Institutional Development

Illinois Central College

Illinois Central College has undergone a radical change in upper administration, including a new president and vice-president of academic affairs during the course of the SAGE 2YC project. There is a strong message of improving student success rates but there are few opportunities at the college-wide level for faculty to share pedagogical ideas. The department for institutional learning/faculty development was eliminated so opportunities to reach into other departments is minimal. Therefore, most of my recent work has been at the department level with the workshops I've conducted for science faculty. Because of these workshops and earlier faculty-led breakout sessions during orientation week, many faculty know of my interests and some have sought me out to brainstorm ideas for their classes.

Waubonsee Community College

I have been promoting active engagement pedagogies and metacognition through several workshops and seminars at Waubonsee. I feel that I have influenced many full-time and part-time faculty, and several have come to me for continued help in employing many of these strategies in their classes. Two Biology faculty have used several active engagement pedagogies in their classes for the first time after conversations and attendance at on-campus workshops I have run. These include gallery walks and jigsaws. This faculty buy-in may have provided the administration the confidence to allow an outside speaker of my recommendation to present a workshop to the entire Waubonsee faculty on topics in motivation, growth mindset, feedback, self-assessment, and self-regulation during a pre-semester in-service event. This was the first time an event of this type by faculty for faculty occurred during the mandatory pre-semester in-service meetings. Since then, these pre-semester in-service meetings have undergone a major redesign. The speaker was chosen because I had been in workshops where she has presented, and have worked with her for the last several years in my self-directed pedagogical training.

Coincidentally, there has been a reorganization of the academic divisions on campus, so that there is now a new Faculty Development and Engagement Division. This new Division is developing programming that happens to include many of the goals and activities of this project. For example, book clubs and webinars addressing teaching effectiveness are now routine. Perhaps my vocalization of the SAGE 2YC project had some small role in exposing the need for such activities. I have recently accepted the position of as one of two full-time Faculty Development Coordinators of the Faculty Development and Engagement Department at Waubonsee. This is a one year position (2019-2020) that is renewable after the first, where I will be asked to provide leadership for advancing the college's goal to foster inclusive teaching excellence to support holistic student success.