May Institute 2008: What We Are Already Doing

What are FLCs? FLP?

The Finger Lakes Project is described in this article from Ithaca College's Sustainability Newsletter, Collective Impacts.

Faculty Learning Communities are described in this page from Miami University of Ohio.

Register Here

Click here to complete and submit your registration form. Please register for each session you plan to attend. Register by May 12, please.

Featured Document

Handout: May Institute 08

The 2008 May Institute: What We Are Already Doing
The Center for Faculty Excellence and the Finger Lakes Project

Tuesday, May 20 – Wednesday, May 21, 2008
9:00- 4:00; Breakfast and Lunch Provided
Clark and Klingenstein Lounges, Campus Center
Register here

Session topics will include:

• What is Sustainability? How can I Teach It in My Discipline?
• What is Designing for Significant Learning? What is Education for Sustainability?
• What is Scholarship of Teaching? Can I Do It?
• What is a Faculty Learning Community? Why do I Want One?

General Information:

• Open to all who teach at Ithaca College
• Sponsored by the Office of the Provost
• Designed and Organized by the Center for Faculty Excellence and the Finger Lakes Project and the Partnership for Sustainability Education
• Some sessions required for Sustainability Mini-Grant Recipients
• Pre-registration by session for food planning; click here

Tuesday morning
What is Sustainability? How can I Teach It in My Discipline?

Jason Hamilton and Susan Swensen, directors of the Finger Lakes Project, engage us with a walking tour featuring the social and environmental history of Ithaca, to see what we already know in a new light. Participants will explore ways sustainability can intersect with their disciplines. Posters and reports from mini-grant recipients will expand our imagination.

Tuesday Afternoon
What is Education for Sustainability? Why is It So Familiar?

Tina Nilsen-Hodges and Susanne Morgan designed this workshop based on materials from L. Dee Fink and the Cloud Institute. These models both employ principles of “backward course design” and guide participants to design modules and courses for student learning. They help us name what we are already doing as we design our modules or courses.

Wednesday morning
What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning? Can I Do It?

Michael Smith has designed this workshop to help faculty devise investigations into teaching and learning and translate these investigations into the kind of scholarship that can shape both institutional and disciplinary practice (and carry real weight in tenure and promotion decisions).  The scholarship of learning can also address the issue of assessment by grounding assessment of learning in what we are already doing.

Wednesday afternoon
What is a Faculty Learning Community? Why do I Want One?

Susanne Morgan will introduce the new Faculty Learning Communities initiative. We will be creating some of these small groups in the fall, to provide institutional support and visibility for conversations and initiatives that are already happening. Some will be to support faculty members to design a teaching project and move it toward SoTL, and others will be to engage us in scholarly exploration of institutional questions.

Preregister by clicking here
Please contact Susanne Morgan with questions.