2014 NW5C Annual Report
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Northwest Five Consortium Stephen Thorsett, President Willamette University 900 State St., Salem, OR 97301 Annual Report to The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation January 1 - December 31, 2013 Grant: 41100697 * March 27, 2014 I. Introduction With the generous support of The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, Willamette University, Whitman College, Reed College, University of Puget Sound, and Lewis & Clark College are engaged in collaborative efforts through the establishment of a new regional alliance, the Northwest Five Consortium (NW5C). Working toward the regular sharing of expertise and resources, the mission of the NW5C is to enhance the student academic experience at our five liberal arts colleges through enrichment and development of faculty as teacher-scholars. In service of this mission, the Consortium provides the infrastructure to support collaborative efforts among its member institutions, and strives to create a vibrant and sustainable intellectual community of scholars in the Pacific Northwest. The NW5C has been very active in the second year of a four-year implementation grant following a 2011 planning grant. This report highlights information regarding NW5C events such as the annual conference and faculty workshops, report-outs of completed projects from the 2013 Fund for Collaborative Inquiry (FCI) grant cycle, an overview of the grant cycle for the 2014 FCI faculty projects, confirmation of the NW5C governance structure, the developing connections between the NW5C and other regional initiatives and national organizations, consortium participation statistics, and the further development of NW5C assessment protocols and review. The progress realized in our initial work together demonstrates the value in our increasing inter-connectivity. II. Project Components To date, over 140 consortium faculty and staff members have attended NW5C events. Based on the responses from participants, the annual conference and faculty workshops make a significant impact by increasing peer contacts. Deepening relationships are also developing over time through project work, sharing resources, and co-teaching opportunities, and with assistance from technology tools to bridge the physical distance between our institutions. In these first years of the Consortium’s development, such regular events and face-to-face meetings allow the NW5C to foster cross-campus, collaborative enterprise and ongoing peer relationships. A. Annual Conference The second NW5C annual conference was held September 27-29, 2013 at Skamania Lodge, Columbia River Gorge, in Stevenson, Washington. Over 70 faculty and staff members participated. This year’s conference theme, The Global Campus, was developed to bring faculty and staff together to examine issues related to creating learning environments and opportunities that foster students’ development toward active “global citizenship.” The breakout sessions included collaborating with partners abroad, area studies, the global curriculum, integrating study abroad with curricula, global citizenship, and faculty-led overseas programs. By discussing core themes with their professional peers, participants learned more about colleagues’ home campuses, exploring opportunities for shared programs and collaborative solutions. Conversations throughout the conference seeded ideas for joint projects and courses, leading to the creation of project pre-proposals for the 2014 Fund for Collaborative Inquiry. NW5C, Gatke Hall 209B, Willamette University, 900 State St., Salem, OR 97301 Carie Faszholz, Coordinator 503-370-6421 [email protected] Conference participant responses from both the 2012 and 2013 annual gatherings indicate the events effectively provided a) informal opportunities for faculty members to network with colleagues from other institutions who shared common interests 2013: effective to very effective = 96.8% 2012: effective to very effective = 75% b) concrete ideas for collaboration (on a scale of 0 – 4, with 4 being most effective) 2013: 3.46 2012: 3.18 Colleagues attending the 2013 annual conference also indicated that I loved the conference and it provided a great way to network with colleagues informally. This is really crucial, and I now have others to contact with similar interests in the NW region. I really appreciated getting a chance to speak with faculty members from other universities. My interest in the themes of this conference far exceeded my area of academic expertise and so I happily found plenty of people with whom to converse. B. Thematic Workshops 1. NW5C 2013 Faculty Workshop: Better Collaboration through Communication & Technology Working collaboratively on program development across a region of 34,000 square miles presents a range of challenges, from requiring online tools and a centralized repository of resources and materials to assist and support groups of faculty and staff working together across campuses, to the complex technology needed to deliver synchronous distance-learning courses. This workshop sought to address these issues. Fifty-five faculty and staff participants came to the Puget Sound campus for a two-day meeting. NW5C staff with expertise in technology, digital literacy, and course enrollment, attended and offered guidance on the developing projects and on the collaborative toolkits that are needed to support programs across institutions. The workshop opened with a plenary presentation on available technologies and included demonstrations of collaborative tools; technology framed the round-table break-out sessions. The NW5C library and instructional technology experts, who have been collaborating successfully for many years, also offered workshop closing remarks, re-emphasizing their unequivocal support for faculty- led and other consortium initiatives, and reflecting on the idea of consortium itinerant experts. The NW5C represents a common pool of expertise available to the consortium, with mobility (which is at times accomplished through technology), increasing the expertise on each campus. Action items from the spring 2013 workshop included the sharing of co-teaching experiences and content- sharing arrangements between faculty, models and ideas for collaborative courses, and ongoing cataloguing of technology tools available for collaborative work. A technology liaison group was formed to work directly with faculty on FCI collaborative projects; the further review of video-conferencing tools to determine a standard platform across the consortium, and the convening of regular meetings for NW5C academic deans and technologists are in progress. 2. NW5C 2014 Faculty Workshop: Supporting Faculty of Color at Liberal Arts Institutions During June 4-6, Lewis & Clark College will host our 2014 workshop which focuses on faculty of color. On each of our campuses, we have relatively few faculty members of color; a workshop goal is to collaborate on ways that these colleagues receive appropriate institutional support as they work toward tenure. Each campus will send at least one administrator whose work is related to faculty diversity and up to ten faculty members. All faculty are welcome, whether they identify as “faculty of color” or as allies. The two-day workshop will consist of breakout sessions chosen to reflect participant interest as well as NW5C, Gatke Hall 209B, Willamette University, 900 State St., Salem, OR 97301 Carie Faszholz, Coordinator 503-370-6421 [email protected] working sessions where faculty will discuss possible ways that the Consortium might help to support faculty of color on our campuses. One potential outcome of the gathering is a faculty-generated proposal for a formalized network for faculty of color in the NW5C. C. Fund for Collaborative Inquiry (FCI) Central to the work of the NW5C is the exploration of collaboration. The Fund for Collaborative Inquiry provides small grants to seed the support of academic innovation and efficiency through cross- institutional, faculty-initiated projects. Funded projects involve faculty from two or more of the five colleges. The five deans of the colleges review proposals together and decide which projects to fund. Since its inception, the Fund for Collaborative Inquiry has supported 16 projects involving over 200 faculty and professional staff. 1. 2013 FCI Faculty Projects Completed 2013 projects have produced ● a shared course, Food Systems Northwest, to be piloted in summer 2014 (see Appendix I for course description); ● the inaugural regional Visual Culture Colloquium to be held in fall 2014; ● the ongoing sharing of course and curricular information and plans for an undergraduate research symposium in the Environmental Sciences; ● plans for a regional conference among Peer Tutoring programs in spring 2015; ● and regular interaction among Gender Studies faculty, including the sharing of curricular information and video-captured guest lectures for cross-consortium distribution. FCI grants supported project goals to capitalize on efficiencies of scale and to improve the quality and scope of similar courses, to meet and identify areas for collaborations, to deepen relationships and establish regular communications and strategies for continuing collaborative work, to discuss pedagogical issues and impacts to campus life and culture, to share and catalogue program and curricular information, and to enhance the Pacific Northwest regional identity, within disciplinary field work and within the consortium itself. Along with fulfilling specific project objectives, faculty teams have created websites, group email distribution,