CTL Sponsors Research and Scholarly Activity

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) provides faculty and students the opportunity to present their research at various conferences throughout the year. During the Fall 2009 semester, the CTL sponsored a dozen faculty and student trips to three different conferences.

The CTL sponsored faculty and students to attend and present at the Missouri Campus Compact annual conference. Attendees at this year’s conference on Sept. 25 in Jefferson City were: Teak Nelson, assistant professor of nursing, who presented “Lessons Learned: Striking a Balance between Student Voice and Faculty Facilitation,” along with two of her students, senior Emily Reinhart and junior Rebekah Weicken; Julie Lochbaum, director of the CTL and Baillie Cloyd, of Americorps VISTA, presented, “How to Succeed with Co-Curricular Service-Learning: Learning from Snags, Missteps and Failures”; and Sally Cook, associate professor of linguistics, and graduate student Amy Bockelman, presented “Working with an Immigrant Community: Learning Flexibility as Part of the Service Learning Experience.”

Nelson, Reinart and Weicken also traveled to the International Research Conference on Service-Learning and Civic Engagement in Ottawa, Canada, Oct. 9-12 to present “The Secret Ingredient for Critical Thinking and Community Engagement.” Truman students were the first undergraduates ever to present at the IRCSL. The Center for Teaching and Learning partially supported their trip with a grant from Missouri Campus Compact.

The CTL annually provides fellowships to several faculty members to assist them with their Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SOTL). This is systematic inquiry about course or program level student learning conceived and undertaken by faculty in such a way that the findings may be reviewed, critiqued, replicated and extended by peers.

This year, the CTL sponsored five faculty members and one student to present their work at the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference at Indiana University Oct. 22-24.

Communication Disorders graduate student, Kimberly Fitzgerald, and Janet Gooch, professor and chair of communication disorders, presented the poster “Assessing the Student-Initiated Course as a Novel Approach to Increasing Self-Efficacy Through Multiple Sources.” Fitzgerald and Gooch also did a 30-minute presentation on “Student-Initiated Courses as a Source of Experiential Learning.”

Dawood Afzal, professor of chemistry, presented the poster “The Interdisciplinary Course at Truman State University and SOTL.”

Hena Ahmad, associate professor of English, presented the poster “Sustaining SOTL Work in the Future: Evidence of Student Productivity Enabled and Generated by Encouragement.”

Julie Lochbaum, director of the CTL, presented a paper and facilitated dialogue on “A Rubric for Evaluating SOTL Work in Promotion and Tenure.”

John (Zhong) Ma, assistant professor of biology, presented the poster “Promoting and Assessing Biology Student Learning through Laboratory Exercises,” based on work done by Zhong Ma, Cynthia Cooper, Hyun-Joo Kim and Diane Janick-Buckner.

Sally Cook, associate professor of linguistics, had her study “The Plagiarism Learning Curve for International Students,” accepted but was unable to attend the conference.

The CTL wishes to thank staff member Barb Bevell for supporting these scholarly efforts through poster consulting and design.

The CTL also annually provides Civic Engagement fellowships to several faculty to assist them in focusing on revising existing experiences for Truman students so that students’ civic engagement is enhanced. This can be through infusing service-learning, but can also include infusing other methodologies such as community oral history, public policy/legislative communication or other forms of publicly engaged scholarship.

These fellowships are made possible due to external grants from Missouri Campus Compact.

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