Early Results of Undergrad You

With 25% of our hoped-for response rate, here are some preliminary results of Undergrad You.

48% identified as first generation

97% participated in extracurricular activities or programs

What was your major?

word cloud of major, word size shows frequency

64% participated in sports-related activities, mostly as a fan or through club/intramurals, one-third on college teams.

When you think about your experience as an undergraduate, what words come to mind?

word cloud of answers; word size shows frequency

Typewriters, posters, coffeemakers, and graphing calculators

What did you bring to college?

Interview: Cognitive Bandwidth and Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning

An Interview with Dr. Erin Hambrick about her experience as a facilitator of a Faculty Learning Community.

The Office of the Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor, as part of RooSTRONG, funded faculty participation in learning communities to explore teaching practice. FLCs are cohorts of faculty members, across all ranks, including non-tenure track, from different disciplines or fields of study. The community provides a supportive environment where faculty can tune into a variety of activities and experiment with new approaches to teaching, share successes and challenges, launch scholarly work, and disseminate instructional practices and tools. 

Dr. Erin Hambrick

  • Assistant Professor
  • Department of Psychology
  • College of Arts and Sciences
  • Directory link

Alexis: Which Faculty Learning Community are you leading?

Erin: Cognitive Bandwidth and Trauma-Informed Teaching and Learning

Alexis: What is the focus?

Erin: This FLC was focused on people who have experienced trauma or other sorts of adversities that might influence the degree of cognitive bandwidth that they have available to them as learners on the UMKC campus.

Alexis: Spring 2020 was the first time UMKC formally offered FLCs through the Provost Office. How did it come together for your group?

Erin: From the beginning, one thing made me really motivated was noticing how hungry and excited faculty were to have a forum to discuss critical issues with one another, and also a forum in which they could advance their own learning. Faculty give so much time thinking about how we teach our students. But the faculty desire to continue to grow and learn is strong and there aren’t a lot of natural outlets available.

Alexis: What was the most challenging aspect of facilitating the FLC?

Erin: Scheduling was extremely tough because we purposefully pulled from a diverse pool of faculty from across campus and from across disciplines. Finding times that converge was absolutely hard. Getting interest and buy-in was not hard whatsoever.

Alexis: How did the COVID-19 crisis affect the FLC?

Erin: We spent some of the early meetings talking over things that faculty wanted to do this semester. Faculty began reading articles about the ways that trauma, adversity, and being of a particular race, ethnicity, or gender identity status can disadvantage the bandwidth available to students. We had meetings brainstorming and thinking about how to disseminate the information to other faculty members. We began discussing how to conduct the business of higher education through a trauma-informed lens. We had many big ideas …. And the COVID-19 crisis landed in the middle of them.

In some ways having our own bandwidth reduced helped us focus on what’s feasible within one semester. Because of time contraints, we all began to recognize that actually, a very important outcome of something like this is our ability to grow in our own learning, our own recognition of a problem, and our ability to brainstorm about the ways that we individually can contribute to tackling this problem on campus.

At the beginning everybody was thinking external, you know, how do we help others learn all the stuff that we’re learning? It’s so important and it’s so exciting. Then we shifted and began to consider what is our individual responsibility? I really saw faculty talking about and thinking through action steps for improving their own teaching. They also did that in ways that they can support others who are interested in down the road. It might be that other faculty could then utilize the tools and strategies members of this FLC developed in their own classes.

Alexis: In what ways, if any, did the FLC provide natural support for faculty?

Erin: We shifted focus and decided to use the time that we have together to talk about how the COVID-19 crisis could be affecting bandwidth in our students and what we might be able to do about it right now. We are currently going through something that could be reducing bandwidth, not only for students, but also for us as faculty. That led the group to value the time that we had together to be able to discuss, and ultimately better relate to, what it is that our students are experiencing. When we ourselves are part of a crisis and are noticing what it feels like to have bandwidth reduced … I think the material really came to life for faculty. I have a lot of hope for how faculty will very genuinely be able to take some of these principles and apply them in future semesters.

Alexis: Why should we continue faculty learning communities?

Erin: For me the ability to connect with faculty about a topic that we all identified as important, and then to be able to have the space to learn and engage is great.  It is different from a workshop that meets once. We revisited our topic over time and got the benefit of developing relationships in a supportive setting. It also allowed me to create connections across campus that I will rely on and keep up with in the future. And so I just think that that outcome was really realized.

Teaching and Learning Continue

A Resource for UMKC Faculty

UMKC Faculty Affairs created a compilation of resources that have been appearing in our inboxes and that we have discovered online. This compilation may be useful to you as you continue to teach this semester and plan for summer and fall.

The resources are available through open access links on the FAN website. They are grouped by the following categories, with each category having several subcategories:

  • administration
  • community
  • coronavirus / COVID-19
  • faculty
  • health and wellness
  • scholarship and research
  • students
  • teaching and learning

On the webpage, view all resources, view by category and subcategory, or search. This is a curated list – to date there are 39 resources available. More are added each day.

excerpt of TLC

If you have a resource you would like to share, email Alexis Petri at petria@umkc.edu

Zoom Virtual Backgrounds

Show your style

A few faculty are showing their style with Zoom virtual backgrounds. Roo Connection published a set of virtual backgrounds featuring UMKC landmarks. This gallery pulls together a few fun statement backgrounds from collections made freely available for personal use. If like one of them, click on the image to open it in a new window and then right-click or control-click to save the image.

How?

Make your own virtual background

Canva has set up an online virtual background studio – you make your own background free of charge.

Sources

Three Things that Help

The Faculty Affairs Newsletter is sharing faculty members’ unique take on the question “what are three things that help?” The question is purposefully vague so that we have a range of perspectives.


Tammy Welchert

photo of tammy welchert
  • Associate Teaching Professor, Director of Student Affairs & Academic Advising
  • School of Biological and Chemical Sciences
  • Bio and contact info

Just as important as taking care of our students is taking care of our selves and our teams! The SBC Advisors set up a Group Me in anticipation of working at home. I have been sending cards through the mail and sharing pictures and updates of me walking with Mr. Diggity, funny memes, and Bitmoji’s. Sharing helps us stay in touch to support and encourage one another.

photo of dog

“Sharing helps us stay in touch to support and encourage one another.”

Pictured above: Mr. Diggity

TikTok

I know, I know, what am I doing on TikTok at 50 years old. It’s my 15-minute laugh break every day — okay sometimes a couple of times a day. It’s good to see families coming together to make videos, to share stories of triumph, to hear funny antidotes, and to try some cool new science stuff. Did you know you can make slippers from balloons? I have laughed so hard I cried at some of these!

“It satisfies my soul and lets me recenter to keep going.”

Pictured above: My daughter Kristina when she and I hiked Half Dome in 2014.

There is no friend like an old book

I have always enjoyed reading but right now this is a perfect way to escape for an hour or two. Some of my favorite books are biographies of people who have hiked the Pacific Crest Trail and the Appalachian Trail. I picture myself out there, making it on my own out in the wild. It satisfies my soul and lets me recenter to keep going.

Thank you to Tammy Welchert for sharing her three things. This is set up with a readers write format. Want to share your three things? Fill out the entry form and they will be included in the next issue. Even if there are many responses – we will figure it out.


Resources Mentioned

TikTok videos – an example

@neildegrassetyson

What will Martha Stewart find to be dusty where you hang out? #science #fortyou #foryoupage

♬ Star Wars – Produced – Ettore Stratta

Group Me

Trails