The Value of a Site Visit
A number of patterns and contrasts emerged for me when I
visited the two main campuses of Southside Virginia Community College (I had
already taught at the Wrenn Center the year before but didn't initiate any
professional development activities there). To make these site visits, I
had both scheduled appointments and some time for informally wandering the halls
and talking to a few faculty at midday. So the site visit plans were
partly formal and partly loose but all about faculty development. Here are
some highlights, but take them with a grain of salt because they aren't
necessarily the realizations someone tried to cause in me; instead, they reflect
on questions I had and what I was currently reading.
 | The VCCS (the colleges and the System Office) does a good job with
individual professional development. Individual faculty can
 | get an advanced degree (as a Chancellor's Professor) |
| embark on a two-year study, as I did for group learning (as a
Chancellor's Commonwealth Professor) |
| or study for one or two semesters (on a sabbatical) |
| travel to professional conventions (especially if they are presenting
and have worked out extra funding with their college) |
| earn Professional Development Research Grants for released time and
materials |
|
| The VCCS has one communal professional development initiative--but it's
a marvelous one--the peer conferences, meetings by discipline--some of
which are annual, some biennial, and a few not very often. |
| Some individual colleges have active professional development
committees, which may be supported with some sort of budget. For
instance,
| NVCC had at least one center for teaching excellence before the VCCS
invented the regional centers. |
| Piedmont Virginia CC has had a functioning professional development
committee (chaired formerly by Evelyn Edson and currently by Dick
Harrington) under the auspices of Dean Marsal Stoll. |
| J. Sargeant Reynolds funded a committee called The TEACHING NETWORK
from 1991-1996 with 3 credits of released time for the chair, who did a
newsletter and most of the logistical work, supported by interested
faculty volunteers from several disciplines. |
| Wendy Weiner's classroom research group at John Tyler CC, though not a
professional development committee as such, showed what a focused effort
can do to foster faculty interaction and growth. |
| JSRCC, due to its SACS Alternative Self-Study, which focused on
professional development, now funds a full-time position for developing
managers, classified, and teaching faculty, directed by Claude Stevens. |
| Technology has been a force for creatively re-looking at teaching, and
people like Leslie Smith (RCC) and John Ambrose (JSRCC) have been
tireless in promoting the wise use of technology to enhance learning. |
| Some colleges also employ instructional designers, e.g. Kristen Kelly
of John Tyler CC, who work to ease the pangs of individual faculty who
are coming to see technology as a viable means to diversify their
teaching styles. |
|
| One function of professional development is to help faculty articulate
their personal teaching philosophies. I was about half way through
reading David Way's article, "A Personal Account of the Development of
One [Educational] Consultant" (in Practically Speaking: A Sourcebook
for Instructional Consultants in Higher Education [Stillwater, OK: New
Forums Press, 1997]: 223-230) when I ran into this teacher from the
Governor's School, a dual enrollment opportunity actually housed on the
campus of SVCC--Daniel, just like the dual enrollment facility that
allowed me to graduate from college in three years a few decades ago.
As we're talking, I'm realizing things about his personal philosophy of
teaching, such as--
| It's wise to coordinate content within and across courses to reinforce
concepts common to more than one course. (He's talking about
year-long sequences of math and physics, as well as parallels
highlighted by faculty in economics, English, and Environmental Science;
but I know that certain units of Afro-American Lit. and American Lit.
have been coordinated, along with parallel courses in American history
and American lit., even world history and world lit. faculty could
coordinate, compare, contrast.) |
| Sometimes faculty have to hide the punch line in order to make a
learning experience more memorable for students. |
| Sometimes faculty have to plant hints (previews, first glimpses of a
concept) early in a course to prepare students for the most difficult
concepts in the course. |
| Sometimes [often?] faculty need to get students to see the data rather
to trust their common sense or the received view. |
|
| Along the way, I picked up a free subscription card to Converge
Magazine (just visited the Web site at http://www.convergemag.com
and got an idea for a grant, plus finding a review for the Hard Drive Cafe
in a Florida college that integrates a food service, an open computer lab,
and student services such as tutoring. (Of course, you do know that
you can have Syllabus magazine just for the asking? See http://www.syllabus.com
) |
| I also picked up brochures that I didn't think my college had, e.g.
one for the transfer program and another for "outcomes," which
turned out to be a brochure that encapsulated the college's graduate
follow-up survey. Very smart recruiting tactic to show what kind of
jobs and what kinds of salary ranges graduates have, typical employers,
usual purposes for attending, and high satisfaction ratings. |
| Faculty I ran into gave me the ideas about coordinating content (see three
bullets up), feedback on the Brookfield Project, and particularly smart
ice-breaker called Great Expectations. |
|
1999