What is a Faculty and Professional Learning Community?
Necessary Qualities for Building Community
The FLC Program Director's and FLC Facilitator's Handbook
The Consortium: Participating Institutions, Their Communities, and Program Directors
FLCs and the Scholarship of Teaching
Recommendations for Initiating and Implementing an FLC
FLC Conferences and Institutes in Review:
2008 | 2007 | 2006 | 2005 | 2004
This component has proved helpful in early-career FLCs, where the role of partner is played by an experienced faculty mentor. For recommendations for establishing a successful mentoring program for such FLCs, see Cox (1997). Helpful memos and support material are on the FLC website. The memo welcoming new mentors follows.
In Miami’s FLC Preparing Future Faculty, the partners for TAs are faculty mentors on Miami’s regional campuses.
In other types of FLCs, partners can be engaged by pairing members in the community. This has been the case in Miami’s Senior Faculty Learning Community for Teaching Excellence, where participants pair as in the New Jersey Partners in Learning (Katz & Henry, 1993). Other partners might include a colleague in administration, in K-12, in business, or at another institution.
Who is available and matches your needs?
- See the following:
List of ATS mentors currently at Miami
Faculty/Staff Teaching Resource List
One or two mentors?
If only one, inside or outside your department?
- Inside: Content expertise but narrow perspective, confidentiality issues
- Outside: Broader perspectives; safer to reveal weaknesses
How do you ask?
- Invite candidate to lunch
Gender considerations?
- Go with your comfort
How often, when, where to meet?
- Every 3 weeks, office exchanges, over lunch
What topics for discussion?
- ATS seminar topics, university politics, P & T advice
What about classroom, videotape exchanges?
- Use videotapes when you have schedule conflicts
Do protégés need to nudge?
Yes!
Create a meeting calendar at the start of the term
Time slippin’, slippin’ away...
See the memo to new mentors at Miami University
This project has been supported in part by a grants from the US Department of Education Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education (FIPSE) and the Ohio Board of Regents.