The Role of the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program and the Promise of Student Engagement in Interactive Learning
The Faculty Teaching Excellence Program (FTEP) is part of the Office of Faculty Affairs in the Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor. The program promotes excellence in the service of student learning through its initiatives, workshops, symposia, individual consultations to faculty and research in undergraduate learning and in academic development for the faculty. The Program encourages shifts in faculty members’ thinking about undergraduate deep learning and constructing understanding as opposed to conveying knowledge. While these programs are designed for faculty academic development, they obviously benefit students and teaching improvement.
Through its research in teaching and learning and engagement with faculty across schools, colleges and departmental projects in the disciplines, the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program extends and enhances effective, evidence-based learning among students and inquiry-based scholarly teaching among our faculty and the reciprocity of both.
Assessing classroom learning is a strong focus in the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program including collecting data, knowing whether learning goals have been met, changing course curriculum where the goals have not been met and archiving the course syllabi in departments. We hold symposia for faculty based on what we learn including the importance of writing goals for learning and expectations for a course in the syllabus. Student centered, interactive and faculty facilitated learning is at the core of faculty members’ opportunities to learn in and from the program. Learning, knowledge, and communication are the dimensions of academic and educational development for both students and faculty and are goals for students’ learning.
