The 2021 Faculty Learning Community Cohort

This team is specifically designed for course coordinators across the six CSM departments. Team members will support each another as you identify, develop/modify, pilot, and organize materials that will be shared with faculty who teach sections of the coordinated courses with the goal of fostering students’ active engagement in learning throughout the course.

Faculty across CSM departments who are interested in transforming their course to include course-based undergraduate research experiences (CUREs) will work together to develop and implement CUREs and organize materials that can be shared with other faculty who may be interested in trying to infuse CUREs into CSM courses. CUREs involve students addressing a research question or problem that is of interest to stakeholders outside the classroom (e.g., the scientific community or society). Read more about CUREs. 

The current KSU Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP) focuses on student engagement through service learning, internships, and co-ops experiences. Faculty across CSM departments who are interested in transforming their course to include service learning/internships/co-ops experiences will work together identify, develop/modify, and pilot materials that can be shared with other interested faculty. Read more about KSU’s QEP.

This team is affiliated with the mathematics department’s SEMINAL project. Although SEMINAL focuses on active learning in precalculus, calculus 1, and calculus 2, this team is open to any mathematics faculty member interested in infusing active learning practices into your course. The goal is to improve teaching and learning in mathematics by engaging students in active-learning experiences that adhere to the following principles:

• students learn meaningful mathematics by engaging in challenging, cognitively demanding problems;
  
  
• students deepen and clarify their thinking through routinely discussing their own reasoning and considering the reasoning of others (peer-to-peer interactions);
  
  
• instructors deepen their own understanding of mathematics content and pedagogical content knowledge when they elicit and make use of student thinking to advance the mathematical agenda; and
  
  
• instructors foster a sense of belonging when they explicitly attend to issues of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Team members will work together to identify, develop/modify, and pilot active learning materials that can be shared with other interested faculty.

This team represents a partnership between MCB and EEOB with a goal of improving the teaching and learning of biology lab courses by making labs more discovery oriented. This team will work together to redesign lower and/or upper division lab courses to infuse active-learning experiences and connected content throughout the curriculum. Together, faculty will identify, develop/modify, pilot, and prepare lab materials to be shared with instructors across all sections of the target courses.

Building on the momentum of curriculum improvements supported by the HHMI project and by the Chemistry I and Chemistry II lab redesign FLC teams, faculty will work together to continue to strengthen the alignment of the chemistry curriculum to achieve the department’s overarching learning goals for students. Team members will examine the chemistry curriculum overall or in a particular course/set of courses to ensure that there are scaffolded and connected opportunities for students to achieve the desired learning goals.

Complementing the support provided by the HHMI project, faculty will work together to examine the physics curriculum overall or in a particular course/set of courses to ensure that there are scaffolded and connected opportunities for students to achieve desired learning goals. Particular attention will be given to identifying, developing/modifying, and piloting active learning materials that can be shared with other interested faculty.

Recent changes to general education requirements coupled with the developing undergraduate degree in statistics have prompted the need for a new statistics and data analysis course to be created for the general education core curriculum. Additionally, there is a need to move the STAT minor required courses online. While team members may focus on different courses, they will work together to ensure that there are scaffolded and connected opportunities for students to achieve desired learning goals. Particular attention will be given to identifying, developing/modifying, and piloting active learning materials that can be shared with other interested faculty.