking ahead to next semester and wanting a refresher, this is a great opportunity for you!

Merrick Archives Events: Please mark your calendars to attend the following events showcasing artifacts in the Merrick Archives:

  • Out of the Vault Event: Tuesday, October 14, 4:00 – 5:00 pm, “Ancient Artifacts: the Cobern Collection” Archives student assistant Daphne Womack will be presenting on the Professor Camden M. Cobern Collection, which includes some of Allegheny College’s oldest artifacts,  some dating to around 3000 BCE. The event will be held in the Merrick Archives Reading Room on the 3rd Floor of the Pelletier Library.
  • Fall Open House: Wednesday, October 22, 3:30 – 5:00 pm, our entire Allegheny Community is welcome! The event includes an opportunity to view a selection of archival and special collection items on display in the Reading Room. Have you seen the Original Library of Allegheny College? You will have access to this fascinating collection of books used in class by the earliest students at Allegheny College. You will also have access to the special collections vault and processing room. Light snacks and beverages will be provided outside the archives.

From the Office of Inclusive Excellence

Upcoming lecture: The Office of Student and Community Development and Stackpole Foundation invite you to a lecture by Dr. Joe-Joe McManus entitled “A Brother’s Insight” on November 10 from 5-7pm in Tippie. Please see this flyer for more information.

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Supporting student researchers: Student research in its many forms is a pillar of Allegheny’s curriculum, and this article by Tood & Moore in Faculty Focus gives some great advice and resources.

Misinformation and fact-checking: Shanna Kirschner sent along this article in The Conversation that describes a curricular approach to fact-checking and critical thinking that has been tested in various classrooms and the results of that work. The good news is that the interventions described in the article worked well! Thanks, Shanna!

Final projects that go beyond an essay: This article describes some ideas for creative final projects and how this could reduce unauthorized use of AI. If you’re interested in something like this, Lisa can share the rubric she uses for the “UnEssays” that she uses in her upper level biology courses – just send her an email!

Upcoming Opportunities

Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).

Upcoming webinars from the GLCA: The Great Lakes Colleges Association (to which Allegheny belongs) runs webinars related to teaching every few weeks. Upcoming webinars are:

The Teaching Professor Conference on Mental Health and Wellbeing: This is a one-day live virtual conference on November 6, 2025; “with two compelling plenaries and 15 targeted breakout sessions across six practical tracks, you’ll leave with research-backed, ready-to-apply strategies to prevent faculty burnout, support student mental health in your classroom, create a culture of care across your department or campus, and more.” Attendees earn a Credly digital badge to showcase their commitment to fostering mental wellness in higher education. You can read more about the conference schedule here, as well as find information about registration.

Faculty Development Digest – September 2025

By September 10th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

CREATE news: I am delighted to let you know that we now have a very comfortable couch in the CREATE lounge, which is now complete.  To celebrate and show off our amazing couch, the CREATE team shot this video and asks you to remember that we will be there for you and your teaching & research needs!

For midcareer faculty: The Midcareer Pathways program aims to help mid-career faculty identify meaningful career goals and how to achieve them. This may be a great program for you if you are feeling like you need to shake up your teaching and/or scholarship, if you’re at loose ends after earning tenure because you no longer have an obvious goal, or if you are thinking about shifting your career to something a little (or maybe a lot!) different than what you’re doing now. Please see this document for more information and the link to the interest form. Note that the deadline for filling out the interest form is October 6.

Fall Educator Resource Institute: Allegheny faculty, staff, and administrators were invited to participate in the Fall 2025 Educator Resource Institute (ERI) on Monday, August 18. If you missed it or want to look back at the materials, you can find the full schedule here (which also contains links to the slide decks that our presenters used). Whether you attended the ERI or not, please take the time to fill out this survey. Our presenters would appreciate your feedback if you attended. If you didn’t attend, we would love some feedback on what you would like to see in future ERIs and what the obstacles to attending are.

Faculty Development Calendar: Did you know we have a Google Calendar just for faculty development-related events? You can add it to your Google Calendar using this link.

Sabbatical/Pre-Tenure Leave Reports: If you had a sabbatical or pre-tenure leave during the 2024/25 academic year, please remember to submit your leave report using the form on this page. For fall one-semester leaves, reports were due by March 31. For spring one-semester leaves and two-semester (fall/spring) leaves, reports are due by October 31. Questions can be directed to Lisa Whitenack  (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)

Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Updates from Student Success

Academic Advising: There are a number of resources available to help you with advising students, whether you are advising undeclared students or students who have already declared. One of your first stops should be the Advising Handbook as you work with students. It is updated each year and is a wonderful resource! The format of the Handbook was refreshed for this cycle and a more significant overhaul is planned for the next cycle. Please also check out this lib guide, created by our new Instructional Design Librarian, Betsy Garloch, to share resources that align with our Advising@Allegheny curriculum.

Dedicated Support for Student-Athletes: The Maytum Center for Academic Success is pleased to announce the addition of Chris Calliari in a newly created position as Allegheny College’s Student-Athlete Academic Support Coordinator. In this role, Calliari will work closely with Gator student-athletes to enhance their academic success, providing personalized support and resources to help them balance the demands of both athletics and academics. The vision for this new position directly supports the first pillar of the College’s Strategic Pathway, which commits Allegheny to ensuring that every student gains knowledge, skills, and career readiness through education rooted in the liberal arts. Calliari will be based in Pelletier Library as part of the Maytum Center for Academic Success and will collaborate with students, coaches, academic success staff, and faculty.

Updates from the Library

Book an Appointment Betsy Garloch: Betsy, our new Instructional Designer/Scholarly Communications Librarian is available to meet and collaborate with faculty to support the development of engaging class activities through integrating new teaching strategies and technology to enhance student learning. Book an appoinment today. Faculty are invited to stop by during open office hours in CREATE, room 308C: Mondays 2pm-4pm, Wednesdays 1pm-3pm, Thursdays 8:30am-11am, or Fridays 1pm-4pm. Visit the Instructional Design page of the Library’s CREATE Research Guide.

Data Bites is Back! – With a FULL LUNCH!: “Faculty Toolbox: Practical Ways to Boost Reading Engagement” (Sept. 19):  Tired of asking “Did anyone do the reading?” and getting crickets? Join us in the CREATE Lab for a hands-on session tackling the challenge of student disengagement with assigned readings. Discover creative strategies like concept mapping, jigsaw activities, flipped classrooms, and more—each designed to transform reading into an active, collaborative experience. This session offers practical tools to spark curiosity, deepen comprehension, and energize classroom discussion. Leave with ready-to-use techniques that make reading irresistible and participation impossible to ignore. Fill out this form to RSVP.

Merrick Archives: Out of the Vault Event: Tuesday, September 16, 4:00-5:00pm, “The Origins of Alleghany/Allegheny College.” College Archivist Chris Anderson will showcase and discuss several original documents on the founding of Allegheny College. He will also spotlight Allegheny’s first president Timothy Alden and family. Selections of the Original Library from 1823 will also be on display. The event will be held in the Merrick Archives Reading Room on the 3rd Floor of the Pelletier Library. See this schedule to learn more about future events with the Merrick Archives.

Research Assistance for Students: Allegheny students are encouraged to make an appointment with a librarian for one-on-one research consultations. A research librarian can assist with formulating a search strategy, focusing your research, identifying authoritative articles and books, finding and requesting items, tracking research, using correct citation styles, and more. Students can make an appointment with a librarian at any time during the semester. Appointments are available throughout the week in person or via Google Meet. The library also offers research assistance at the Research Desk, facing the entrance to the library. Librarians and trained students provide on-the-spot research help from 3-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

From Global Education

Upcoming events & deadlines: The Global Education Office will be hosting general information sessions through September. More details available here. Please also remember that all regular program applications are due September 20th. You can find information about all of our programs here.

Email list: If you’d like to receive updates from Global Education, please complete the Email List Google Form here.

Scholarships for your advisees: There are 2 scholarships that are available for students applying to study away with deadlines of October 3. You can read about them here and here. For more specific information, contact Casey Gardner (cgardner@allegheny.edu).

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Resources for higher education news & issues: While many of us have particular go-to sources that keep us apprised of the latest topics and news related to our specific disciplines, there are some great resources for news and information on higher ed in general, pedagogy, and scholarship. Many of these resources are either free or freely available with an Allegheny email. Here is a list of Whitenack’s go-to sources for staying updated on higher education news and for bringing things to you in this digest. If you have suggestions for some that I may have missed, please let me know!

Communication Cheatsheet: This article discusses two frameworks in communication theory to help us think about how we’re communicating with our students and includes 5 tips for communication.

Creating a More Accessible and Inclusive Classroom: This article from Faculty Focus outlines a tiered series of steps to make your classroom more inclusive. It begins with some bullet points about where to start, and then successive parts of the article outline ways to take it to the next level.

Is Reading Over for Gen Z Students? Catharina Coenen (the first Director of Faculty Development!) sent along this podcast from The Chronicle about reading and Gen Z students. This might be particularly relevant for SWS instructors. Thanks, Catharina!

Introducing Students to Rubrics: While rubrics are likely familiar to many of us, our first year students (and beyond) may not have encountered them before. Sarah Forbes has written a really great article in Faculty Focus about how to introduce your students to rubrics using an exercise about cake.

Should I say “yes” to this service opportunity?: Inevitably, most of us are going to be asked to join a task force, a search committee, or participate in some other sort of “service” role. And the better you are at this kind of work, the more often you get asked. So, how to decide what to say “yes” or “no” to? If you struggle with this, this article in Inside Higher Ed contains a series of questions to help you out.

Upcoming Opportunities

Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).

Upcoming webinars from the GLCA: The Great Lakes Colleges Association (to which Allegheny belongs) runs webinars related to teaching every few weeks. Upcoming webinars are: Getting Students to Read with Chris Hakala of Springfield College (September 29, 2025 at Noon), and How Neurodiverse Students Can Use AI to Enhance Their Learning with Todd Zakrajsek of the School of Medicine at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (October 10 at Noon). If you think these sound interesting, you should subscribe to the GLCA Consortium for Teaching and Learning’s weekly News of the Week emails! They will send the registration links in those Friday emails, as well as a great roundup of news items from the week.

Project Pericles invites interested faculty to apply for grants for community-engaged course development. Draft applications are due September 19 to the Office of Foundations and Corporate Relations and final applications are due October 3. Please contact the campus Program Director, Tarah Williams, at twilliams@allegheny.edu for additional information. There are two opportunities to apply for: Periclean Faculty Leader Program: $3,000 and $4,500 course grants for Spring 2026, and Civic Engagement Mini-Grants: $1,000 for Fall 2025 and Spring 2026.

For humanities faculty: The Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA) has been awarded a $1.5 million grant from the Mellon Foundation to establish the GLCA Academic Leadership Fellows Program, an initiative designed to build academic leadership capacity among humanities faculty and expand the breadth of perspectives contributing to institutional decision-making at GLCA institutions. Through this two-year fellowship, ten tenured humanities faculty from GLCA institutions will engage in immersive leadership experiences tailored to institutional priorities. Fellows will benefit from mentoring, cohort-building, and professional development grounded in self-reflection and strategic self-awareness. “This program will cultivate the next generation of academic leaders whose humanistic perspectives are essential to ethical, mission-driven leadership in higher education,” said GLCA President Mickey McDonald. For additional information, please contact Provost Dearden.

The Teaching Professor Conference on Mental Health and Wellbeing: This is a one-day live virtual conference on November 6, 2025; “with two compelling plenaries and 15 targeted breakout sessions across six practical tracks, you’ll leave with research-backed, ready-to-apply strategies to prevent faculty burnout, support student mental health in your classroom, create a culture of care across your department or campus, and more.” Attendees earn a Credly digital badge to showcase their commitment to fostering mental wellness in higher education. You can read more about the conference schedule here, as well as find information about registration.

Faculty Development Digest – August 2025

By August 4th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

Welcome back to our returning faculty & staff, and welcome to Allegheny for those who are new! I hope that everyone had the best summer they could. With the start of the new academic year comes various professional development events and reminders. Here we go!

Fall 2025 Educator Resource Institute: The Fall 2025 ERI is August 18, with programming starting at 8:30 am (breakfast ready at 8 am!) and ending at 3:30 pm for the CREATE Grand Opening Celebration. If you’re planning on attending the ERI, please register here by Monday, Aug. 11, so we can get an accurate count for food. You can find the program schedule here.

Faculty Development Calendar: Did you know we have a Google Calendar just for faculty development-related events? You can add it to your Google Calendar using this link.

Fall 2025 Teaching Circle: A teaching circle is a group of up to a dozen faculty members who meet on a regular basis throughout the semester to share issues, ideas, and advice connected to their teaching in a confidential and supportive setting. If you are interested in participating in a teaching circle for the Fall 2025 semester, please fill out this form by September 3. If you have questions, please contact Adrienne Krone (akrone@allegheny.edu)

Sabbatical/Pre-Tenure Leave Reports: If you had a sabbatical or pre-tenure leave during the 2024/25 academic year, please remember to submit your leave report using the form on this page. For fall one-semester leaves, reports were due by March 31. For spring one-semester leaves and two-semester (fall/spring) leaves, reports are due by October 31. Questions can be directed to Lisa Whitenack  (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)

Faculty Development Office Hours: Lisa will be holding faculty development office hours again this fall. You can find her in her CREATE office from 1:30-2:30 pm on Wednesdays and 2-4 pm on Thursdays.

Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Writing accountability groups: Do you have scholarly writing projects you need to complete, and just have a hard time finding the time? Do you like to have camaraderie while you work? If the answer to any of these questions is yes, please join us for a writing accountability group. We will have two versions of this for the upcoming academic year!

  • WAGS, which is for untentured faculty, will continue to meet one Saturday per month from 9 am-4 pm in CREATE, plus 9 am-12 pm one Wednesday per month. All dates are TBD. If you are interested in attending,
  • please contact Chris Normile (normile@allegheny.edu)
  • We are also adding a group for tenured faculty, which will meet Fridays from 1:30-4 pm in CREATE starting on Sept. 5. There is no need to RSVP to this group, and it is meant to be “come when you can”. Please contact Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu) if you have questions for this group.

Setting Up Your Courses

Check out the Preparing for a New Semester page for reminders and tips for the new academic year. In particular:

  • Take a look at the Syllabus Checklist page as a reminder of the required and recommended syllabus content. This page summarizes the information found in Section 9.1 of the Faculty Handbook.
  • Don’t forget to update your syllabus statements if you’re reworking a syllabus from a previous semester.
  • If you are teaching a course that has an HE or SB distribution requirements tag, please make sure you are able to identify at least one assignment that will assess that learning outcome. The rubrics that will be used to assess those learning outcomes can be found here (HE) and here (SB).

Reports of Student Experience (RSEs). The fall RSE survey will be open during the week of December 1, so please make sure that you set aside time for students to complete the survey during class that week. This survey is administered via the RSEs link that appears in the navigation menu in each of your Canvas courses. For this reason, all courses that are eligible for RSEs must have published Canvas sites, preferably by the Add/Drop deadline so that reminders don’t need to be sent out to instructors. This doesn’t mean that entire courses need to be managed through Canvas. You can find instructions on how to create a minimal Canvas course in this document.

You may also want to make time to administer a midterm course reflection, followed by a post-semester course reflection.

Honor Code Reminders. As faculty write syllabi and assignments, please remember to give students clear guidance on what is and is not acceptable in each course. This guidance should be repeated to students at appropriate intervals, especially as tests and assignments are coming due. Faculty teaching classes with first-year students should be especially mindful to teach academic integrity to students, as the standards and habits these students are used to may not be the same from high school to college.

As a reminder, the Honor Code was revised by student vote in Spring 2024, but nothing has changed in terms of the expectations or process for faculty to report suspected Honor Code violations. The Honor Code reporting form is here and the up-to-date Honor Code is here. As the changes are still new, here is a summary of the changes made Spring 2024.

Another change for Fall 2025 is that we are building mandatory Honor Code training into Week of Welcome for first-year students – this will also include a discussion of AI. This means that for the first time, there will have been Honor Code training BEFORE we ask students to swear to uphold the Code.

Staffing Updates in Academic Success

The renamed Maytum Center for Academic Success (MCAS) has welcomed three new colleagues to the team in the past month. These will be folks that faculty are likely to interact with. Please join us in welcoming them!

Chris Calliari joined us as the inaugural Student-Athlete Academic Support Coordinator. Chris will be working directly on academic success with student-athletes and coaches and will be supporting the class deans working on academic alerts for student-athletes. Chris comes to us from Mt. Aloysius College where he directed Residence Life. He has also worked at the IMG Academy in Florida and as a YMCA branch director. His academic background is appropriately in Sport Science. 

Amy Herman joined us as the inaugural Director of Orientation and Advising Programming, taking over a significant portion of the work previously done by Erin O’Day-Frye. Amy will take over new student orientation and transition programming as well as serve as the point person for academic alerts. Amy had a distinguished career in the Titusville Area School District, starting as a math teacher, and working her way up to become the Director of Student Services for the District. She served as a School Counselor and Assistant Principal along the way. 

Pam Shreve moved from the Registrar’s Office to the role of Executive Assistant to the Dean for the Student Experience and support for the Academic Success staff. Pam served as the Student Records Coordinator and spent five years putting up with Ian, so she is well prepared to do so again!

Financial Services Updates

Faculty Travel: This is a friendly reminder that if you are claiming mileage for faculty travel (whether that’s sabbatical, a conference, or anything), you must include a screenshot from Google Maps that shows the mileage traveled. This screenshot acts as a receipt for mileage, and the College cannot process your reimbursement without it.

Receipts for Purchases: If you’re submitting a reimbursement for any purchase (travel, supplies, etc.), it must show the methods of payment – for example, “VISA Ending in ******4444”, “PayPal”, “Apple Pay” – otherwise it doesn’t qualify as a receipt.

Payments for Services: Financial Services asks that you do not pay for services (e.g. editing, painting) directly. Please run those through the Accounts Payable Office, as there are IRS forms and reports that need to be completed.

Institutional Memberships and Subscriptions: Whenever possible, please run payments for these through the Accounts Payable Office, to ensure that we are not double-subscribing. For example, if your department wanted to purchase an institutional subscription to the hypothetical Alliance of Awesome Professors, you should check with Accounts Payable to make sure we don’t already have one.

Updates from the Library

CREATE Grand Opening Celebration: Please join us on August 18 from 3:30-5 pm to celebrate the grand opening of CREATE (Center for Research and Teaching Excellence)! We are excited to show you how much the space has evolved since the spring. We’ll have CREATE swag, champagne, and fancy hors d’oeuvres for your enjoyment. Please reach out to Tressa Snyder (tsnyder@allegheny.edu) with any questions you may have.

New colleagues in CREATE: Please join us in welcoming Betsy Garloch, Instructional Design and Scholarly Communications Librarian! Betsy will be working with faculty through CREATE to support instructional design, educational technology, Canvas, and scholarly publishing initiatives. Betsy’s office is 308C (in CREATE) and her ext. is 2749

Data Bites is back: The Data Bites series of professional development workshops will return this fall. We have four sessions scheduled so far: Sept. 19 (Instructional Design), Oct. 17 (TBA), Oct. 31 (Anti-deficit pedagogy workshop part 2), and Nov. 7 (TBA). All sessions will be 12:20-1:20 pm in the CREATE Lab. We will also be adding some workshops on a different day and time throughout the semester. We hope to see you there!

Library research instruction for your courses: It’s never too early to schedule a research librarian visit for your course! Research librarians are available to work with faculty to design classes to help students develop the information literacy and/or research skills they need for their courses. Using the Request a Library Session button on our Research Instruction Classes page, please request two possible dates and times for a librarian visit to your class. Note that 50-minute presentations are the default, but you have the option to request a 75-minute presentation. Librarians can visit your classroom, or you can bring your students to Pelletier for the session, depending on availability. A list of suggested possible topics can be found on the same page. Please let us know which would be particularly important for your students to learn, or we encourage you as well to suggest additional topics. A librarian will reach out to you to establish dates and discuss topics to be covered. If you have any questions or concerns, please reach out to Research Instruction Services at research.instruction@allegheny.edu.

Streaming videos: In an effort to improve accessibility and be copyright compliant, the library is updating the process for requesting streaming videos.  Most video requests will be provided through our streaming subscriptions. Knowing faculty and departmental needs regarding streaming requests will help budget planning and collection development. Full instructions and procedures will be communicated to faculty shortly.  In the meantime, please contact Brian Kern, bkern@allegheny.edu, with questions.

Zoom to Google Meet transition: Due to the increasing cost of Zoom, the College’s institutional license will be ending in March 2026, so faculty who are currently using Zoom for teaching or other purposes will need to move to Google Meet instead. Meet has had many improvements in recent years and now offers all of the same functionality as Zoom and more, including waiting rooms, breakout rooms, polls, closed captioning, recordings, and auto-transcription. See the Google Meet help pages for more information. Library staff will be offering individual help sessions throughout summer and fall, plus group training through the fall semester.  You may make an individual appointment with a librarian for assistance here.

Timeline:

  • Summer 2025:  Individual help sessions with librarians
  • August – December 2025:  Group training and individual help sessions offered (details forthcoming)
  • December 2025:  Zoom connection removed from Canvas
  • March 2026:  Institutional license ends

Items of Clarification:

  • Please note that this change affects the Allegheny institutional Zoom accounts. You are still able to join Zoom meetings not hosted by you.
  • If you feel that you need to request a Zoom exemption, please contact Katrina Yeung directly at kyeung@allegheny.edu
  • Google Meet Features & Instructions

From the Office of Inclusive Excellence

Sustained Dialogue: The Office of Student and Community Development is seeking anyone from the campus community interested in participating in moderator training as part of the Sustained Dialogue initiative on campus. Participants will learn to moderate conversations with others that prompt change and understanding through listening deeply to each other. Dialogue sessions occur over the space of several sessions throughout the semester.A Virtual Moderator Training Series will be offered through the Sustained Dialogue Institute beginning September 23rd through December 2nd. Sessions begin at 2 pm until 3:30 pm. More information about the Sustained Dialogue Institute can be found here. If interested, please contact Anne Butcher at abutcher@allegheny.edu by June 2nd to be registered for the free training.

Readings, Slides, and Guides 

Resources for higher education news & issues: While many of us have particular go-to sources that keep us apprised of the latest topics and news related to our specific disciplines, there are some great resources for news and information on higher ed in general, pedagogy, and scholarship. Many of these resources are either free or freely available with an Allegheny email. Here is a list of Whitenack’s go-to sources for staying updated on higher education news and for bringing things to you in this digest. If you have suggestions for some that I may have missed, please let me know!

Communication Cheatsheet: This article discusses two frameworks in communication theory to help us think about how we’re communicating with our students and includes 5 tips for communication.

Creating a More Accessible and Inclusive Classroom: This article from Faculty Focus outlines a tiered series of steps to make your classroom more inclusive. It begins with some bullet points about where to start, and then successive parts of the article outline ways to take it to the next level.

Upcoming Opportunities

Council of Independent Colleges (CIC) AI Ready Program: You should have received an email from the AI Task Force outlining this program. This year-long series introduces foundational concepts of AI through topical discussions, practical examples, and guided virtual learning tailored to different campus roles. Whether you’re in academics, administration, or student support, there’s something for everyone, and we have unlimited spaces available as a perk of our membership in the cohort. If you are interested in participating, please contact Katrina Yeung (kyeung@allegheny.edu).

The Teaching Professor Conference on Mental Health and Wellbeing: This is a one-day live virtual conference on November 6, 2025; “with two compelling plenaries and 15 targeted breakout sessions across six practical tracks, you’ll leave with research-backed, ready-to-apply strategies to prevent faculty burnout, support student mental health in your classroom, create a culture of care across your department or campus, and more.” Attendees earn a Credly digital badge to showcase their commitment to fostering mental wellness in higher education. You can read more about the conference schedule here, as well as find information about registration.

Faculty Development Digest – May 2025

By May 19th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

We have come to the end of another semester!  This will probably be the last Faculty Development Digest until August; I know that everyone has an assortment of summer plans, and reading emails is perhaps not the priority. I will still be available for your faculty development needs over the summer months, but I will be travelling several times and may not be able to immediately answer questions via email. Some travel is for fun (family vacation to New Mexico in June!), but most trips are for scholarship or college stuff (research in Florida, conference, COACHE institute) – lucky for me, these are still mostly fun! Whatever your summer plans are, I hope that they are restorative!

Important deadline for getting reimbursed: Please remember to turn in all Faculty Travel or ASC Grant reimbursement requests to Lisa Whitenack (Box 10 or right in my mailbox in Steffee B101) by Friday, June 6, so that they can be processed before the end of the fiscal year. In particular, please submit any remaining requests before heading out of town for summer travel. Original, itemized receipts should be accompanied by a completed Travel/Entertainment Report form with an ink signature. Additional information is available on the Faculty Funding page. If you turn in your faculty travel paperwork and receipts too late, they may have to get charged to the next fiscal year’s faculty travel. This means that you will have fewer funds available in the cycle that starts on July 1 because you will have already pulled from them. If your travel is between June 6 and 30, and you haven’t already talked to Lisa about this, please do so ASAP.

ASC funding reports: If you received an ASC grant for the current fiscal year (July 1, 2024 – June 30, 2025), please remember to complete the Funding Report submission form by June 30. This form and further details are available on the ASC Grant Applications page. Please contact ASC Chair Terry Bensel (tbsensel@allegheny.edu) or Lisa Whitenack (lwhitena@allegheny.edu) with any questions. Please note that if you do not turn in this report, you are not eligible for ASC funds in future award cycles until we’ve received your report.

Sabbatical/Pre-Tenure Leave Reports: If you had a sabbatical or pre-tenure leave during the 2024/25 academic year, please remember to submit your leave report using the form on this page. For fall one-semester leaves, reports were due by March 31. For spring one-semester leaves and two-semester (fall/spring) leaves, reports are due by October 31. Questions can be directed to Lisa  (lwhitena@allegheny.edu)

ICYMI: Spring 2025 Educator Resource Institute (ERI): The Spring 2025 ERI took place on Tuesday, May 13. If you missed it or need to go back and look at materials, they are linked in the schedule here.

Updates from the Library

Summer research students & the library: Research librarians are offering summer research support to both students and faculty. We want to partner with you! Sessions can be tailored to individuals or groups. Email researchinstruction@allegheny.edu for more information. *New to our research repertoire includes support of digital humanities, archives and special collections research and research projects. Contact us today!

Librarians are here to help faculty, too!: Faculty can set up individual meetings with librarians over the summer to get help with moving from Zoom to Meet, Google Workspace (Docs, Sheets, Slides, etc), Canvas, faculty research, and integrating librarian sessions into classes. Please go to the Library Resources for Faculty page to schedule an appointment.

Open access publishing opportunities: You can find information about open access publishing opportunities that Allegheny has with various publishers and journals here. You can also find the slide deck associated with the presentation that Tressa Snyder and Brian Kern gave here. Please don’t hesitate to reach out to Brian (bkern@allegheny.edu) with questions!

From the Office of Inclusive Excellence

Sustained Dialogue: The Office of Student and Community Development is seeking anyone from the campus community interested in participating in moderator training as part of the Sustained Dialogue initiative on campus. Participants will learn to moderate conversations with others that prompt change and understanding through listening deeply to each other. Dialogue sessions occur over the space of several sessions throughout the semester.A Virtual Moderator Training Series will be offered through the Sustained Dialogue Institute beginning June 9th and concluding on July 7th. Sessions begin at 1pm and will last 4 hours. More information about the Sustained Dialogue Institute can be found here
Summer Moderator Training. If interested, please contact Anne Butcher at abutcher@allegheny.edu by June 2nd to be registered for the free training.

Readings, Slides, and Guides – stock up for summer!

Using AI in the classroom: Attitudes among faculty range from embracing GenAI fully to prohibiting it completely, and everything in between. While we will be providing plenty of faculty development opportunities around AI in the next academic year, you may be interested in this article by Lisa Delgado Brown in Faculty Focus. In the article, she outlines several potential strategies for incorporating AI into your classroom, including how to teach students about ethical considerations. (Note that if you can’t access the article, you can sign up for a free subscription to see it)

More AI in the classroom: The Eberly Center at Carnegie Mellon University, just down I-79 from us, has established the GAITER Initiative. No, they’re not going to steal Chompers as their mascot. GAITER stands for “Generative AI Teaching As Research.” Included in this initiative are GAITER Fellows, faculty who are doing pedagogical research projects on AI in the classroom. You can read all about their projects and data-driven conclusions here. Projects include studies such as “Does student use of generative AI while completing formal writing assignments impact students’ writing performance?” and “To what extent does student use of generative AI impact the rate of change in students’ abilities to critically read and analyze academic papers?”

Solve a teaching problem: I just today learned that Eberly Center also has a “Solve a Teaching Problem” website – click on a problem that you’re having, and it’ll walk you through potential reasons for the problem and strategies to solve the problem. Folks from the Eberly Center say that some of these are a little out of date, and one of their big summer projects is updating this website. However, it’s still pretty useful!

Creating inclusive learning environments for international students: This short guide, written by Dr. Thilagha Jagaiah (who was an international student herself), contains five strategies for creating a more welcoming classroom for international students.

How to mentor anyone in academia: No matter your career stage, part of being a faculty member is mentoring. Yes, we are all (hopefully) mentoring students, but we are also mentoring other faculty too. This interview, published in Inside Higher Ed, talks through some of the main points in Maria Lamonaca Wisdom’s book, How to Mentor Anyone in Academia. This book will be coming to the faculty development collection in Pelletier in the coming months, and faculty institutional mentors for the next academic year will be receiving a copy as well.

Why aren’t students reading? You can either watch this three-minute video or read the article in the Chronicle of Higher Education. And yes, there is some irony in watching a video instead of reading the article about not reading.

Co-creating classroom rules: It may seem too early to be thinking about the fall semester, but it’s not! Summer can be a great time for having some breathing room to truly think about potential changes to future courses. One change folks may be considering making is co-creating ground rules or classroom norms with their students. This article in Faculty Focus walks through some ways to do that and why it may be a great idea for your classroom.

Upcoming Opportunities

Duquesne University National Research Scholars Program: The Carl G. Grefenstette Center for Ethics in Science, Technology, and Law at Duquesne University invites scholars and researchers in the United States to apply for the Grefenstette National Research Scholars program for Academic Year 2025-2026. The National Research Scholars program is a small community of scholars from all backgrounds and traditions who come together monthly and discuss their research on the intersections of technology, society, and faith, broadly construed.  Areas of study include but are not limited to critical AI/critical technology studies, responsible AI studies, ethics, religious studies, sociology of religion, intersectional approaches to technology and society, and theology. Applications are due May 30. You can read more about the program here.

Free online professional development course on research methodology: The Center for Learning and Teaching at Forman Christian College University, Lahore, is excited to offer a FREE online professional development course on Research Methodology 2025 – based on the Researcher Development Framework (RDF).  Here is the information (emojis came with the message, not from Lisa):

️  June 11 – July 8, 2025         |   23 webinars on different days and times

  Online via Zoom                   |   Registration link (Zoom link will be shared once you register)

  Course Schedule                |  Schedule carries expert(s) & session(s) info

  Who can benefit:                 |   Scholars, postgraduate students, refresh/strengthen research skills

  Course benefits                   |   Online Access to Recordings, Slides, Resources

  Digital Participation Certificates ** for participants who attend full sessions

Fullbright-IMC Krems: The application period for the prestigious Fulbright-IMC Krems Visiting Professor Award is now open. This award offers a unique opportunity for scholars to engage in a combination of teaching and research at IMC Krems, a renowned internationally oriented University of Applied Sciences in Austria. The program aims to foster international collaboration and academic exchange and strengthening ties between the United States and Austria. We highly encourage eligible candidates to apply and take advantage of this exceptional opportunity. IMC Krems is known for its practice-oriented education, international focus, and close collaboration with industry partners. Located in the picturesque town of Krems, the university offers a vibrant academic environment with state-of-the-art facilities and a strong emphasis on student satisfaction and employability. With a diverse range of degree programs in business, health, and science & technology, IMC Krems is committed to developing the talents of its students and preparing them for successful careers. For more details about the Fulbright-IMC Krems Visiting Professor Award and the application process, please visit Fulbright Austria.

Faculty Development Digest – April 2025

By April 15th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

Spring 2025 Educator Resource Institute (ERI): The Spring 2025 ERI will take place on Tuesday, May 13 in Pelletier. You can find a schedule with workshop descriptions here. Please RSVP here by Thursday, May 8 so that we can plan for food, etc. Note that you are free to attend as many of these sessions as you like, but we hope to see you at all of them! Most sessions will be taking place in the new CREATE Lab (formerly the Collaboratory) – come take a sneak peek at the new CREATE space!

We also could use some of your help in planning these workshops, even if you are unable to attend sessions:

  • If you already use alternative grading strategies (and Lisa hasn’t already reached out to you), please fill out this 6-question survey.
  • The RSVP form also has a field for questions about alternative grading that you may have.

RSE week is coming!: This is a friendly reminder that RSEs are being administered the week of April 21. Please allow class time during that week for your students to complete their feedback.

COACHE: From the COACHE team, thank you to everyone who took the survey and/or encouraged others to do so. Our final response rate was 83.6%!! High fives to everyone!

Brain break: In “The Waste Land”, T.S. Eliot wrote, “April is the cruelest month”. While he was not referring to the rhythm of the academic year, the sentiment applies. The mad dash to the end of the semester can be a lot. Please make sure that you’re taking care of yourself and taking breaks in this final leg of the semester (just like when we tell our students to take study breaks!). One of the things that I like to do when I feel chained to my desk, but can’t get out into nature, is to keep a live cam going in the background so that I can stop and watch the fishes for a while. Coral City in Miami is one of my frequent ones, as is the live stream from the Okeanos Explorer which will be at sea from April 11 – May 2. Coral City was coincidentally featured on NPR on April 14! If fishes aren’t your thing, there are oodles of live cams at explore.org, including birds, general landscapes, bears, and more.

Allegheny Awesome: If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Updates from the Library

Student appointments with the Research librarians: The Research librarians at Pelletier encourage faculty to recommend that their students make an appointment with a librarian for one-on-one assistance with papers, presentations, and reports. Appointments are available throughout the week, with 48 hours notice, either in person or via Google Meet. Librarians can assist with honing search strategies, focusing research, identifying authoritative articles and books, tracking citations, using correct citation styles, and more. The library also offers research assistance at the Research Desk, facing the entrance to the library. Librarians and trained students provide on-the-spot research help from 3-9 p.m. Monday through Thursday.

Summer research students & the library: Research librarians are offering summer research support to both students and faculty. We want to partner with you! Sessions can be tailored to individuals or groups. Email researchinstruction@allegheny.edu for more information. *New to our research repertoire includes support of digital humanities, archives and special collections research and research projects. Contact us today!

Meeting with departments: The Dean of the Library is meeting with interested departments to discuss research and resource needs and to showcase department and program-specific resources. If your department would like to move to the top of the list, please contact Tressa Snyder, as soon as possible at tsnyder@allegheny.edu.

Upcoming library events:

-Lafayette at Allegheny College, a Merrick Archives Exhibit, April 11 to May 2, 2025   

In 1825, French General Marquis de Lafayette was on a national tour of the United States. On June 2, 1825, Lafayette’s entourage stopped in Meadville and the General gave a speech from the steps of Bentley Hall.

From April 11 to May 2, the exhibit “Lafayette at Allegheny College” will be displayed at the Merrick Archives on the 3rd floor of Pelletier Library. The exhibit showcases several original artifacts, including the recently rediscovered 1825 Allegheny College Guest Book, signed by Lafayette, his son, and several of his French companions. The exhibit also features original artifacts related to Lafayette’s brief stay in Meadville, on loan from the Crawford County Historical Society, the Hagen History Center in Erie, and Allegheny Alumnus Bill Owen.

-Out of the Vault, April 22, 2025, 4:00 PM

On Tuesday, April 22, at 4:00pm, the Merrick Archives will host the final Out of the Vault program for the spring semester. Allegheny Archivist Chris Anderson will discuss General Lafayette’s stop at Allegheny College and also showcase original artifacts from the exhibit. The Allegheny College and Meadville communities are invited to attend the event to be held on the 3rd floor of the Pelletier Library.

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Resources for higher education news & issues: While many of us have particular go-to sources that keep us apprised of the latest topics and news related to our specific disciplines, there are some great resources for news and information on higher ed in general, pedagogy, and scholarship. Many of these resources are either free or freely available with an Allegheny email. Here is a list of Whitenack’s go-to sources for staying updated on higher education news and for bringing things to you in this digest. If you have suggestions for some that I may have missed, please let me know!

Self-archiving your research and teaching materials: There are several reasons that folks may have for backing up your professional materials in multiple places. During my Ph.D., I backed up all of my data on 3 copies of CDs – one for the lab, one for home, and one that mailed to my parents to put in their safe deposit box – because what if I lost one of those CDs?! An Allegheny faculty member sent me this Bluesky thread about how to go about self-archiving your electronic stuff (which I printed to a PDF in case you’re not on Bluesky). Note that the thread is focused on potential censorship in the current political climate, but the advice is solid regardless of your reason for self-archiving.

Reflecting on the semester: While it’s tempting to close up your course notes and grade book and sail into the summer, it’s worth taking time to reflect on your courses while the experience is fresh in your brain. This guide from the City University of New York talks about pausing your sprint into summer to close out the semester with reflection, record-keeping, and thinking about how these connect to your professional development.

Upcoming Opportunities

GLCA teaching & learning workshop – AI in Action: Improve, Create, Integrate, a Hands-on Workshop: April 16, 12-1 pm Eastern. As educators, finding the time to explore the practical applications of AI in our teaching can be challenging. This hands-on workinar, designed specifically for those with minimal AI experience, will guide you through effective ways to use AI to improve your existing assignments, create innovative new ones, and seamlessly integrate generative AI into your busy academic life. We will primarily use ChatGPT, the platform most used by students. This session will be highly interactive, featuring group discussions and hands-on activities, so it will not be recorded. Throughout the workshop, we will actively use ChatGPT to demonstrate its capabilities and explore its applications in your teaching. To fully engage with the workshop materials, we recommend that attendees create at least a base account on a generative AI platform such as ChatGPT, Claude, or Gemini before the session. This will allow you to upload files and experiment with AI tools in real time, ensuring a more productive and immersive learning experience. By the end of this session, you will have a solid understanding of how AI operates in educational contexts and its potential implications for your teaching. You’ll leave equipped to make well-informed decisions about whether and how to incorporate AI tools into your teaching practices based on your specific educational objectives and classroom needs. Register here.

What Works in 2025? Building for the Future of Higher Education: The Center for Innovative Pedagogy at Kenyon College invites presentations on teaching and learning for a hybrid conference May 28-29, 2025.  This conference is an opportunity for faculty and academic support professionals to share their experiences innovating for the classroom. The presentation application deadline has already passed, but it may be worth checking out as an attendee! More information can be found here.

Faculty Development Digest -March 2025

By March 19th 2025

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 Lisa Whitenack at lwhitena@allegheny.edu. To access previous issues, use the links in the Recent Posts box or on this page.

From the Director of Faculty Development:

List of incentives for COACHE survey

COACHE: Great news!! As of 3/18, our response rate to the COACHE survey is 56.9%! That means that we’ve earned cookies and finals week beverages at French Creek Coffee! We will be getting cookies and punchcards for beverages to your mailboxes in the coming weeks.

This also means that we still need eligible folks to complete their surveys if y’all want a nice brunch at the last faculty meeting. You’re probably tired of hearing me say this, but if you’re eligible, please take the COACHE survey! If you’ve already taken it, thank you. Please be sure to encourage your colleagues to take the survey as well!

Don’t forget that our second open tab at GFC is on March 27!

Allegheny Awesome: Tommy Conners, Assistant Professor of World Language & Culture, has been experimenting with curricular-extracurricular collaboration in “Intro to Latinx Studies”.  On Wednesday, 2/26, students held poster presentations defining, contextualizing, and complicating keywords in the field. This directly preceded a panel that the student org Latinas on the Rise held about colorism in the Latin American diaspora. Tommy writes “It’s a curricular-extracurricular collaboration that aims to support Latinx students on campus, make space for Latinx Studies as a field, and turns a midterm project from a written paper into a public-facing interdisciplinary conversation.” This required close work with Latinas on the Rise, including attending meetings, navigating meeting students as both students and officers, pitching ideas and listening to their needs, and collaborating with IDEAS center leadership.

If you have a cool pedagogical thing that you’re doing and would like to share, please email me! If you’ve seen a colleague doing something awesome in the classroom or while advising that people should know about, please let me know! If you’ve discovered the key to staying productive in your scholarship while juggling all of the things, send me an email! From there, I will follow up with folks and work with them to write a paragraph or two for a future Faculty Development Digest.

Spring 2025 Educator Resource Insitute (ERI): The Spring 2025 ERI will take place on Tuesday, May 13 in Pelletier. Topics planned include a syllabus audit workshop, a workshop on alternate grading schemes (e.g. contract grading, mastery-based grading, and more), and a workshop on teaching oral communication skills. The form for RSVPing to the ERI will be coming soon.

From the Office of Inclusive Excellence

“Research for Lunch” is a once-monthly lunch event that showcases the different forms research can take. It’s geared towards students interested in summer research or in early stages of preparing to comp, but faculty are encouraged to attend! It features the projects and day-to-day research of faculty and staff from creative writing, music, sustainability, athletics, COMJ, public humanities, art, philosophy, theatre, and more. It convenes on Jan 28, Feb 19, March 27, and April 14 from 12:30 pm-1:20 pm in the Brooks Gillespie Room. Please RSVP here. Sponsored by the Office of Inclusive Excellence, the IDEAS Center, and URSCA; please direct any questions to Tommy Conners (tconners@allegheny.edu).

Updates from the Library

Data Bites: The next Data Bites session is on Friday, March 28 from 12:15-1:20 pm in Pelletier classroom 224. Tressa Snyder and Doug Anderson will talk about Copyright & Fair Use information: Want to become more copyright literate? Learn more about copyright as it applies to faculty publishing and AI, senior comps, sharing course content, and using copyrighted materials in Canvas and in the classroom. Find out about public domain, Creative Commons, and fair use in education. Snacks will be served!

Looking ahead to Fall 2025: As you start to plan your fall courses, consider inviting a librarian! Librarians will work with faculty to prepare classroom sessions designed to help students develop and reinforce both information literacy and research skills. Presentations are tailored to each course’s level and subject matter.

A sampling of possible topics:

  • Research:
    • Using AggreGator and general research databases
    • Boolean search strategies
    • Subject-specific resources
    • Finding primary sources
  • Information Literacy:
    • Assessing reliability of sources
    • Evaluating journals and scholars
    • RefWorks Citation Manager

Request a library session by visiting the library’s Research Instruction page, or email research.instruction@allegheny.edu if you’d like to discuss possibilities first.

From Student Success:

Help us get ready for first-year advising: Erin O’Day-Frye is looking for information about courses offered in Fall 2025 for the purposes of first-year course registration. Please especially send her information about special topics courses, new courses, and courses that will count for other major/minor requirements. This information will be shared with Exploratory and First Year Course Registration Advisors.

Resources for career education and Gator2Gator: Sara Pineo and colleagues have made a number of resources related to Gator2Gator, a networking platform that connects Allegheny students with alumni for career advice and professional connections. You can find the folder of resources here, which includes an info sheet for faculty and staff, as well as individual flyers/posters for majors/minors that have alumni connected to Gator2Gator.

Readings, Slides, and Guides

Updating think-pair-share: This article by Ashley Harvey offers some quick upgrades to think-pair-share.

Materials from GLCA workshop with Mays Imad: The Great Lakes College Association (GLCA) hosted a virtual workshop titled “Teaching Through Difficulty” with Dr. Mays Imad on Weds. March 12. You can find the recording here, the slides here, and a related article here.

A tool kit for open educational resources (OERs): If you’re curious about adopting OERs to reduce textbook costs for students, you may find this guide by Sami Lange handy.

Upcoming Opportunities

Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership & Course Enhancement Grants: Funded by the Mellon Foundation and the Eugene M. Lang Foundation, these grants provide up to $4,500 to support faculty in developing or enhancing courses with civic engagement, community partnerships, and/or public scholarship. Selected faculty will (i) receive funding for course development, faculty or student stipends, research, travel, and/or community-engaged projects and (ii) join a national network of scholars dedicated to advancing civic engagement in higher education.

There are two different grants:

  • Mellon Periclean Faculty Leadership (PFL) Program ($4,500)
  • Periclean Course Enhancement (PCE) Grants ($1,000-$3,000)

Application Deadline: April 4, 2025 (for courses taught in Fall 2025 or Spring 2026) and October 3, 2025 (for courses taught in Spring 2026.)
 Click here to learn more and apply.

*** Interested faculty should complete the Allegheny College grant proposal endorsement form well before the deadline. Please also keep in mind that the Foundations & Corporate Relations Office will need to review all drafts of the proposal at least 2 weeks before the proposal deadline.

For questions or more information, please contact Brian Miller (bmiller2@allegheny.edu) or Tarah Williams (twilliams@allegheny.edu).

What Works in 2025? Building for the Future of Higher Education: The Center for Innovative Pedagogy at Kenyon College invites presentations on teaching and learning for a hybrid conference May 28-29, 2025.  This conference is an opportunity for faculty and academic support professionals to share their experiences innovating for the classroom. Your proposal should include an explanation of how your session would apply to the teaching of undergraduates in small colleges and universities. These can be lessons learned in larger institutions that would also apply to smaller settings. We will consider all proposals that would apply to undergraduate education at a small college or university, but we especially want to encourage proposals in these areas:

  • approaches that build community and belonging in the classroom
  • creative connections between different disciplines across the curriculum
  • experiential opportunities and real world applications for the liberal arts

The presentation application deadline has already passed, but it may be worth checking out as an attendee!