An Iowa College in the Liberal Arts Tradition
May 2021
The page features CELT Notes sent to Luther faculty members during the academic year 2020 - 2021.
21. May 2021
Good morning!
Here is what's coming up in CELT this week and next.
Monday, May 17 - 3 pm
Faculty Morale Survey -- Listening Session (Monday)
Join CELT and members of FIC for a confidential listening session designed to offer feedback on the Spring 2021 Faculty Morale Survey. Register here
Thursday, May 20 - 9:30 am
Faculty Morale Survey -- Listening Session (Thursday)
Join CELT and members of FIC for a confidential listening session designed to offer feedback on the Spring 2021 Faculty Morale Survey.
Monday, May 24 - 9:30 am
Making Time for Reflection -- Making Sense of COVID 19 Teaching
This interactive discussion and workshop is designed to help faculty process their impressions of what has happened since spring 2020 and how they feel about those events. The end goal is to encourage participants to begin to integrate their 2020 teaching experiences into the longer and larger narrative arc of their careers and callings. This workshop was designed by the Teaching and Learning team at Plymouth State University. Register here.
Tuesday, May 25 and Wednesday, May 26- 9:00 am
Equity Minded Study Away with Dr. Dawn Whitehead, VP, Office of Global Citizenship for Campus, Community, and Careers, AAC&U and Lori Stanley
Register here.
In the annual Open Doors report by the Institute of International Education, Luther is usually ranked in the top 20 baccalaureate colleges in the nation in terms of study away participation. The integration of study away into yearlong/semester-based, January term, and faculty-led programs has contributed to this success, along with strong participation from the faculty. Currently, 64% of the 2020-21 tenured faculty have led international, credit-bearing experiences with students.
This workshop will provide faculty and staff with an opportunity to hear the full story of participation in study away at Luther and explore ways to ensure that all students can share in and benefit from this story. The workshop will:
- Set the context for study away at Luther by sharing results from a multi-year effort to gather and analyze study away participation data over a four-year period, 2015-16 to 2018-19
- Examine best practices for achieving equity-minded study away
- Explore specific actions that we can take to ensure full participation in study away regardless of academic major, cocurricular participation, race, ethnicity, citizenship, religion, socioeconomic background, physical ability, gender, sexual orientation, or other identities.
- Identify forms of support that are necessary for equitable study away experiences and outcomes.
- Ask participants to reflect on the role that each plays in achieving the goals of diversity, equity, and inclusion in study away, whether as a CGL or CIES staff member, academic advisor, faculty mentor, program leader, coach, ensemble director, work study supervisor, development officer, financial aid/financial services officer, student life staff member, or administrator.
14. May 2021
Dear Faculty,
Congratulations on making it through this, most difficult, year of teaching. I was so pleased that our final faculty meeting was on Zoom because I took advantage of the short commute and slept in this morning. It was glorious.
I have grading to do of course, but not today. I'm going to work in my garden this afternoon, planting some of the perennials that I took home with me yesterday from my childhood home, which will be someone else's childhood home next Friday. Continuity and change -- feels like a good theme for this last CELT Notes of the spring semester.
Summer Faculty Development Opportunities
We have been working hard over the last few weeks scheduling out the summer of faculty development opportunities. It is a full slate consisting of our course redesign institutes, thematic workshops, and anti-racist working groups and reading groups.
Registration is now live for all events. Please visit:https://www.luther.edu/celt/
Please notice that we are still updating workshop descriptions. Notice too that there are workshop spots open over the course of summer. This is so we can be responsive to faculty needs and wishes. If you have an idea for a workshop that you would like us to explore, please send me an email. For now all workshops and institutes will be held via Zoom.
We will be sending out CELT Notes with notices and descriptions about upcoming workshops throughout the summer, but for now, here are the highlights and our general schedule.
- Inclusive Excellence Course Design Institute Round 1 (June 21, 24, 28, and July 1) at 9:30 or at 1pm
- Inclusive Excellence Course Design Institute Round 2 (July 26, 29, August 2, 5) at 9:30 or at 1pm.
- Topic-based Workshops will run most Monday, Wednesday, and Thursday mornings at 9:30 and Monday and Thursday afternoons at 1 pm.
- CELT Social Hours - In an effort to ease our way back into in-person connection and community, we are relaunching casual social hours this summer. The CELT social hours will be offered on random Wednesdays at 3 on the Valders Terrace. No registration will be required, please just show up. More here soon.
- Working Group - Round 3 Layla Saad - Me and White Supremacy. Anti-racist working group for both faculty and staff. A five-week working group starting June 7 that will be organized according to participant's schedules. Please sign up here.
- Book Group - Navigating Difficult Moments in Teaching. We know we need to do better addressing race and social justice issues in our classrooms, but how? This three week book group will help faculty with this work. This reading group will meet July 6, 13, and 20. Sign up here.
Although I won't be keeping scheduled office hours this summer, I am available for physically-distanced or Zoom consultations this summer.
I do want to highlight the Faculty Morale Survey listening sessions that are scheduled for next week. These confidential listening sessions with members of FIC are a good way to flesh out survey comments and importantly brainstorm ways to that we, as a community, might fix some of these issues. The first will be held
May 17 at 3 pm and the second will be held onThursday May 20 at 9:30 am. They are open to faculty only. And as with all virtual CELT events -- come as you are, where you are, with whomever you share a space with.
Thank you all for your work. Thank you for helping our students to the finish line of Spring 2021. Take some time to breathe. You deserve it.