This website shares faculty work completed during the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence’s Advanced Course in College Teaching offered at the  Penn State York campus in  Spring 2017

The opportunities for discussion were extremely helpful.

What I deeply appreciated about the class was the conversation with my colleagues.

It broke me out of the mindset to just keep doing what I always do in the class.

 

Participation in the course will definitely improve my teaching practice.

Resources and hearing other faculty views worked well.

The projects forced me to address an issue that has been a challenge but was put on the back burner.

 

Approach and Participants

Faculty members participated in a semester-long exploration of their teaching in an advanced version of the Schreyer Institute for Teaching Excellence’s (SITE) Course in College Teaching. In the program, each participant chose a challenging aspect of their teaching to investigate using an action research approach. Sessions were held on writing effective problem-statements, searching for resources and intervention ideas in disciplinary teaching journals, and methods of collecting classroom data. These were presented by staff from SITE (Drs. Chas Brua and Mary Ann Tobin) and the Penn State York campus instructional designer (Suzanne Shaffer). The program provided time for discussion with colleagues, feedback sessions, and problem-solving. Each person drafted a report detailing the problem addressed, classroom context, intervention used, data collection methods, and lessons learned. Finally, participants presented their projects and outcomes to the group. Faculty members who completed these outcomes received a certificate from SITE to acknowledge their accomplishments.

The program also had a non-certificate track for any faculty member interested in the conversations around teaching, but who did not have time to complete the formal deliverables for the program.

Sixteen faculty members participated in the program and twelve completed the formal SITE certificate. Their work is summarized in the tab entitled “Projects”. The breakdown of faculty appointment types and disciplines appears below.

Discipline & Number of Participants
English – 3
History – 1
Mathematics – 2
Information Sciences & Technology – 2
Psychology – 1
Human Development & Family Studies – 1
Library – 1
Spanish – 1
Science – 3
Business – 1

Appointment Type & Number
Tenure line – 8
Full-time, non-tenure line – 5
Part-time – 3

Participants
Marcy Nicholas, Noel Sloboda, Joy Giguere, Joan Smeltzer, Bill Cantor, Jess Petko, Asif Mahmood, Nicole Muscanell, Amber Seidel, Joel Burkholder, Cecilia Heydl-Cortinez, Steve Lentz, Harry Payne, Deirdre Folkers, Ann Fetterman, Pat Miller

Facilitators
Mary Ann Tobin, Chas Brua, Suzanne Shaffer