Professional Development
Remaining current in my field of educational pedagogy requires constant engagement with evidence-based strategies on teaching and learning. I've accomplished this through a mixture of certification in effective teaching practices, conference attendance, and participation with our SCU Faculty Collaborative for Teaching Innovation.
I'm also excited to have recently become a Community Catalyst for Engineering Unleashed. Engineering Unleashed is part of the KEEN network of thousands of engineering faculty, working to unleash undergraduate engineers so that they can create personal, economic, and societal value through the entrepreneurial mindset. As a ComCat, I serve as a role models for community behavior, such as engaging in forums, greeting new users, and participating in card creation. Most importantly, it allows me to understand what is going on in the Network, identify gaps, and assist in future content creation led by peers!
ACUE prepares, credentials, and supports faculty to teach with the practices that improve student achievement.
The Association of College and University Educators (ACUE) believes that all college students deserve an extraordinary education and that faculty members play a critical role in their success. In partnership with institutions of higher education nationwide, ACUE supports and credentials faculty members in the use of evidence-based teaching practices that drive student engagement, retention, and learning. Faculty members who complete ACUE courses earn certificates in effective college instruction endorsed by the American Council on Education. ACUE’s Community of Professional Practice connects college educators from across the country through member forums, podcasts, and updates on the latest developments in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
ACUE’s Effective Practice Framework is a leading statement of the instructional skills that every college educator should possess. It was independently validated and is endorsed by the American Council on Education. Every faculty member credentialed by ACUE has learned about and implemented practices across all of the framework’s core competencies.
Participating in and completing the inaugural ACUE course at SCU was a wonderful experience. We learned first-hand from evidence-based research, best practices, examples, and reflection.
Here are a few of the pedagogical innovations that I have learned and integrated into my own teaching from ACUE:
Student-led rubric development
New active learning-based activities, especially those around in-class discussions
Concept-mapping and flowcharting as timelines class activities and learning outcome explanations
Here is a link to ACUE's Effective Practice Framework! The Framework's core competencies are shown on the right of the certificate below certifying my completion in the course.
Integrating Curriculum with Entrepreneurial Mindset (ICE) Workshop
To become a KEEN Innovative Teaching (KIT) faculty member, you must meet all the requirements, which include:
Attend the entire ICE workshop in Denver, CO (August 9-12, 2017) and draft pilot versions of modules
Present draft version of the modules at virtual meetings between your cohort and mentor (facilitated by Lawrence Tech and the Kern Family Foundation) at approximately three months and six months after the workshop
Develop and implement between two and four modules during the 2017-2018 academic year
Assess the effectiveness of the modules with assistance from workshop instructors and peers
Submit coures modules and supporting content to online database and present findings on a video conference (May/Sept 2018)
Compensation for these efforts included:
$500 paid upon completion of the 2017 ICE Workshop
$500 paid upon attending two virtual progress meetings
$1500 paid upon uploading modules to online database and presenting findings on a video conference summer 2018
Slide show of my final report on my module development initiated by the ICE workshop in 2017.
This workshop was a great experience! The goal of the workshop is to foster greater student engagement and collaboration by focusing on real-world problems that promote the 3 C's of the KEEN network, curiosity, connections, and creating value. The workshop featured activities and presentations covering the important aspects of Entrepreneurial-Minded Learning, Authentic Context Learning, and Project-/Problem-Based Learning and how to integrate the pedagogies into our own courses.
I felt that I gained a lot of good information from the workshop activities, although some of the content was a refresh of what I have already implemented. I met a lot of people with similar mindsets in various stages of their EML implementation, and got to know the KEEN ICE Mentors (Andy Gerhart, Maria-Isabelle Carnasciali, and Joe Tranquillo). Special thanks goes out to these mentors, and also to my peer cohort team - Michael Caston (U Denver), Chad Stillinger (George Fox U), and Damien Salas (Drexel U).
Conferences
Attendance at conferences [along with authoring publications, presentations, and workshops in engineering education, see 'Scholarship'] is one primary method of professional development, enabling me to deepen my knowledge and understanding of key aspects of teaching and learning, and also remain current in the area of engineering education and vital as a teacher. I attend both ASEE and KEEN conferences nearly every year.
ASEE is the only engineering education society dedicated to the professional needs of engineering educators across all disciplines. ASEE connects engineering educators to a world of research and a wealth of information.
KEEN focuses on one mission: to graduate engineers with an entrepreneurial mindset so they can create personal, economic, and societal value through a lifetime of meaningful work.
ASEE is a great conference for engineering educators. I always come away from the conference inspired, armed with new techniques and with new colleagues in my network. It is also a great chance to reconnect, refresh, and collaborate with colleagues from other institutions across the country. I also contribute to division work (see Professional Service) as a deep dive into national interests around division topics and interests and to scholarship around my pedagogical interests.
Santa Clara University is part of the Kern Family Foundation and KEEN. We have many engineering faculty who contribute to the KEEN network through card development (see Scholarship for an example of a card I've contributed), keynote and other lectures and workshop presentations, and through conference attendance. I really appreciate the time for the SCU cohort to reconnect at this conference and also to spread our collaborative network through connections with others who are entrepreneurially minded at other institutions.
In addition to these regular conferences, in the past few years, I've also attended some new conferences relating to my work in the development and integration of electronic portfolios, community-based courses, diversity and inclusion, entrepreneurial thinking, leadership, and student learning through engineering grand challenges! Click the icons below for more information!
Forum on Digital Learning and ePortfolios
This recent conference was funded by Georgia Tech who paired this conference with a day-long workshop at GT with the newly formed LEARN - Learning through Evidence-based Authentic Reflection and Networking cohort. The Forum itself was very informative and I especially enjoyed the plenary talks which bracketed the technical sessions which illustrated how the eFolio movement has grown in higher education and specific examples of how it is being used around the country.
Association for Authentic, Experiential, & Evidence-Based Learning
AAEEBL is a smaller eFolio conference which we have targeted for future publication and presentation. This was my first time attending this conference. While I primarily used it as a scouting opportunity, I also attended a workshop on how to prepare work for publication in the International Journal on Electronic Portfolios and formed new relationships with those at Stanford University, Menlo College, and Auburn University.
Women's Leadership Success in Higher Education
The Women’s Leadership Success in Higher Education conference focuses on mid- to upper-level female higher education leaders who wish to build upon their leadership skill set for success. The conference has a mix of sessions including opportunities to learn from expert faculty and to build an affinity network with peers. I came away with more information on how to effectively build and grow a leadership skill set with awareness of particular factors such as gender, generation, and diversity.
Teaching to Increase Diversity and Equity in STEM (TIDES)
I attended this conference as part of an SCU cohort to learn from and plan to implement culturally responsive pedagogies in STEM education. The highly successful TIDES Institute model has been uniquely designed to empower attendees with skills for conducting deep introspection and exploration of implicit biases, unfair classroom practices, and limiting institutional policies and traditions. This workshop was a difficult week of work and I found it quite emotionally draining. However, we came away with new knowledge about teaching and learning with more inclusive practices and more importantly a way for us to progress with our aim to improve culture around these issues at SCU.
Grand Challenges Scholars Program Annual Conference
The Annual Meeting provides a forum for GCSPs to learn from each other, engage with GCSP stakeholders, and generate ideas for growing the GCSP movement across the US and around the world.
The 2018 GCSP Annual Meeting presented an opportunity to:
Engage with employers that recognize the alignment of the GCSP competencies and their recruitment priorities;
Enhance connections among and between GCSP students and faculty across the GCSP network;
Connect newly established GCSP’s and community colleges exploring joining the network with mentors and other resources;
Create a platform for continued engagement with GCSP alumni; and
Recognize excellence within the GCSP network.
The Faculty Collaborative for Teaching Innovation at SCU has a wealth of resources relating to faculty development and teaching including CAFEs, Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs), and the DRT website (Digital Recourses for Teaching) .
Recent Faculty Learning Communities that I've participated in:
First-Year and First-Generation College Students - In this LEAD Program co-sponsored FSLC, faculty and staff colleagues will explore Lisa Nunn’s new book: 33 Simple Strategies for Faculty: A Week-by-Week Resource for Teaching First-Year and First-Generation Students (Rutgers UP 2019). This book is a quick, easy read (about 1.5 hours) with very accessible ways that we can all support our first-generation college students, as well as first-year students, in general. FLC groups meet three times over the term to discuss the book’s straightforward ideas. Participants will be asked to apply Nunn’s strategies in specific ways to the contexts in which they work with students. While the book focuses on classroom settings, the strategies can easily be applied to other contexts. During the meetings, the group:
Discuss experiences of first-generation college students
Share the ways in which participants are using the suggested strategies
Explore challenges and solutions to supporting first-generation college students, as well as all first- year students.
Human Centered Design Thinking - facilitated by Michelle Stecker and Tonya Nilsson. Faculty had the opportunity to understand the mindset and methodology of human-centered design thinking (HCDT), and how to integrate HCDT into curricular and co-curricular settings. During the quarter-long FLC, group participants:
Brainstormed, Ideated, and Empathized around engaging faculty in teaching pedagogies
Most helpful was the time to sit with colleagues and brainstorm and also the 'empathy safari' to reframe the problem
Ideas to move forward have been drafted in a white paper form
Assignment Design: Creating Assignments that are Effective, Innovative, and Interesting - Participants in this FLC explored the characteristics of effective assignment design and looked at the resources and research that can guide thinking and planning of effective assignments. Members considered how attention to backward design, scaffolding, integration of learning objectives, and principles of engaged learning can shape our design of assignments that provide compelling evidence of student learning, no matter what the discipline. Within the FLC, faculty will share and offer feedback on one-another's assignments.