Welcome from CETL!
This is our first newsletter of the 2004-2005 academic year. We apologize for being so tardy but it took longer than planned to get this new site up and running. We are excited about changing over to the new design. Now you can access MSU websites easily from our site. You will also be able to move around the site easily and we can update it quickly.
The school year has started off with a bang for CETL. We held our first ever new faculty orientation session prior to the start of school which was well-received by those in attendance. More importantly, the two new initiatives for faculty that started this year turned out to be very popular. The new Mentoring Program for first and second year faculty filled fast and we now have 37 new faculty matched with trained mentors. These pairs of faculty will meet during the year, have free lunches, and develop an important relationship that should aid new faculty in their understanding of the university. We are hearing encouraging reports already from both mentees and mentors.
The other new program, our Faculty Teaching Certificate Program (FTCP), has been more successful then we could have dreamed. We have 60 teaching faculty (including 8 graduate teaching assistants) meeting monthly in seven different groups. These faculty are developing relationships with other faculty from around the university in virtually all colleges and most disciplines. They are also learning about various aspects of the teaching/learning culture at the university from active learning strategies, to quality syllabus writing, to increasing diversity in the classroom. These faculty will also pair up and visit one another's classrooms, have at least one peer-faculty consultation during the year, and complete a capstone project of some kind that can be used in the classroom. Best yet, each participant that completes the program will receive a certificate that can be added to their article 22 documents as evidence of continued preparation and study. We have had our first groups meet and the atmosphere has been electric as faculty share ideas, ask questions of one another, and change the climate of teaching and learning for the better at MSU.
Other on-going programs from CETL include Peer Faculty Consultation for any faculty who contact us, workshops on teaching/learning issues, and two conferences that are now being planned. The first conference will take place on November 11th and is titled, "Talking About Teaching and Technology." Co-sponsored by CETL and ITS, this conference will aid faculty in finding out more about on-line courses taught by our faculty and faculty at other institutions and the use of technology at the university in general. A second conference will be held on February 11th and is titled, "Talking About Teaching and Significant Learning." This conference will feature a leader in higher education faculty development, Dee Fink, from the University of Oklahoma. Many faculty read his book, "Creating Significant Learning Experiences," last year and will be able to ask questions of the author at the conference. There will also be break-out sessions provided by some of our own faculty who are working to create significantlearning experiences for our students through course development and redesign.
Take a look around the CETL website for more details on the above initiatives and to see what faculty are involved in our programs. Please bookmark this site so you can visit often. We hope to include pictures of faculty participating in CETL programs in the near future and will update this newsletter every couple of weeks. Finally, we will be announcing new workshops and reminding you of upcoming events through this medium.
We also want to introduce Dawn Ellen Kirkland, our new full-time graduate assistant for CETL. Dawn Ellen comes to us from New York where she worked with the New York City school system in experiential education, which is her current field of study at MSU. Dawn Ellen is working to finalize an annotated bibliography of new books we have purchased through a donation by the Faculty Association and administration. These books will soon be housed in a special section of the library so faculty can check them out as necessary. Dawn Ellen is also completing a huge Faculty Resource Guidebook that will be up on this website soon. Sponsored through a grant, the guidebook was written this summer by CETL Director, Stewart Ross. It will include things faculty need to know from "where are the cash machines" to developing a quality syllabus. Stay tuned. Come back to our site often.
Stewart Ross
Director, CETL
