Video with transcript

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Natasha Speer: Our charge is to figure out what are the supports that faculty around campus would need in order to implement strategies to improve student success.

There are lots of things that are known from research on the teaching and learning of undergraduates. We’re trying to learn from that research, as well as learn what is going on locally on our campus in courses that our first-year students are in.

Then figure out ways that we can learn from each other. Support faculty, as well as graduate students who are teaching these classes, to implement some things that are known to be effective. We also need to figure out what the supports are on campus that are needed, like the Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning, to help those faculty learn how to do those things.

The wisdom is that you teach the way you were taught. For some faculty who are interested, we want to support them changing how they’ve been teaching or how they themselves were taught.

I was drawn to this because it’s what I think about all the time anyway. I wanted to learn more about what is going on on our campus already and figure out ways to strengthen that even further to reach more faculty and graduate students.