These Things Take Time

One promising - literally - initiative on this campus is the "Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning." It sounds like a wonderful thing. Provided, of course, that it can be located. Although the "Faculty Center" has been described as a "virtual center," the closest virtual resource center I could find was the Academic Development Resource Room. While other University documents - such as the Provost's page on SoTL,- reference the "Faculty Center" and/or its Fellows,"a full list of the Fellows is nowhere to be found on the University website. Evidence of the "Faculty Center's" effects on the quality of teaching is likewise absent to date.

I'm not faulting the Central Administration on this. The Associate Provost for General Education and the Assistant Provost for the Extended Campus are extremely busy people and, I suspect, have a good handle on what needs to be done. I understand these things take time. I'm not personally looking for the cavalry. Nor am I in any big hurry. Nothing's going majorly wrong in my classroom. Whatever can be improved upon will be tweaked appropriately. I don't need any help - at least not from the usual Carnegie/SoTL suspects - in designing my new class for the upcoming semester. If I cared about studying Educational Design or Motivational Student Psychology, I would have done it as an undergraduate. As with the dear old Showcase, the language that they constantly prate says nothing to me about my life.

What would I like to see at a "Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning?"For one thing, spaces - both physical and virtual - where faculty members can talk about teaching without necessarily feeling compelled to label their conversation as the almighty "Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." In the late 1990s I participated in an impromptu discussion group with faculty from four different colleges. I went primarily because I enjoyed meeting with colleagues and sharing experiences with them. The benefits I obtained over the two years I attended the group were substantial - but secondary. I think a sense of community can be built among faculty, but not if it is forced on faculty as a mandate.

I would also like to see the "Faculty Center" led by a real, live, practicing teacher. Not by a staff member, no matter how capable. Not by one of those semi-administrative looters who routinely cadge released time for dressing in nice clothes and going to meetings. Not by one of those armchair theoreticians who publish reams but can't teach their way out of a paper bag. Not by one of those hothouse flowers who hasn't taught undergraduates in more than a decade. Of course, most (if not all) of the real, live, practicing teachers I would have in mind would run screaming from an administrative job - especially one that would take them out of the classroom. I can't even imagine the patience required to sit through the endless meetings with people dressed in nice clothes. But maybe one of them could be talked into taking one for the proverbial team.