The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Academic Leadership offers structured learning communities that bring faculty together with the goal of providing regular opportunities to share knowledge, explore teaching practices, and engage in focused professional development within these specific areas. Faculty gain fresh perspectives, receive peer feedback, and develop supportive professional relationships with colleagues who share similar interests. Each semester, CETAL provides safe spaces for experimenting with new teaching methods while fostering expertise in AI integration, pedagogical innovation, and professional growth through peer coaching.
Book Groups
The Focused Professor: Stolen Focus
Dates: Mondays (9/14, 9/28, 10/12, 10/26, 11/9, 11/23)
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Facilitated by: Amy Hawkins
Think you’re the only one fighting to sustain attention in a world filled with distractions? Think again! Join us for a deep dive into Johann Hari’s groundbreaking book, Stolen Focus: Why You Can’t Pay Attention–and How to Think Deeply Again. From the back cover, “We think our inability to focus is a personal failure to summon enough willpower to ignore our devices. The truth is even more disturbing: Our focus has been stolen by powerful external forces that have left us uniquely vulnerable to corporations determined to raid our attention for profit.” Hari identifies twelve deep causes of this crisis and offers us ways to begin reclaiming our focus.
AI in Education: The Science of Learning Meets AI
Dates: Wednesdays (9/16, 9/30, 10/14, 10/28, 11/11)
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Facilitated by: Stacy O’Brien, Sun Kim Thao
Are you ready to move beyond the basics of Artificial Intelligence? Join your colleagues this spring for a dynamic, hands-on Community of Practice designed to take your AI skills from theoretical to tactical.
From the back cover: “Drawing on decades of experience in faculty development and learning science, Ludwig and Zakrajsek propose a three-stage progression model–Adapt, Create, Embed–to help faculty from any discipline thoughtfully incorporate AI into their teaching. Rather than chasing the latest tech tools, this book focuses on how AI can deepen student learning by enhancing time-tested frameworks such as TILT, Universal Design for Learning, Bloom’s Taxonomy, and Backward Design….Each chapter includes classroom-tested examples, reflection prompts, and activities ready for individual exploration or group discussion. Whether you’re skeptical, curious, or cautiously optimistic, this book offers a clear, practical path to using AI as a partner, not a replacement, in ways that support students and reinvigorate teaching.”
Communities of Practice
Community Cafe: Teaching & Learning in STEM
Dates:Wednesdays (9/9, 9/23, 10/14, 10/28, 11/11, 12/9)
Time:12:00 p.m.
Facilitated by:Kyle Hurley
STEM disciplines face unique challenges in the fields of teaching and learning. This year-long learning community will serve as a meeting place for anyone interested in improving, exploring, and growing as professionals. Our conversations in the spring will be responsive to community needs, covering such topics as technology use and misuse, student behavior and motivation, communication and coaching, the challenges of online teaching, and administrative challenges.
First-Year Seminar Sandbox
Dates:Tuesdays (9/8, 10/13, 11/10)
Time: 1:40 p.m. (xperiod)
Facilitated by: Amy Baldwin
Are you currently teaching a First-Year Seminar and want to try something new or focus on improving a key component? The FYS Sandbox is your dedicated space to experiment with your FYS without risk. In this learning community, you’ll choose a high-impact instructional intervention that is aligned with the guiding principles of FYS, test it in your own classroom during , and collaborate with colleagues to share what’s working. Think of it as a teaching lab or action research project — come with curiosity, leave with strategies that can improve the learning experience for your students.
First-Year Seminar Teaching Circle
Dates: Wednesdays (9/2, 10/7, 11/4)
Time: 3:00 p.m.
Facilitated by: Amy Baldwin
Are you new to teaching FYS and want a built-in community to share your experience? FYS Teaching Circles give you a trusted community of colleagues who get the thrill and challenge of teaching first-year students. In small, supportive groups, you’ll share challenges, celebrate wins, troubleshoot tricky moments, and develop a support network. No judgment, no lectures, no homework — just honest, collegial conversation that will help you become a more confident, connected FYS instructor.
Service-Learning Faculty Fellows Community of Practice
Dates:Thursdays (9/10, 10/8, 11/12)
Time: 1:40 p.m. (xperiod)
Facilitated by:Amy Hawkins and Lesley Graybeal
Join others engaged in service-learning pedagogy to continue to sharpen our toolkit of community-engaged learning strategies. These monthly gatherings offer a forum to test our ideas and troubleshoot our challenges to strengthen service-learning at and in our community.
Stage-of-Career Communities
New Faculty Teaching Academy (NFTA)
Dates: Tuesdays (9/8, 9/29, 10/13, 10/27, 11/10, 11/24, 12/8)
Time:1:40 p.m. (xperiod)
Facilitated by:Olivia Bundrick, Stacy Lom, Stacy O’Brien
This community for first-year faculty meets twice a month, in person, throughout the academic year to provide new faculty with a strong foundation in research-based strategies for teaching and learning, key insights into -specific resources and student populations, and a supportive environment for discussing and responding to the emergent needs of new faculty. Participants in the program will have opportunities to workshop syllabi and assignments. NFTA provides a laboratory of ideas and supportive feedback for any new faculty looking to establish a strong foundation in their first year at .
Early Career Coaching Circle (ECCC)
Dates: Tuesdays (9/8, 9/22, 10/6, 10/20, 11/3, 11/17, 12/1)
Time:3:00 p.m.
Facilitated by:Amy Hawkins, Rebekah Luong, Ashley Phillips
Interested in setting yourself up for success in your first few years as a faculty member? ECCC is a learning community with a semi-structured discussion format for faculty in their second through fifth years at . This group will meet twice a month throughout the academic year to support each other in the development of individualized plans to set and achieve goals in the areas of teaching, scholarship & creative activity, and service. Hear from diverse faculty panels on each topic with opportunities to discuss with your early-career colleagues.
The Mid-Career Mentor: Leaving a Legacy through Mentorship
Dates: Mondays (9/21, 10/5, 10/19, 11/2, 11/16, 12/7)
Time: 2:00 p.m.
Facilitated by: Amy Hawkins, Wendy Lucas
Faculty are called to be mentors but rarely equipped with the skills to do so. Join us this fall for a book group based on Johnson and Griffin’s 3rd edition (2024) of On Being a Mentor: A Guide for Higher Education Faculty. According to Amazon’s description, “This third edition of the classic On Being a Mentor is the definitive guide to the art and science of engaging students and faculty in effective mentoring relationships in all academic disciplines. Written for professors and academic leaders with pithy clarity, the text is rooted in the latest research on developmental relationships in higher educational settings and offers concrete mentoring strategies and best practices… with evidence-based rules of engagement for mentoring―including both relational and career mentoring tactics―as well as methods for forming and managing these relationships.”
Academic Leadership Learning Community: Reframing Academic Leadership
Dates: Fridays (9/11, 9/25, 10/9, 10/23, 11/6, 11/20)
Time:12:00 p.m.
Facilitators: Nancy Reese & Amy Hawkins
This learning community explores topics and application exercises to hone participants’ leadership skills. This fall we are reading the book Reframing Academic Leadership by Gallos & Bolman (2021, 2nd edition). As stated on the book jacket, “Reframing Academic Leadership is the go-to guide for deepening leadership commitment, capacity, and impact. Gallos and Bolman tease out the unique opportunities and challenges in academic leadership and present powerful ideas and tools to guide and assist college and university administrators ” Whether you are a new or experienced chair or director or interested in exploring academic leadership roles and responsibilities, this group is for you!