by Laurel Willingham-McLain, Director, Center for Teaching Excellence, Duquesne University
Welcome to the 2019 Spring edition of the Flourishing Academic blog – on this, the coldest day of the year!
The blog has a fresh new look, and we have planned a series of inspiring posts to warm your way through the semester. Please join us in welcoming Arianna Lower to her role as program assistant and co-editor of Flourishing Academic. Arianna is a graduate student in history.
If you are currently feeling a little stir-crazy with the campus closure and the cold weather, consider participating in some of the upcoming opportunities on campus. Our programming emphasizes the New 3Rs of Learning, featured in CTE’s Scale up workshops this February. Jose Bowen says, “a convergence of behavioral economics, neuroscience, and cognitive psychology suggests a new educational ‘three Rs’: relationships, resilience, and reflection” (p. 28).
As Daniel Siegel writes, “we can now say that reflection, relationships, and resilience can be the ‘new R’s of education’ and adopt a policy of ‘no prefrontal cortex left behind‘!” (p. 276). In this series of micro workshops, participants will consider ways to strengthen student learning by implementing practical strategies to build relationships, resilience and risk taking, and reflection into their teaching practices.
Using a whole person approach, CTE applies these 3Rs not only to student learning, but also to faculty ways of being, through sessions on topics such as these:
* Spiritan Pedagogy in practice: Academic excellence through solidarity with the poor
* Race and pedagogy at a predominantly white university
* Gender and sexuality in the classroom: Serving students as allies
* Student learning and disabilities
* Book studies on The Spark of Learning and Contemplative Pedagogies,
* Publishing teaching/learning articles, and approaching academic book publishers
* Reflecting on feedback from student evaluations
* A framework for documenting academic rigor in teaching and learning
* Teaching for the common good
Again this semester, we are grateful for Duquesne co-sponsors who help to build campus relationships, foster resilience and deepen our reflection: Special Services, Writing Center, Gumberg Library, Classroom Technologies, Women’s and Gender Studies, and Catholic Faith and Culture.
At the April 11 Celebration of Teaching Excellence (Power Center), we will recognize teaching award winners, university teaching certificate recipients, and the many peer-leaders who volunteer through CTE. And we cap the semester with the annual Inspired Teaching Retreat, May 15-16 at the Spiritan Retreat Center.
We wish you the very best in 2019 from CTE.
Resources: Bowen, J. (2018). Nudges, the Learning Economy, and a New Three Rs: Relationships, Resilience, and Reflection. Liberal Education, 104(2), n2. Siegel, D. J. (2012). Pocket Guide to Interpersonal Neurobiology: An Integrative Handbook of the Mind (Norton Series on Interpersonal Neurobiology). WW Norton & Company.
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