Faculty Learning

By Meredith Guinness

Two years ago, Dr. David Schmidt was at a turning point. A respected associate professor of ethics in the Charles F. Dolan School of Business, he had a dynamic teaching style, technical expertise, and 14 years of solid experience.

But privately, he was in a career rut, frustrated by the difficulty of advancing beyond his early successes at Fairfield. "When I looked at my teaching," he says, pausing, "I couldn't get excited by simply repeating what worked; I wanted to keep improving."

Enter the Faculty Learning Community, a group of four mid-career professors who spent the 2004-05 academic year considering the nature of teaching and how - once the thrill of tenure and the first book or research project is gone - to keep their classes engaging for their students and themselves. Through regular brainstorming sessions and chats over a meal, they discovered fresh teaching tools that had a strong impact on their careers and classes in 2005-06.

"I really think my teaching shifted dramatically," says group member Jo Yarrington, professor of visual and performing arts in the College of Arts & Sciences (CAS). "I got to shake it up a bit."

Dr. Elizabeth Boquet, professor of English (CAS), and Dr. Dennis Keenan, professor of philosophy (CAS), created the learning community, loosely basing it on more formal models at other universities. They decided to keep their group small and intentionally invited professors from four different disciplines with very distinct teaching styles. For instance, Keenan, a former Teacher of the Year, is a strong, traditional lecturer, while Boquet thrives on small group interaction. Schmidt is interested in technology and assessment in the classroom, and Professor Yarrington, who has taught studio art classes for 28 years, thrives in an active, participatory environment.

The group set up a traditional first meeting with an agenda, but that was quickly tossed aside. What emerged was a more freeform space, where they could discuss immediate dilemmas and open up about their worries and perceived shortcomings, something that doesn't come easy for seasoned professionals.

"Teaching can be lonely," said Boquet, who has taught since 1990. "You prepare your syllabus, you close your door. You write, you close your door."

"Sometimes you don't talk to people about how you teach because you don't want to find out that what you're doing in the classroom is wrong or weird," says 20-year-veteran Keenan with a laugh.

Putting pride aside, the group found sharing led to real results. At one meeting, they discussed Boquet's attempt to use Internet chat in a class she says "went horribly awry. We had a long discussion about whether we can use chat - which is so 'owned' by students - in a pedagogical way,"  Boquet says. "Can they move back and forth between those worlds?"

Dr. Schmidt got some solid advice on an Honors Program course he was setting up with a new professor he had never met. Keenan, who had found many small group situations stilted in the past, studied how Boquet incorporated them successfully and took that knowledge back to his classrooms.

Prof. Yarrington credits the group with solving what she saw as a persistent dilemma in her courses. Since they fill core requirements, her classes attract both future art majors and students who "haven't picked up a drawing pencil since second grade," and she struggled to keep sessions "rigorous, but realistic." Meeting with her peers, she learned to let her students voice their opinions instead of presenting pre-ordained notions of art, a move she believes made her classes more inspiring for all. "It made a tremendous difference with their engagement in the process," she says. "That, for me, was a big leap."

Looking forward, Yarrington and Boquet are working on a cluster course in which students will take both Boquet's English 11 and Yarrington's "Foundation Drawing." Schmidt has taken the learning community idea back to the Dolan School, where the art of teaching has become a frequent topic in his Management Department meetings.

And more professors will soon have the opportunity to join faculty learning communities through the Center for Academic Excellence (CAE). The Center hopes to have several groups up and running by 2007-08. 

Dr. Schmidt believes learning community members will find the same kind of reinvigorating spirit he did. "Teaching? It's hard," says Schmidt, shrugging. "It's good to have support and this was a really supportive group for me."