peter felten<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nour final panelist had the earliest connection to the history of the cft. peter felten<\/strong> is now assistant provost for teaching and learning and executive director of the center for engaged learning and professor of history at elon university, but before that, he was an assistant and associate director at the vanderbilt cft (1999-2005). peter\u2019s sense of humor showed in his recollection, which focused on the halloween parties that cft assistant director darlene panvini used to host. peter said those parties captured some of the spirit of the cft in that they were both serious and fun. he recalled a colleague who dressed as the farmer in the famous grant wood painting american gothic<\/em>, complete with pitchfork and frame. (that colleague was me.) peter said that the halloween parties, like the cft, blended \u201cplayfulness and rigor.\u201d<\/p>\nengaging in the present<\/em><\/p>\nwhen asked how his time at the 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 helped equip him for his current work, peter felten noted that he was trained to work entirely by himself. \u201cthat\u2019s how historians work,\u201d he said. the cft work environment, with colleagues from different disciplines, was much more collaborative. peter worked closely with peers on a variety of projects, and sometimes just got together to discuss a journal article over bagels. \u201cone of the things that fundamentally reoriented how am i as a professional,\u201d he said, \u201cwas the relational work at the cft.\u201d<\/p>\n
katie headrick taylor echoed this sentiment. \u201ci can\u2019t overemphasize how collaborative the space was at the cft,\u201d she said, \u201cand how that prepared me to not just think about supporting my current graduate students around research, but also supporting them around their own instruction.\u201d she said her time at the cft helped her approach her work on teaching and learning as a continuous collaboration with colleagues and with her students.<\/p>\n
when asked how her cft experiences affect her current work, brielle harbin noted that students at the united states naval academy come from every congressional district in the country and thus have very different experiences and perspectives they bring to the political science classroom. brielle said her experiences as a graduate teaching fellow thinking critically about issues of difference helped prepare her for this sometimes challenging teaching environment. without the \u201cspace to think about these things,\u201d she said, \u201ci don\u2019t think i would have been able to step into these conversations.\u201d<\/p>\n
shederick mcclendon also pointed to the professional development he received at the cft as a key part of his current work and practice. he both participated in and led workshops on discussion leading while at the cft, and he drew good practices from that workshop as he moved into professional spaces. \u201cin a classroom or in a meeting,\u201d shederick said that those lessons learned affect \u201chow i shape the conversation, how i start and lead throughout.\u201d<\/p>\n
envisioning the future<\/em><\/p>\nwhen asked about her hopes and fears for the future of teaching and learning in higher education, both katie headrick taylor and brielle harbin discussed higher education\u2019s recent response to the covid-19 pandemic. katie noted that the move to online learning and instruction helped many teachers and students during a difficult time, but she worries about increasing pressure to shift more instruction online. \u201ci feel like we are losing so many sense-making modes of our bodies when we are just sitting in front of our computer screens,\u201d she said. in her research, she studies digital learning, so she\u2019s no luddite. but she added, \u201cwe have to hold the physical and the digital up next to each other and really understand our reasons for engaging in one over the other.\u201d brielle pointed to all the lessons learned during the pandemic about \u201cmaking more learning more accessible to people,\u201d particularly students who benefit from different kinds of access to content, interaction, and assessment. she hopes that we\u2019re not \u201cmyopic\u201d and that we \u201chold onto some of these lessons.\u201d<\/p>\n
katie and brielle also mentioned the opportunities and challenges of an increasing diverse student population. \u201ci\u2019m so excited to see the increasing diversity in my classrooms,\u201d said katie,\u201d and how their perspectives are changing the kinds of conversations we can have.\u201d brielle added that this diversity means more work needs to be done in the affective domain. \u201cdo you have the soft skills to talk to your neighbor? to communicate with people who are different from you?\u201d she asked. addressing these needs can\u2019t happen in just one course, however. \u201cyou need to think about revisions to curricula to actually track those types of skills,\u201d brielle said. \u201cthose are larger institutional questions.\u201d<\/p>\n
shederick mcclendon also mentioned the challenges of teaching and learning in diverse environments, with a recommendation for centers for teaching and learning like our own cft. \u201ci hope that teaching centers put time and energy into anti-racist pedagogy,\u201d he said. \u201ci\u2019ve had several students describe what trauma looks like to them in a classroom. i know some campuses are already doing this, but it\u2019s just so important.\u201d shederick also noted that more campuses are seeing value in teaching centers, in part for their role in faculty development along these lines. \u201cseeing that movement across the country is great,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
peter felten agreed, but also offered a note of caution. he described a recent article, \u201cagency and structure in academic development practices<\/a>\u201d by torgny rox\u00e5 and katarina m\u00e5rtensson, educational developers at lund university in sweden. the article raises questions about the potential for teaching centers to bend faculty toward larger institutional goals. \u201care we liberating faculty and students in our institutions through our work?\u201d paraphrased peter. \u201cor are we constraining them,\u201d perhaps by having a strong agenda shaped by center or institutional priorities.<\/p>\nthe questions and concerns our faculty and students bring matter to the work of a teaching center, peter argued. \u201cif we can\u2019t answer the question, \u2018how does our teaching, our curriculum, our educational development engage with the grand challenges of our communities and the world?\u2019 then what are we doing and why are we doing it?\u201d peter added that the teaching and learning in higher education needs to be relevant to the current moment, even if research and scholarship can sometimes get away with being in an ivory tower. \u201ci don\u2019t think our teaching can responsibly be apart from covid and black lives matter and climate change and threats to democracy,\u201d peter said.<\/p>\n
reflection<\/em><\/p>\nas i said at the start of the panel, the vanderbilt 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 has perhaps the most impressive alumni of any teaching center in north america. i knew when our 35th<\/sup> anniversary was on the horizon that i wanted to celebrate and honor those alumni. i am deeply grateful for peter, shederick, katie, and brielle for participating in this panel and sharing their perspectives and experiences. their responses to allison\u2019s thoughtful questions were full of wisdom, and they articulated so clearly some of the things i know to be true about the 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 and the work of teaching centers more broadly.<\/p>\nwe offer welcoming spaces for critical reflection on one\u2019s teaching in the company of thoughtful colleagues from across the disciplines. we help faculty and other instructors grapple with their teaching questions and interests, and we help them consider new questions posed by the changing contexts of higher education and new pedagogies drawn from ongoing research on teaching and learning. in 2020, centers for teaching and learning became centers for resiliency in the face of unprecedented teaching and learning challenges, and in the future we will (i hope) continue to help our teaching communities engage with, as peter said, \u201cthe grand challenges\u201d we face.<\/p>\n
thanks again to our alumni panelists, and thanks to all the 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分 staff and students who have made this such a special place (playful and rigorous!) for 35 years and counting.<\/p>\n
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by derek bruff, executive director in honor of the 2022年世界杯中国小组赛积分\u2019s 35th anniversary, the cft hosted a special anniversary panel on october 29, 2021, featuring staff and graduate student alumni of the cft. the panelists discussed a series of questions on teaching and learning in higher education and the field of educational development. the…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":451,"featured_media":39468,"parent":593,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"spay_email":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40688"}],"collection":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/451"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40688"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40688\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40689,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/40688\/revisions\/40689"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/593"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/39468"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40688"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"\/\/www.imrbdigital.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40688"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}