February 1999 Scholarship of Teaching Initiative The Dean of Faculties has launched a new initiative to advance scholarship of teaching and learning among IUB faculty. Through a series of annual campuswide major events, smaller spin-off meetings of special interest groups, and a new small grants program, the initiative will enable discussion and collaboration among faculty, with an emphasis on building a community of scholars across all academic units to promote publication and dissemination of scholarly work on teaching at IU, and to validate the scholarship of teaching as a legitimate endeavor supported and rewarded by the university. Scholarship of Teaching Grants The Office of Academic Affairs is pleased to announce the availability of Scholarship of Teaching Grants for: 1) Established scholars of teaching whose work may not be widely known beyond their academic units or disciplines, and 2) New investigators who show promise of scholarly work in teaching and learning. Bloomington campus tenured and tenure-track faculty are invited to submit proposals for scholarship of teaching grants in the amount of $500. Each grant will be awarded for presentation of scholarly work, either in progress or completed, with potential to advance undergraduate teaching and learning. Inherent in the grant award is the obligation to present the work at an interdisciplinary meeting of campus colleagues. Grants may be awarded either to individual faculty or to groups collaborating in the production of a scholarly work. For more information, contact Moya Andrews, Bryan 109, 5-0230, andrews; or Samuel Thompson, Franklin 004, 5-9023, samthomp. The initiative is sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs through Vice Chancellor Freund and Associate Dean Moya Andrews, as well as through Instructional Consulting at Franklin Hall (ICFH). “The commitment to teaching—and the thrill we all get when something goes well in the classroom—is the common core of our academic community,” Andrews says; “it binds us together no matter what discipline we're in, and is really central to our identities as faculty members.” ICFH consultant Samuel Thompson stresses the importance of establishing a campuswide community of faculty who advance teaching and its scholarship: “If you ask people on this campus, ‘who are the scholars of teaching at IUB?’ often they don't know.” FACET brings excellent teachers together across the disciplines, but there is no mechanism to bring such scholars together with younger faculty and with each other. “What about the people who are interested in the scholarship of teaching, but don't know how to start?” ICFH consultant Tine Reimers asks. The first event sponsored by the initiative took place on February 5 and was a resounding success. It was designed to draw as many IUB faculty as possible—in particular, to generate faculty interest in pursuing the scholarship of teaching, in exploring the literature on undergraduate teaching and learning, and in defining prospective research projects that concern teaching. The event also established the administration's commitment to encouraging reflective practice and making explicit the connections between research and teaching. “The scholarship of teaching offers a genuinely new way for faculty who make new discoveries about teaching to be esteemed in the same way as a researcher who makes new discoveries in a field or discipline,” according to Kenneth R. R. Gros Louis, Vice President for Academic Affairs and Bloomington Chancellor. Attended by nearly two hundred interested faculty, the February 5 Celebration of Teaching and its Scholarship featured addresses by President Brand, Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Dean of the Faculties Deborah Freund, Professor of History and co-director of the Freshman Learning Project David Pace, and Professor of Biology and nationally recognized figure on scholarship of teaching Craig Nelson. Russ Hanson, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, introduced the COAS scholars of teaching. Chancellors' Professor Bernice Pescosolido, from the Sociology Department, gave the keynote address, “The Social Worlds of Higher Education: Why Research on Teaching and Learning? Why now?” In order to celebrate the achievements of IUB faculty groups who contribute to the advancement of teaching and learning and to make their members visible and accessible to interested colleagues, several groups were recognized: Research & the University Graduate School (RUGs) scholars of teaching, Faculty Colloquium on Excellence in Teaching (FACET) participants, Preparing Future Faculty directors, Intensive Freshman Seminar (IFS) faculty, Freshman Learning Project (FLP) fellows, Lilly fellows, departmental pedagogy teachers, Instructional Development Grant winners, Campus Writing Program (CWP) writing fellows, and Active Learning Grant recipients. The social hour that followed the event allowed attendees to continue the conversation. Andrews, who introduced representatives from the various award-granting units, praises the event's “mix of different disciplines.” The next major event pertinent to the scholarship of teaching initiative will take place next fall. In the meantime several activities will engage the agenda established on the fifth. Interested faculty will hold “Campus Conversations” to discuss definition and implementation of scholarship of teaching appropriate to IUB. Applications for Scholarship of Teaching Grants will be solicited. Announcements of opportunities to join groups associated with classroom research and publication will be forthcoming in the next weeks. “Scholarship of teaching is problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through methods appropriate to disciplinary epistemologies, application of results to practice, communication of results, self-reflection, and peer review.” —The Carnegie Foundation “Often faculty don't know how to publish in teaching journals because there's no precedent for it in their departments,” Reimers explains. Publishing groups will help them learn how. Another group may address classroom research directed at the “why” and “how” of student learning and embedded in the ongoing work of the class. IUB's scholarship of teaching initiative coincides with the Carnegie Teaching Academy Campus Program. In “Campus Conversations,” the first step of the Campus Program, campuses throughout the country consider what “the scholarship of teaching” means. The Carnegie Foundation offers this provisional definition: “problem posing about an issue of teaching or learning, study of the problem through methods appropriate to disciplinary epistemologies, application of results to practice, communication of results, self- reflection, and peer review.” Interest in and institutional support for the scholarship of teaching has gained momentum nationwide throughout the nineties. Ernest Boyer's 1991 book Scholarship Reconsidered led to a public conversation on the topic, and organizations such as the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (which published Boyer's book) have promoted his ideas. “The most important obligation now confronting the nation's colleges and universities,” Boyer wrote, “is to break out of the tired old teaching versus research debate and define, in more creative ways, what it means to be a scholar.” Outlets for the scholarship of teaching have grown apace over the last decade as well. Almost every discipline now has at least one journal, from Teaching Sociology to Chemical Engineering Education, which complement established pan-disciplinary publications such as New Directions for Teaching and Learning and College Teaching. Particular publishing houses—Jossey-Bass, Heldrup, Sage—specialize in teaching innovation. IU's initiative stresses the interdisciplinarity that marks the national scholarship of teaching movement. “There will be a lot of room for teaching-related scholarship within the disciplines,” Thompson reports; “But we also want to foster collaboration and scholarly work about teaching across academic units and disciplines.” The ultimate goal of the scholarship of teaching initiative, Thompson says, is to “broaden the definition of scholarship to accommodate society's demands on the research university and the actual productive activities of faculty, particularly in regard to the evolving challenges associated with educating undergraduates.” Although faculty sometimes go up for tenure on teaching now, as Reimers points out, “how to do scholarship of teaching or even what scholarship of teaching is are not very clear, either to those evaluating candidates or to their colleagues.” The initiative will work to clarify such definitions and methods, to present research on teaching and learning as a scholarly exercise with as much interest for the progress of the university as traditional disciplinary scholarship. “This is the wave of the future,” Andrews asserts, “and IU is committed to rewarding high-quality teaching and the efforts of its talented faculty.” For more information, visit the initiative's web site: http://www.indiana.edu/~deanfac/sotl/, or contact: Moya Andrews, Bryan 109, 5-0230, andrews; Samuel Thompson, Franklin 004, 5-9023, samthomp; or Tine Reimers, Franklin 004, 5-9023, creimers.

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