Dr. Julia Metzker, a nationally recognized leader in faculty development, pedagogy and assessment, civic engagement, and chemical education, joined Stetson University as executive director for the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence and professor of Pedagogy, effective June 20, 2016. Prior to her role with the Brown Center, Dr. Metzker served as director of Community-based Engaged Learning and professor of Chemistry at Georgia College. A strong advocate and teacher-scholar of the liberal arts, Dr. Metzker has served in leadership roles in faculty governance, curriculum development, and assessment. She has extensive experience leading initiatives with diverse stakeholders including shepherding the development and implementation of the SACS Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) at Georgia College.
Dr. Metzker has a keen interest in developing engaging courses that are the building blocks of a transformative college experience, particularly using thematic approaches to engage students with conceptually challenging topics. In addition to designing and executing successful summer institutes, she has facilitated teaching and learning workshops at a variety of universities and conferences. Her experience in this work resulted in the national workshop, Using the Climate Debate to Revitalize General Chemistry, offered through the NSF-funded Chemistry, Collaborations, Workshops and Communities of Scholars. Metzker has been an active member of the NSF-funded Science Education for New Civic Engagement and Responsibilities (SENCER) community and received the SENCER Leadership Fellowship in 2008. This work spawned an inclusive collaboration of higher educators, known as the Innovative Course-building Group (icbg.wordpress.com), who provide professional development around issues of learning. As co-founder of IC-bG, she promotes curricular innovation by mentoring faculty across institutions and in diverse disciplines to use civic issues and active pedagogies as a catalyst for designing engaging courses that result in important student learning.