Mediated Learning Newsletter

Vol. 5, Issue 1: October 2005, pg. 1

How to Light the Teaching Fire from Within

by Johnny W. Lott, Director

A teaching fire needs to be lit within some faculty members. To whom might this message be directed? First consider brand new faculty members. Do we need to light their teaching fires?

Johnny Lott

This group is smoldering with new knowledge and glowing with enthusiasm. For this group, we need to think about how to capitalize on their knowledge and enthusiasm to the best advantages for us as faculty members and for the students they teach. We need creative scheduling so that we can expose them to The University of Montana students while not providing an impossible teaching load. And we need to determine how they can help with the professional development of the experienced faculty members on campus to re-invigorate those who might need it. We should capitalize on the new knowledge and let this group mentor faculty members who have ripened away from their own graduate schools and the research process. Using enthusiastic new faculty in this way can help more experienced faculty members.

Another faculty group to consider who need their teaching fires lit is the group in their first five years of service. Smoldering concerns for this group of faculty members are both their students and themselves. These teachers are facing career and life decisions. They are on their way to promotion and tenure. They are heavily involved in teaching, research and service, with the number and quality of papers produced uppermost in their minds. The real question for them is how they can get everything done that needs to be done to continue up the academic ladder. And the real question for more experienced faculty members beyond this group is how can we tender the fire and help the flames glow a little brighter as this group struggles for academic survival?

Think about how experienced faculty can make this 5-year group a more integral part of the academic world. [It is not by putting them on more committees and burying them in bureaucratic academia.] If this 5-year group is having problems with teaching due to all the pressures, we could be guest faculty in their classes to (1) demonstrate good teaching techniques and (2) help with their load by doing this at a time when they have severe deadlines, like the presentation of faculty evaluation documents. With (1), we can model our versions of good teaching and be good academic mentors in the process. We can also include these 5-year faculty members in collaborative research with us to yield the needed papers for the academic tracks. Further if the research is related to what is being taught, this could show the needed ways to integrate research in teaching. In a word or two, we need to show this group that we care about them. In the same way that we need to interact with students in our classes, we need to interact with this group of faculty members. If not, they may decide that The University of Montana is not the place for them.

Now consider the middle-years faculty group. This group has achieved tenure and promotion and is in the most productive years of careers in teaching, research and service. Smoldering for this group is priority juggling: earning enough money to send children to college, writing grants to get higher research salaries to do that, becoming department chairs and chairs of graduate committees, serving on vital university service committees, as well as teaching and being role models for less experienced members of their departments. These folk are changing content in courses and the methods being used to teach classes. These folk may be ones who are worrying less and less about their teaching and their students because of all the other pressures on them.

This group needs special help within their schools and colleges as well as from the university. Leading academic officers can help by setting universities priorities recognizing that this group is making needed changes in curriculum and methodology that set the stage for the university's future. To make changes, this group has to be given time to pilot suggested curriculum and methodological changes in classes. Whether it be teaching with iPods in music classes or using data from the internet in applications classes in mathematics, this group needs time to think, teach, and re-think about the knowledge future students need. This group is the glue of the university cementing work between the less experienced faculty and the last group needing fires lit.

The faculty members who are in their last years of teaching have smoldering for them impending retirement, the growing age differences between them and their students, and a potential content gap in their knowledge base and current needs of their fields. We need to capitalize on experience and wisdom in this group, but we need to make sure that they still teach in ways that help students learn. We must be sure that the content they teach is still pertinent today and taught so that students can see that. We ask advice from this group but temper that advice with new ideas and methods; this faculty group should be both mentors and mentees of all other faculty groups. We need them actively involved in the work of the university and must think about how their knowledge is not lost when they are gone.

To light the needed fires for teaching, research and service for this campus, we must all recognize that regardless of the faculty group being considered,

• professional development in content and teaching methodology must never end;
• all faculty members must love their discipline and their students;
• enthusiasm cannot be allowed to wane.

Does your fire need igniting? How can the Center for Teaching Excellence help? Call (406) 243-5943, or e-mail Dr. Johnny Lott