The Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence is thrilled to partner with the Center for Community Engagement and the Equity and Inclusion Group (formerly IISG) to bring Heather Hackman back to campus as the featured speaker for Stetson’s annual Teaching and Learning Day. Dr. Hackman will be speaking on Racial Equity and the Classroom.
What is Racial Equity? What is a Racial Equity Lens?
How does Racial Equity Impact the Classroom?
January 11, 2019 – 9:00 am to 12:00 pm
Lunch 12:00 pm to 1:00 pm
CUB Stetson Room [MAP] RSVP Requested
Dr. Hackman has been teaching and training on social justice issues since 1992 and was a professor in the Department of Human Relations and Multicultural Education at St. Cloud State University in St Cloud, Minnesota for 12 years before she began focusing full time on consulting. She has taught courses in social justice and multicultural education (pre-service and in-service teachers), race and racism, heterosexism and homophobia, social justice education (higher education leadership), oppression and social change, sexism and gender oppression, class oppression, and Jewish oppression. In 2005 she founded Hackman Consulting Group and consults nationally on issues of equity and social justice and has focused most of her social justice training work on race, class, gender, and LBGTQI issues. [learn more]
Sign-up now at : REGISTER Location(s): ALLEN HALL A five-part course design series, explores evidence based strategies for designing assignments and activities that have high-impact on learners. [Learn More and sign up]
Mondays from 1:00 pm – 2:30 pm – Allen Hall
Workshop 1 – What’s the Big Idea: : 9/17/18
Workshop 2 – Essential Learning Goals: 10/8/18
Workshop 3 – High Impact Pedagogies: 10/29/18
Workshop 4 – Authentic Assessment: 11/12/18
Workshop 5 – Reflect & Share: 12/3/18
Spring 2019 Series Follow our blog for more details as they develop.
Sign-up Deadline: 9/7/2018 The Teaching Squares program offers faculty at any stage in their career an opportunity to gain new insight into their own teaching through a non-evaluative process of reciprocal classroom observation and self-reflection. [Learn More and sign up]
Proposals accepted year round Small groups who meet regularly during the academic year to engage in a common inquiry, build community, and disseminate what they have learned together to the Stetson community and beyond.
[Learn More and sign up]
Applications open: 9/1/2018 Application Deadline: 11/15/2018 Fellows participate in a series of hands-on experiences over the course of a calendar year designed to help innovate or refine teaching techniques and learning activities. Faculty participate in multi-day course building institute in May.
[Learn More]
Spring 2019 (Scholar in Residence NYU) sabbatical applications due September 3
Winter seminar (January 14-18, 2019 in Puerto Rico) applications due September 17
Summer seminar (June 10-14, 2019 at NYU) applications due in January 28
Fall & summer sabbatical applications due in January 28
Stetson University’s membership in the New York University Faculty Resource Network (FRN) provides Stetson faculty opportunities to participate in seminars and scholar-in-residence programs alongside colleagues from colleges and universities across the nation and world. Typically, participation in these programs is included in the membership and faculty only have to pay for travel expenses. [Learn More] *ALL applications are reviewed internally prior to submission. Please contact us at browncenter@stetson.edu if you are interested in applying.
Signups open 8/22/2018 The Stetson Spotlight Series is a monthly showcase of research, creative inquiry, and other scholarly engagement of the campus community. This year, 2018-19, the series will be held on Fridays. Subscribe to our blog to get notices of upcoming spotlight presentations. [See schedule here]
Call for Proposals: Opens 11/1/2018- 3/15/2019 Do you have a project, initiative or area of study that could use a “boost” from a teacher-scholar fellow? Would you like to bring some special expertise to campus? Our flagship program prepares teacher-scholars who inspire current and future faculty to aspire to excellence in undergraduate learning, teaching, and research. Brown Teacher-Scholar Fellows come from and contribute to a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. For more information about the Teacher-Scholar Fellows Program, contact the Brown Center.
Subscribe to our blog to be notified of important dates and deadlines.
Sign-up now at bit.ly/BC-RSVP-CDfEL Location(s): TBD A five-part course design series, explores evidence based strategies for designing assignments and activities that have high-impact on learners.
Workshop 1 – What’s the Big Idea: : 9/17/18
Workshop 2 – Essential Learning Goals: 10/8/18
Workshop 3 – High Impact Pedagogies: 10/29/18
Workshop 4 – Authentic Assessment: 11/12/18
Workshop 5 – Reflect & Share: 12/3/18
Spring 2019 Series Follow our blog for more details as they develop.
Faculty Resource Fair & New Faculty Mixer
On Thursday, August 16th, the Brown Center will host the 5th annual Faculty Resource Fair and New Faculty Mixer. This popular event brings campus and student service departments under one roof, so you can learn about the resources available for faculty and students. This year the Fair will be held in the newly renovated CUB. Follow our blog for more details as they develop.
Sign-up Deadline: 9/21/2018 The Teaching Squares program offers faculty at any stage in their career an opportunity to gain new insight into their own teaching through a non-evaluative process of reciprocal classroom observation and self-reflection. [Learn More]
Proposals accepted year round Small groups who meet regularly during the academic year to engage in a common inquiry, build community, and disseminate what they have learned together to the Stetson community and beyond.
[Learn More]
Applications open: 8/15/2018 Application Deadline: 9/26/2018 The program celebrates teacher-scholars as learners by offering dedicated time for reflection and strategies to prepare students to lead lives steeped in personal growth, intellectual development, and global citizenship.
[Learn More]
Winter seminar applications due in September*
Summer seminar applications due in January* Spring sabbatical applications due in August* Fall & summer sabbatical applications due in January* Stetson University’s membership in the New York University Faculty Resource Network (FRN) provides Stetson faculty opportunities to participate in seminars and scholar-in-residence programs alongside colleagues from colleges and universities across the nation and world. Typically, participation in these programs is included in the membership and faculty only have to pay for travel expenses. [Learn More] *ALL applications are reviewed internally prior to submission. Please contact us at browncenter@stetson.edu if you are interested in applying.
Signups open 8/27/2018 The Stetson Spotlight Series is a monthly showcase of research, creative inquiry, and other scholarly engagement of the campus community. This year, 2018-19, we will expand the series and include Wednesday and Friday presentations. Subscribe to our blog to get notices of upcoming spotlight presentations.
Call for Proposals: Opens 11/1/2018- 3/15/2019 Do you have a project, initiative or area of study that could use a “boost” from a teacher-scholar fellow? Would you like to bring some special expertise to campus? Our flagship program prepares teacher-scholars who inspire current and future faculty to aspire to excellence in undergraduate learning, teaching, and research. Brown Teacher-Scholar Fellows come from and contribute to a variety of disciplinary and interdisciplinary fields. For more information about the Teacher-Scholar Fellows Program, contact the Brown Center.
Stetson faculty and staff gathered in the duPont-Ball Library to explore critical questions such as “What are colleges and universities doing to prepare for the students who are entering their institutions?” and “What must change in an institution’s policies, practices, and culture in order to be student-ready?”.
After Dr. Brown’s initial remarks, attendees worked in small groups to create drawings that represent the state of student-readiness at Stetson and brainstormed directions that we might design and implement to support success for more students.
*A limited number of copies of Becoming a Student-Ready College are available to rent through our online library. If you are interested in participating in or leading a book circle, please express your interest by emailing us at browncenter@stetson.edu.
Each year, the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence hosts a national scholar to Stetson University for the annual Teaching and Learning Day (formerly known as Faculty Learning Community Day). This day of reflection and discussion provides an opportunity for the Stetson community to grapple with big issues that impact our work delivering high-impact educational experiences in the 21st century. We hope that you will join us as we engage in thought-provoking conversation about Becoming a Student Ready College!
2018 Teaching and Learning Day Making Excellence Inclusive: Becoming a Student-Ready College January 12, 2018 – 9:00 – 12:00 PM
(Lunch immediately following) duPont-Ball Library Space is limited RSVP to save your spot!
Tia Brown McNair will engage the Stetson University community in a conversation raised in a recently published book she co-authored, Becoming a Student-Ready College . The national conversation asking “Are students college-ready?” concentrates on numerous factors that are beyond higher education’s control. This book flips the college readiness conversation to provide a new perspective on creating institutional value and facilitating student success. Instead of focusing on student preparedness for college (or lack thereof), this book asks the more pragmatic question of what are colleges and universities doing to prepare for the students who are entering their institutions? What must change in an institution’s policies, practices, and culture in order to be student-ready?
Dr. Tia Brown McNair currently serves as Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Dr. Tia Brown McNair oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact educational practices, and student success, including AAC&U’s Network for Academic Renewal series of yearly working conferences. Read Dr. McNair’s complete bio on the AAC&U website.
*A limited number of copies of Becoming a Student-Ready College will be made available to participants who wish to participate in book circles. If you are interested in participating in or leading a book circle, please indicate your interest with your RSVP.
Tia Brown McNair will engage the Stetson University community in a conversation raised in a recently published book she co-authored, Becoming a Student-Ready College*. The national conversation asking “Are students college-ready?” concentrates on numerous factors that are beyond higher education’s control. This book flips the college readiness conversation to provide a new perspective on creating institutional value and facilitating student success. Instead of focusing on student preparedness for college (or lack thereof), this book asks the more pragmatic question of what are colleges and universities doing to prepare for the students who are entering their institutions? What must change in an institution’s policies, practices, and culture in order to be student-ready?
Dr. Tia Brown McNair currently serves as Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Dr. McNair oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact educational practices, and student success, including AAC&U’s Network for Academic Renewal series of yearly working conferences. Read Dr. McNair’s complete bio on the AAC&U website.
*A limited number of copies of Becoming a Student-Ready College will be made available to participants who wish to participate in book circles. If you are interested in participating in or leading a book circle, please indicate your interest with your RSVP.
Each year, the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence hosts a national scholar to Stetson University for the annual Teaching and Learning Day (formerly known as Faculty Learning Community Day). This day of reflection and discussion provides an opportunity for the Stetson community to grapple with big issues that impact our work delivering high-impact educational experiences in the 21st century. We hope that you will join us as we engage in thought-provoking conversation about Becoming a Student Ready College!
2018 Teaching and Learning Day Making Excellence Inclusive: Becoming a Student-Ready College
January 12, 2018 – 9:00 – 12:00 PM
(Lunch immediately following) duPont-Ball Library Space is limited, RSVP to save your spot!
Tia Brown McNair will engage the Stetson University community in a conversation raised in a recently published book she co-authored, Becoming a Student-Ready College . The national conversation asking “Are students college-ready?” concentrates on numerous factors that are beyond higher education’s control. This book flips the college readiness conversation to provide a new perspective on creating institutional value and facilitating student success. Instead of focusing on student preparedness for college (or lack thereof), this book asks the more pragmatic question of what are colleges and universities doing to prepare for the students who are entering their institutions? What must change in an institution’s policies, practices, and culture in order to be student-ready?
Dr. Tia Brown McNair currently serves as Vice President in the Office of Diversity, Equity, and Student Success at the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). Dr. Tia Brown McNair oversees both funded projects and AAC&U’s continuing programs on equity, inclusive excellence, high-impact educational practices, and student success, including AAC&U’s Network for Academic Renewal series of yearly working conferences. Read Dr. McNair’s complete bio on the AAC&U website.
*A limited number of copies of Becoming a Student-Ready College will be made available to participants who wish to participate in book circles. If you are interested in participating in or leading a book circle, please indicate your interest with your RSVP.
A faculty member recently remarked that we, faculty, should have to take a class every so often just to remember what is like on the other side of the podium. I believe that’s true, but what course to take, and how do we find the time? Then last spring, the Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence at Stetson University sponsored my participation in Harvard University’s online course, “Including Ourselves in the Change Equation”. The course, developed by Robert Kegan and Lisa Laskow Lahey, was life-changing!
The premise of the course is that most of us have stubborn life goals for which we make little sustained progress. The course had us identify a large, important goal that we’ve noted is stubbornly resistant to progress and challenged us to make a visible commitment to change. This process required that we become strongly motivated to change. Without that motivation, minor change issues would overshadow the core major issues that require change. For example, if an individual wanted to prevent her children from having to support her in old age, she might commit to increasing her net worth by saving now. From there, she might list what she is doing (or not doing) that may sabotage or slow her progress to achieving the goal of independence during retirement. For example, she might identify over-spending as a major obstacle to saving. However, Kegan and Laskow argue that these obstacles are probably not random. Rather, barriers of this nature actually help an individual achieve another hidden goal. Perhaps hidden is her desire to spare her children now of any feelings of economic insecurity. That is, her resistance to the big goal is part of a hidden “immunity to change” that, like physical immunities, protects her from even worse emotional damage.
In other words, by examining what we are doing or not doing, we can identify the hidden competing commitments we are harboring. Only then can we examine the big assumptions that underlie those commitments. It is possible that these assumptions are only partially true. As such, we should test our assumptions in small, safe ways. As we reign in assumptions, we begin to reign in our resistance to stubborn goals. However, to the extent that our assumptions remain true, our immunity to emotional damage remains intact as well.
The impact of this course was profound! At a personal level, the course has shattered my long-held views of how people, in aggregate, feel and react. On a professional level, I now have more empathy for those who cannot bring themselves to get (or keep) their financial lives in order. I have long known that lack of money was an emotionally-scarring experience, but I did not have a framework for providing structured advice to others on how to begin healing from that experience.
I took this course as a semester-long, online extension of the on-campus Faculty Learning Community Day workshop facilitated by Dr. Kegan. The course was rigorous, but the timing of the weekly assignments was flexible, allowing me to complete them even with my own demanding work schedule. I highly recommend this course to anyone who is interested.
Thank you, thank you, thank you again for your sponsoring of my participation in this course!
About the Author
Valrie Chambers, Ph.D., CPA, is associate professor of accounting at Stetson University. At Stetson, Dr. Chambers enjoys designing innovative courses to scaffold learning. She teaches mostly graduate tax courses and a few upper-level undergraduate courses. Chambers also teaches in the Executive MBA program and recently designed an online tax course for managers to be offered for the first time in summer 2017.
Prior to joining Stetson’s faculty in 2014, Dr. Chambers worked for a private corporation and then founded her own CPA business which she ran for over a decade before returning to school to obtain a Ph.D. from the University of Houston. Chambers received multiple awards including the Texas Society of CPAs Outstanding Accounting Educator Award in 2012, the Bobby Bizzell Southwestern Deans’ 2006 Innovative Achievement Award. She is also a multiple recipient of the Texas A&M System Student Recognition Award for Teaching Excellence service activities, for extensive peer-reviewed publication record in journals such as the Journal of Economic Psychology, Tax Notes,The Tax Adviser, citations by two different federal courts, and a report by the National Taxpayer Advocate of the IRS.
Harvard’s Robert Kegan conducts Stetson’s Faculty Community Day 2016.
If adaptability in today’s world is the name of the game, then Robert Kegan, Ph.D., holds the tools to the rules.
“Dr. Kegan’s expertise is with adult learners,” explained Resche Hines, Ph.D., assistant vice president of Institutional Research and Effectiveness at Stetson University. “He has helped hundreds of institutions deal with change. And his personality is one of modeling in a very non-threatening way.”
Kegan is the William and Miriam Meehan Professor in Adult Learning and Professional Development, educational chair at the Institute for Management and Leadership in Education, and co-director of the Change Leadership Group at Harvard University. He was chosen to be the facilitator for this year’s Faculty Learning Community Day at Stetson, thanks to the university’s new Brown Center for Faculty Innovation and Excellence. This event has taken place for the past four years on the Friday before the spring semester begins as a way of reflecting and discussing big issues that impact the university’s mission and learning community.
“Beth [Beth Paul, Ph.D., executive vice president and provost at Stetson] started the event because she wanted to give the faculty time to enjoy thinking together – across the whole university,” said Stetson University President Wendy B. Libby, Ph.D. “We invite thought leaders to come and think with us.”
Paul said she felt personally honored to have Kegan, a transformational learning specialist, on campus for this learner-centered discussion and workshop since she has known and respected his work for decades.
“Today we learned a new way to ask ourselves, ‘How do we help our students grow? What is eating away at their time unnecessarily to prevent them from reaching their goals and potential?’ We also look at the continuing growth of Stetson as an organization,” said Paul. “We’ve undergone lots of changes in recent years. And I think today’s workshop is a fabulous way to make us realize how special this place really is.”
Faculty and staff learned through interaction with each other. (Photos by Lisa Yetter)
Through group exercises facilitated by Kegan, the Stetson faculty, staff and administrators could ask themselves if their systems of self-protection are enough to support and achieve goals. “Self-deception is a very powerful force,” noted Kegan. “We need to ask ourselves if we examine that enough. We need to look below the surface of the water as well as above it.”
“There are a lot of pressures on higher education that force us to dance as fast as we can to sustain our level of teaching here. This workshop is timely in light of recent events to find and grab the future we want in a positive manner,” explained Paul. “Today was a journey in which we spent time with one another and indulged ourselves in a reflective manner. We need to care about ourselves because we do something so important at Stetson University, which in turn does something important in this world.”
Matthew Schrager, Ph.D., associate professor of integrative health science, said that attending the workshop was an opportunity to reflect on the important issues that have been difficult to resolve. “Dr. Kegan taught me how to examine major assumptions that are not serving me well as a way to address long-standing problems,” he noted.
Assistant Provost for Student Success Lua Hancock, Ed.D., said she thought Kegan’s research about why humans desire new behaviors in their lives, but struggle to make the changes needed, was fascinating. “I was able to really dig into one of my goals and think deeply about what is the true root behind why I don’t achieve it,” she added. “The workshop was great for my personal development and also helped me think about how we best empower students to manage change so that they can graduate ready to solve complex problems in the world.”
“On a collective scale, I hope that everyone who participated today now feels empowered to ‘break the mold’ and that a ‘we-can-do-this’ mentality comes forward,” added Kegan. “I hope that they made a number of discoveries, but mostly for the professors to discover for themselves that they can surprise themselves, that they are still growing and developing themselves, and that they still have ‘unwritten’ chapters.”
At the end of the day, participants were asked to rate the workshop. “The feedback response shows that 82 percent of the faculty and staff reported an ‘excellent’ to ‘good’ experience,” explained Rosalie Richards, Ph.D., associate provost for Faculty Development and professor of education and chemistry. “The session challenged us to think about how we can transform individually and consequently, as an institution, to develop timely responses to change we are already experiencing and as we prepare for the future.”
Dr. Hackman has been teaching and training on social justice issues since 1992 and was a professor in the Department of Human Relations and Multicultural Education at St. Cloud State University in St Cloud, Minnesota for 12 years before she began focusing full time on consulting. She has taught courses in social justice and multicultural education (pre-service and in-service teachers), race and racism, heterosexism and homophobia, social justice education (higher education leadership), oppression and social change, sexism and gender oppression, class oppression, and Jewish oppression. In 2005 she founded Hackman Consulting Group and consults nationally on issues of equity and social justice and has focused most of her social justice training work on race, class, gender, and LBGTQI issues. [learn more]
For example, if an individual wanted to prevent her children from having to support her in old age, she might commit to increasing her net worth by saving now. From there, she might list what she is doing (or not doing) that may sabotage or slow her progress to achieving the goal of independence during retirement. For example, she might identify over-spending as a major obstacle to saving. However, Kegan and Laskow argue that these obstacles are probably not random. Rather, barriers of this nature actually help an individual achieve another hidden goal. Perhaps hidden is her desire to spare her children now of any feelings of economic insecurity. That is, her resistance to the big goal is part of a hidden “immunity to change” that, like physical immunities, protects her from even worse emotional damage.
Valrie Chambers, Ph.D., CPA
