August 28, 2019
Teaching and Learning Center's news and upcoming events
Good morning, K-State!
The Teaching and Learning Center is starting a new era. Don Saucier has been hired as the associate director, and Sara Kearns has joined the staff as the coordinator for the Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence. Along with Tamara Bauer as the coordinator for the New Faculty Institute and Jennifer Anthony as the coordinator for the Peer Review of Teaching, we have an excellent staff. We are all excited to launch a new year of priorities, events, and resources to advance teaching and learning at K-State! Here is some of what you can look forward to this year:
Increased communication and social media presence
We will send out a biweekly newsletter in K-State Today that will announce upcoming events on teaching and learning topics, programs, teaching award deadlines and more.
We are developing a Canvas page that, along with our redesigned website, will provide resources to help you achieve your goals in teaching and learning, and will provide an opportunity to crowdsource answers to your teaching and learning questions.
We have added more teaching resources on our website. You can also like us on Facebook and follow us on Instagram and Twitter! We will be using the hashtag #iteachatkstate to identify our posts — please use it as well when you post about your teaching, mentoring, and advising activities:
Professional development series
We are offering a professional development series to provide experiences, information, resources, and networking to help faculty, staff, and graduate students improve their craft in teaching, mentoring, and advising in many ways.
We will offer events throughout the academic year that delve into many domains of teaching and learning. These events will provide valuable experiences for those who attend in person; Zoom participation also is available by request, and the events will be cataloged on a Canvas page for those who cannot attend in person or by Zoom in real time.
You will have the opportunity to earn a TLC Professional Development Certificate or be selected as a TLC Fellow as a result of your participation in this series. More information on our professional development series can be found HERE and our first event of the year is scheduled for 3:30-4:30 p.m. Friday, Aug. 30, in 4061 College of Business Building. See below for more information and to register.
"Need to Know" events
Some of the events in our professional development series are designated as "Need to Know" events. These will reflect our priorities for this year, including issues of diversity and inclusion, accessibility, assessment, dealing with student issues and concerns, overcoming barriers to student success, and teaching first-year and first-generation college students. Our first "Need to Know" event is scheduled for 1:30-2:30 p.m. Wednesday, Sept. 11. Location TBD; see below for more information.
Celebration of teaching
We will celebrate teaching and teaching-related activities often! Each month we will collect nominations for TLC Twitter Teachers of the Month (stay tuned to nominate your favorite teacher in September), we will discover and showcase great teachers across K-State and their philosophies and practices, and highlight K-Staters' achievements in their scholarship of teaching and learning.
We look forward to this exciting year as we advance K-State's teaching and learning mission with energy and optimism! We are proud to say that, "I teach at K-State!" #iteachatkstate
Sincerely,
Brian Niehoff
Interim Director
Don Saucier
Faculty Associate Director
Upcoming events hosted by the TLC:
Professional Development Series
- "Teaching Persona" (Don Saucier; view a promotional video). Friday, Aug. 30, from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in 4061 College of Business Building. Who are you as a teacher? Join Don Saucier (associate director, Teaching and Learning Center) in a discussion of how you can create and revise your teaching persona to optimize your experiences as the teacher and the experiences of our students, your teaching philosophy to inform and guide your teaching practices, and your teaching statement to demonstrate and document your teaching excellence. Register online.
- "What is CliftonStrengths for Students?" (Mike Finnegan; view a promotional video). Monday, Sept. 16, from 3:30-4:30 p.m. in 4061 College of Business Building. CliftonStrengths for students is a 30-minute, web-based assessment that measures the presence of talent in thinking, feeling, and behaving of 34 areas called "themes." A strength is the ability to consistently provide near-perfect performance in a specific activity. K-State utilizes strengths as a tool to increase the overall engagement and well-being of students. Join Mike Finnegan (assistant professor, leadership studies) as this session will provide you with a working knowledge of the strengths philosophy and how you can integrate strengths-based learning into your classroom. Register online.
Need to Know Series
- "Baking Accessibility into Your Course," presented by Laura Widenor, Deborah Goins, Trina McCarty and Kaitlyn Cherry)More information coming soon. Wednesday, Sept. 11, from 1:30-2:30 p.m. Location TBD. Check us out on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram for more information.
Other upcoming events related to teaching and learning:
- "Have a Byte" presented by Global Campus on Friday, Sept. 20.
Upcoming award deadlines:
Global Campus Awards — submission deadline is Friday, Sept. 6. Read more information about the awards.
- Excellence in Online Teaching Award: Awarded to an online instructor or faculty member who has provided outstanding online teaching, course development, mentoring of students and service to the field of continuing education.
- Outstanding Advising Award: Awarded to a K-State faculty or staff member who has demonstrated exceptional efforts in assisting and advising distance education students.
- Extraordinary Student Award: Awarded to a currently enrolled distance education student who has overcome an obstacle in the path of his or her education and who demonstrates academic excellence, focus and career ambition in his or her studies at K-State. Recipients of the Extraordinary Student Award will receive a $500 Global Campus scholarship. The student must be enrolled in the semester in which the award is given.
- Friend of Kansas State University Global Campus: The purpose of the Friend of K-State Global Campus award is to recognize an individual who has significantly contributed to the advancement of K-State Global Campus programs or services. Some examples include: extending services to students studying at a distance, providing support for development of new programs, providing support that enhances the productivity of a unit or multiple units within K-State Global Campus, etc.