faculty learning community

FLC: Improving Student Belonging

Posted on by Alexis

Underserved and marginalized students may face unique difficulties (isolation, marginalization, discrimination, racism, ableism) that cause them to change majors early in their time at UMKC, decide to transfer to another college or university or stop their postsecondary education altogether. This FLC will bring together faculty interested in exploring how to help students develop a sense of belonging in a class, major, and/or discipline. Academic disciplines are not value-neutral, cultural-free spaces. Faculty interested in connecting belonging and exploring the implications of structural racism for students, courses, and academic disciplines are welcome to select a diversity and inclusion focus. 

This FLC is also in search of a facilitator to help shape reading and the “give back” to the UMKC teaching community. If you would like to facilitate, logic in the application that will include two questions about being a facilitator.

Apply

FLC:

Posted on by Alexis

Threshold Concepts for

Writing Intensive Faculty

This faculty learning community (FLC) will focus on (1) how and why faculty write differently in their disciplines and (2) how to articulate and apply threshold concepts in writing studies and one’s own discipline. Threshold concepts are “established and widely agreed-upon knowledge/ideas/orientations” that have come to be “foundational” for successfully entering a discipline, according to the editors of (Re)Considering What We Know: Learning Thresholds in Writing, Composition, Rhetoric, and Literacy (23). Modeled after the Howe Center for Writing Excellence’s Faculty Writing Fellows Program at Miami University, this FLC will bring together WI faculty from across the university to learn from the expertise about writing in one’s discipline that everyone brings with them to their classroom and scholarship. This FLC will not only facilitate individual learning about effective writing instruction and assignment design practices but also will make visible the knowledgeable, diverse, creative culture(s) of writing at UMKC.

This Faculty Learning Community will convene ten WI faculty to discuss threshold concepts in writing studies and in their individual disciplines. These discussions will address how and why we write differently in our disciplines. Based upon these conversations, faculty will choose to revise an assignment, unit, or the syllabus of their existing WI course with the intention to teach these revised courses/assignments in the next semester or within the next academic year. Faculty will be encouraged to apply for the FLC with colleagues from their department, and preference will be given to groups of 2-3 from the same department or academic unit. 

Apply