A New Year and Exciting Opportunities

This month marks the beginning of several new things here at the Faculty Center for this coming Spring semester. To start with, our student SCOTs (Students Consulting on Teaching) are up and ready to begin working with faculty to give you some insights into how your class is perceived by those you helping to learn. Our new website should be up and running shortly and will be full of information and useful tips and ideas to help you with your teaching. We are also starting two new Learning Circles: Susan Madsen will be leading a discussion of the book The Courage to Teach and Anton Tolman will be leading a discussion of the book Developing Learner Centered Teaching. Although this last book is intended as a follow-up to last semester's discussion of Weimer's book, it is also open to anyone who is interested.

We are especially excited this semester because we will be co-hosting with the College of Science and Health a day-long workshop on POGIL (Process Oriented Guided Inquiry Learning). UVU has top chances at seats, but on January 12th, it is open season, so sign up now! You can do that at http://www.pogil.org/events/UVU1.php

In addition, we will co-host with the Center for Engaged Learning, the first UVU Scholarship of Teaching and Engagement Conference on April 13-14 here on campus. We are looking for faculty to present posters or papers at that conference. Papers or posters should focus on theoretical developments or scholarly presentations concerning teaching theory or pedagogical methods and what you are learning about how to improve student learning. This is an incredible opportunity to share with each other on campus and improve our learning as well as to recognize innovative teaching happening right here among us. If you want to know more or want to submit a proposal, please contact Ursula at Sorensur@UVU.edu or Anton at Anton.Tolman@UVU.edu

Last, we wanted to make you aware of some really great conferences on teaching that are coming up. Think about taking some time to go to one of these conferences and strengthening your contribution to UVU as an Engaged University!

• International Alliance of Teacher Scholars Conference (also known as Lilly West) will be held at Pomona, California on March 20-21. They are also still accepting proposals as of this time, I believe. You can learn more at:

http://www.iats.com/conferences/west/index.shtml

• American Educational Research Association Conference will be April 13-17 in San Diego, California. Learn more at: http://www.aera.net/Default.aspx?id=6542#date
• The amazing Teaching Professor Conference is in Washington, DC on June 5-7. Learn more about the program at: http://www.teachingprofessor.com/conference/index.html

If you know of professional teaching conferences in your specific discipline, please get us that information. We would like to post it on our website.

We look forward to working with you this semester!