Students have identified the problem . . . and it's me. Now what?
After another few months of campus activism and protests surrounding campus diversity, one cannot shake the impression that the Knox conversation and the national conversation have become increasingly indistinguishable from each other. While an episode at Claremont McKenna College made national headlines, the experience of one professor may well resonate with many of us. Her brief essay, "Call and Response," presents her thinking when her course, much to her surprise, was cited by student activists as a source of problems on campus, not a solution to them. (A full ventilating of the issues surrounding the essay are offered in the comments section by the Chronicle's assortment of thoughtful, earnest, and loutish readers.)
Our Knox conversation is ongoing. The second Faculty Diversity Workshop on December 11-12 explored issues very much like those in the essay. This link to the workshop website will take you to the workshop preparatory materials but the "Resources" tab includes many other useful links and suggested readings for faculty.
Next Midwest Faculty Seminar: Human Rights - January 21-23, 2016
The agenda for the next Midwest Faculty Seminar has been announced.
Human Rights: Past, Present, and Future - January 21-23, 2016
Human rights clearly do have a history. However, its contours are still undergoing debate
and revision. This seminar will examine topics such as the conceptual origins of human rights; how human rights have been articulated (and actualized) in law; the links between human rights and humanitarianism; the expansion of human rights to groups that include minorities and also new or non-citizens; issues of health and human rights; and even critiques of differing notions of human rights as well as the imbrication of each of these developing ideas with the historical events and problems linked to them. The speakers will represent a wide range of methodological approaches from across the social sciences and humanities. Read full description.
You can find a description of the Midwest Faculty Seminar and Knox policies regarding participation in MFS here.
General descriptions of the remaining seminars for the year are here.
Please email facultydevelopment@knox.edu no later than Monday, December 28, 2015 if you are interested in this seminar.
A Host of Other Faculty Development Opportunities:
ACM Florence Program Faculty Site Visit, April 12-16, 2016 - Application Deadline January 4, 2016
Applications are open to full-time faculty in tenure-line or long-term continuing appointments across departments at ACM colleges. The site visit offers faculty the opportunity to gain direct knowledge of the program by meeting with the ACM Florence Director Jodie Mariotti and Program Coordinator Rosita Cirri, joining instructors and students in their exploration of the city's artistic treasures, and learning from affiliated scholar Andrew Whitfield (Luther, Associate Professor of Music) about the experience of being a visiting faculty. This link to the ACM website page describes the site visit and application requirements: http://acm.edu/2016FlorenceSiteVisit.
Council of Independent Colleges Faculty Development Seminars in the Humanities - Deadlines January 8, 2016 and later
See specific program websites for dates and locations of programs and specific application procedures for each.
- Ancient Greece in the Modern College Classroom: Histories of Herodotus
- American History Seminar: Slave Narratives
- Teaching European Art in Context: Baroque Europe
- Teaching Interfaith Understanding
Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) Summer Leadership Institutes for STEM Faculty - Applications Due February 24, 2016
Institute I: July 12–July 17, 2016; Institute II: July 19–July 24, 2016; Institute III: July 26–July 31, 2016 at the Claggett Center, Adamstown, Maryland
The PKAL Summer Leadership Institute is designed for both early and mid-career STEM faculty engaged in leading projects aimed at transforming undergraduate STEM education in their classrooms, departments, and institutions. The five-day intensive Institute provides faculty participants with the theory and practice required to effectively manage the politics of such change and contribute to the national STEM higher education reform effort.
Using Student-Led Focus Groups for Assessment: A Workshop at the Center of Inquiry, Wabash College - March 10–12, 2016
When we try and make sense of assessment evidence, we often overlook a critical source of information—our students. Conversations with students in focus groups can aid our efforts to understand our assessment evidence. Focus groups allow us to dig into the mechanisms behind the patterns we see in quantitative assessment data. They get at the "why" and "how" behind our data. Focus groups can also help us gather new evidence and answer questions with more detail and nuance than we might get from a survey.
Colleges will participate as two-faculty, two-student teams. Details and application procedure here.