July 7, 2017
Honey to take on Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence coordinator role
Peggy Honey, associate professor of interior design, has accepted the coordinator role for Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence, or FETE, with the Teaching and Learning Center.
The exchange program is charged with the enhancement of teaching and learning at K-State and was founded in 1997 by Ann Stalheim Smith, university distinguished teaching scholar. Honey is stepping in as the coordinator after serving on the Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence committee for four years. She said she sees FETE as an organization of like-minded people who care about the quality of teaching.
Honey has been a K-State professor since 2003, previously taught at Brigham Young University, and worked in the interior design industry for a dozen years. She notes that when graduate school programs don't train you to teach and that is your job, professional development, such as the programming offered through Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence and the Teaching and Learning Center, becomes particularly important.
"The general assumption is that if someone knows their discipline well, they should be able to teach it, but an educator also is obligated to their students," Honey said. "Students are constantly evolving and changing and we, as educators, also have to keep learning in order to teach effectively. I find the design problem of figuring out how to teach something well even more creatively demanding than the problems I worked on as a practicing designer."
An educator is trying to sequence a number of learning experiences to entice students to learn and to encourage students to see the value of learning, Honey said. "Creating learning opportunities is a dramatic exercise and FETE provides a variety of ways to help educators develop as teaching professionals."
"We are so pleased that Peggy will be leading FETE," said Jana Fallin, director of the Teaching and Learning Center. "We have valued her role as a board member and are truly excited to see her passion for teaching translated into future programming. She will be a wonderful successor to FETE leadership."
Exchange program activities, including workshops, presentations and study groups for K-State faculty and graduate students are supported by the Teaching and Learning Center. The Faculty Exchange for Teaching Excellence board is comprised of colleagues from each college who create, promote and implement professional development programming for the campus community.