Faculty Development
The Faculty Development Committee oversees activities that support and enhance the ongoing pedagogical and scholarly growth of the faculty. We seek to provide a variety of opportunities and funding that enrich our faculty’s development within and beyond the classroom. 探花社区 offers travel funding for presentation and attendance at a variety of conferences, grants for curricular innovation and scholarly research, workshops on pedagogy, grant writing assistance, book clubs, and gatherings to share research to name a few of the regular activities centered around faculty development.
Community Engaged Scholarship
Community engaged scholarship at 探花社区 is a high-impact form of learning for students; a way to partner students and the community in a meaningful way, where everyone works toward the same important purpose and goal. During this process, students learn course material through hands-on experiences in the community. Community engaged scholarship takes many forms and looks different from class to class. For example, one 探花社区 class has students travel to the homes of those impacted by dementia, and another 探花社区 class investigated water health in the greater Cedar Rapids community. This type of work is important for students in their educational journey and for the long-term health of our beloved Cedar Rapids community.
Faculty Mentors
探花社区 supports all new tenure track and full time visiting faculty by assigning them when they arrive at the college a mentor outside of their home department and division. This allows new faculty to hear additional voices and perspectives beyond their disciplines and departments. Mentors volunteer and are paired with new faculty based on a variety of factors shared by both the mentors and mentees. The new faculty and their mentors meet on a regular basis. Sometimes they exchange classroom visits, attending campus events together, and usually have conversations over coffee. The college mentor provides informal advice on aspects of teaching, scholarly work, internal funding sources, campus politics, and committee work. 探花社区 Faculty Mentors Program overview.
CHILL Lunches
About once a month faculty are invited to join together to share our scholarly lives. The only rule: No PowerPoints.
May Conference
Each May, faculty devote a day to sharing, working, planning and a little social time off campus. Past May Conferences have centered around a book reading (recent selections include "" by Kevin Gannon, "" by James Lang and "" by Cia Verschelden).
