Summary of Idea
In response to the revolutionary challenge, I propose a Teaching and Learning Incubator. An incubator is a place, replete with support staff and tools, where instructors can go to hatch new ideas – in this case, innovative teaching pedagogies and learning projects. Incubation, one of the stages of creativity, involves thinking with others, collaborating within and across disciplines, and then synthesizing knowledge and insights to create new ideas. Thus, to incubate is to innovate.
Arising from Dickinson’s innovative Writing Program, the Incubator would build on a strong foundation. Dickinson’s Writing Program has been awarded a Writing Program Certificate of Excellence from the Conference on College Composition and Communication in 2018 and the Martinson Award of Excellence in Writing Program Administration from SLAC-WPA (Small Liberal Arts College-Writing Program Administrators) in 2016. Having developed a Multilingual Writing Center that offers writing tutoring in eleven languages as well as a Quantitative Reasoning Center, I am an experienced higher education innovator. I also have experience connecting and collaborating with, at this point, three donors whose generosity has enabled me to build programs like the Faculty Learning Communities in Writing, the Peer Writing Tutor Development Program, and the Quantitative Reasoning Center. Thus, the Teaching and Learning Incubator would build from the successful Writing Program/QR Center while maintaining its own separate existence.
A Teaching and Learning Incubator could breed endless revolutionary changes in Dickinson’s teaching and learning culture. I am reminded of that riddle: If you found a magic lamp and a genie granted you three wishes, what would you wish for? The clever answer: I would ask for unlimited wishes. The Incubator is the purveyor of unlimited wishes as it would enable faculty – in perpetuity -- to address issues as they emerge, to devise creative solutions, and to reimagine learning as the demand for new skills arise.
Approximately 1778 colleges and universities worldwide have some form of faculty development center or program. The Incubator would be a distinctively Dickinson version of this important component of academic culture. As articulated on the POD Network website, educational development for faculty includes developing a campus teaching and learning culture, “enhancing teaching,” and “ensuring institutional quality and supporting institutional change.” As a potentially distinctive feature of the college, the Incubator would be less a repository of teaching wisdom and more a laboratory, makery, or invention space.
The Incubator’s director would be an expert facilitator of faculty co-learning rather than a “guru.”
- The Incubator would house collaboratories or spaces with staff, tools, and resources for re-inventing learning experiences. I envision three types of collaboratories:
- one in which faculty incubate their own ideas;
- one in which faculty incubate classroom solutions to campus-wide priorities;
- and one in which faculty incubate their own research in collaborative writing groups as they create new knowledge.
- The Incubator would provide experienced and award-winning Dickinson faculty who would serve as coaches-in-residence (on a rotating basis) for faculty working on projects.
- The Incubator would provide experienced and award-winning Dickinson faculty who would be trained more broadly to mentor faculty seeking to develop their own teaching skills and the learning capacities of their students (thereby enhancing our mentoring efforts).
- The Incubator would invite cutting-edge innovators in higher education to share their insights and advice through faculty development workshops.
For one example of incubating classroom solutions to a campus-wide problem, if the Incubator had already existed in AY 2019, it might have been tasked with addressing a current campus-wide concern: diversity and inclusion in the classroom. The Incubator would tackle the issue by bringing in higher education’s best scholars of inclusive pedagogies. These speakers would give talks and hold workshops to kick off a friendly competition in which groups of faculty and students would incubate ideas regarding “Best Practices for Inclusive Classrooms.” Then these groups would present their findings to the campus community and a panel of judges who would award prize monies to the most innovative projects/solutions. The winners would then use the monetary awards to institute their innovations on campus.
How does your idea relate to or support the college’s strategic framework?
Dickinson’s core value proposition is to provide a high-quality, high-impact education for our students. If we are to meet this core value, we need to provide professional development for faculty so that they have access to the best pedagogies and a space to apply those pedagogies to their own courses. As stated in the strategic framework, Dickinson’s mission is to “provide a useful, innovative and interdisciplinary education in the liberal arts and sciences.” To that end, the college aims to “attract and retain the highest quality teacher-scholars and endow them with the necessary resources and time to pursue creative pedagogies, innovative uses of technology, productive research and performance agendas, and collaborative work with students and each other.” Of course, these goals are manifested in the classroom, but they do not happen automatically. They need to be intentionally developed and sustained.
The Teaching and Learning Incubator would contribute directly to providing Dickinson students with a “pioneering education” that is “innovative” and “forward thinking” and of retaining the “highest quality teacher scholars.” Innovation, problem-solving, creative pedagogies – all values in the strategic plan – must be planned, strategized, and cultivated. Most high-quality teacher-scholars are not hatched right out of graduate school; instead, their talents are nurtured through dynamic professional development opportunities, like the Incubator. In the Incubator -- where to incubate is to innovate, faculty would develop their understanding of “pioneering education” and attain the skills of master teachers through workshops, collaboratories, and mentoring relationships. In short, the Incubator would teach faculty how to innovate.
What partnerships, on campus and off campus, do you envision?
To be successful, the Incubator would form partnerships with several campus entities, some that already offer faculty development: Media Services, Center for Sustainability Education, Center for Global Study and Engagement, Access and Disability Services, Waidner-Spahr Library, Center for Civic Learning and Action, Ethics-Across-the-Curriculum, Popel Shaw Center for Race & Ethnicity, Women’s and Gender Resource Center, the Trout Gallery, among others. Depending on the teaching and learning projects being incubated, the list could grow to include other on and off campus partnerships.
How will your idea positively affect the education of Dickinson students?
Rather than viewing the all-important “21st-century skill set” as fixed, the Incubator would keep Dickinson faculty apprised of the ever-evolving skills needed in a rapidly changing and increasingly globalized world. Thus, the world beyond Dickinson’s campus would reap the benefit of working with students who are not only knowledgeable but have also acquired all kinds of relevant and useful skills that speak to the contemporary moment.
Do you anticipate resource needs to prepare a detailed proposal if selected as a finalist? If so, please describe.
No.