Products / Reflections / … UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? NW-PULSE @ NW Bio 2018 Faculty Engagement Drives Student Success IDAHO STATE UNIVERSITY Barbara Frank, Janet Loxterman, Rosemary Smith VISION – Increase learner-centered teaching among our faculty members. MAIN GOAL– We improved the “cultural” awareness of teaching at the chair level and increased faculty awareness of the value of teaching for student retention and engagement. Photos should be at least 300dpi, but not more than 5-12 mgs each. Your poster is set to be enlarged 200% so do not change the page size to fit another poster size. Posters (3’ x 4’) will be printed at WWU using the same purchase order at the same time. Please email your poster as a PPT file to by Joann Otto at WWU by Friday, April 13, 2018, by 5 pm. Please contact Joann Otto (Joann.Otto@wwu.edu) with questions about poster printing. Also please put your institution “logo” on your poster. Please note that this template is provided to simplify your effort to prepare a poster for the NW Biology meeting. You can change the font size, colors, column widths, add photos, institutional logos, graphics, etc. This template can also be used as a starting point and you can be as creative as you want in your poster. However, we would like to have all of the posters the same size and we will be printed at the same time, at the same print shop in order to easily pay for printing with one purchase order. ACTIONS BARRIERS & CHALLENGES Products / Reflections / … As part of the interview process, candidates for two faculty positions presented a guest lecture to a ‘real’ class. Department chair has established a mentoring program for new hires. Department chair is challenging current mental models by recognizing and valuing teaching expertise as well as research excellence. Cultural elements (mental models) value research as the prime criterion for new hires. Barriers include not a critical mass of support from current faculty about the value of teaching. A new University President and Dean of our College may be more supportive of innovative teaching. Program prioritization plan is being evaluated. SUSTAINABILITY RESOURCES & ALLIES Department chair used dynamic governance for getting feedback from faculty on candidates. The BioCore brochure and the “tool kit” on the PULSE website were disseminated to faculty. Our allies included colleagues from BSU and NWPulse attendees. The teaching demonstration for candidates will continue with current chair. Chair visiting classrooms and assessing teaching using published rubrics. Considering inviting an ambassador to continue the momentum of valuing teaching. STRENGTHS & LEVERAGE Our chair and the search committee were supportive of efforts to showcase teaching skills of candidates. Levers of support included our department chair and Human Resources. FUTURE GOALS UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES? We are in the process of designing a survey that assesses faculty engagement in teaching, roles that they play in retention and student success, and overall “happiness” quota. Faculty retreat will focus on recommendations from V &C. One unintended consequence may be that the new hires do not bring in enough research dollars. One positive consequence may be that the new hires share more teaching expertise with other faculty and have a broader research agenda. This work was supported NSF RCN UBE award # 1345033.