Faculty Development Workshop Options
The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) at Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) offers a range of professional development seminars for faculty and students, both at IUP and other institutions. The CTE's professional in-service programs can be specially tailored to meet the unique demands of a university's professional working atmosphere. The CTE's major workshop offerings include the following:
Developing a Program for Undergraduate Instructional Associates
This workshop offers research findings regarding the use of undergraduate students in roles traditionally occupied by graduate students and helps participants begin thinking through a process to recruit, train, support, and evaluate both undergraduates and their faculty mentors. Institutional support structures and challenges are also discussed.
Formative Teaching Dialogues: An Alternative to Traditional Peer Review for Teaching
Instead of the often intimidating summative evaluation of teaching that many institutions use to make decisions on promotion and tenure, a team of experienced “dialoguers” will help train participants to interview colleagues, observe with a focus on the teacher's needs and desires for feedback, and follow-up in a non-threatening way. Formative Dialogues focus on the broader process of teaching, not the single-shot method some institutions currently employ. Participants will practice all steps of the formative dialogue and outline ways to institute such a program at their own institution.
Reflective Teacher Practice: What IS Reflection and How Do We Best Practice It?
Reflection is a recursive activity which takes place, ideally, both alone and communally. With roots in John Dewey, reflective or intentional pedagogy asks teachers to fully engage themselves in the construction and reconstruction of their courses, considering a range of elements and discussing their speculation, changes, testing, and evaluation with colleagues. A team of experienced members of IUP's Reflective Practice Project will lead participants through exercises and discussion to help them experience reflection alone and among others, and will help them begin the process of developing institutional structures to support reflective practice at their own institution.
Please contact Dr. Stephanie Taylor-Davis (stdavisl@iup.edu) if you would like to receive more information about scheduling a faculty development workshop for your university.