Faculty Exploration Groups
- In what areas are you excited to grow and develop?
- What are some of the biggest questions or challenges for you as a faculty member?
- Wouldn’t it be great to work through those questions and challenges with other committed faculty?
Faculty Exploration Groups (FEG) connect small groups of faculty with shared interests and learning needs to engage in exploration in a focused area. These groups seek to strengthen community, enhance faculty collaboration within and across disciplines, and encourage reflection about teaching and learning.
What does a Faculty Exploration Group look like?
Groups will consist of 5-10 faculty members with a shared learning interest. Each Faculty Exploration Group will collaboratively define its goals and process to pursue those goals. Activities might involve readings, webinars, virtual conferences coupled with substantive group discussion, reflection, and collaboration. While the specific format of the FEG is, of course, up to the members of each group, we expect that each Faculty Exploration Group will meet regularly through the fall semester and maybe the academic year to discuss, reflect, share ideas, and provide feedback to one another. We hope each group will develop a sense of shared purpose among the participants and a specific goal for sharing the results of their group. Each Faculty Exploration Group will have a convener who is responsible for scheduling meetings, sharing a roster of their FEG with CELTS, and ensuring the group shares a product from their learning with the larger community in some way.
What are the topics for Faculty Exploration Groups?
The options are endless and up to you. They might include themes like teaching with AI, practices for promoting inclusive excellence, how to plan a study away course, coping with compassion fatigue, mindfulness for educators, parenting and academia, the digital humanities, leadership skills, or teaching observation groups. Propose a group that excites you!
What support is available for Faculty Exploration Groups?
The Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship and Academic Affairs will provide support of up to $500 per Faculty Exploration Group for up to 5 groups. These funds can be used by the group to purchase supporting resources, such as books, honorarium for a consulting expert, or webinar or virtual conference registration fees.
Upon a report of sharing their learning with a larger faculty community (more on that below), the convener of Faculty Exploration Group will be eligible for $50 PDF.
What are the expectations of a Faculty Exploration Group?
We hope that these groups will be a small collaborative community to support your growth this year. We expect that each Faculty Exploration Group will meet regularly (at least monthly) to discuss, reflect, share ideas, and provide feedback to one another. We expect that every group shares their learning with the larger faculty community in some way either at the end of the academic year or the following academic year. This might be through a white paper or resource sheet shared on the CELTS Moodle page or workshop programming through CELTS--the CELTS director will work with you to ensure that you have a way to share what you learn with faculty colleagues.
How do I form or join a Faculty Exploration Group?
Faculty who are interested in convening a FEG should complete this form to share the topic and very brief description of what might be explored in this group. A list of those groups will then be emailed to the faculty and interested faculty will contact the convener to join. Reach out to Erin Kempker if you have questions or want to brainstorm.