Here are four overarching strategies with specific ideas for investing in each:

Build and Leverage Conditions and Structures to support faculty engagement
Conditions and structures might include:

• Faculty Open Forums
• Drafting faculty beyond “the committee”
• Connecting curriculum to other activities
• Developing ideas based on the university’s mission and values
• Utilizing existing structures (discipline, CETL, IT infrastructure) and new structures (that might add to the university)

Engage Faculty through Intentional Professional Development
Intentional Professional Development might include:

• Faculty work sessions on outcomes-based learning
• Summer course design institutes
• Faculty learning communities for course development
• Campus workshops
• Peer Facilitation Series
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Seminars
• Symposia
• Analysis of Teaching
• Adjunct Faculty Workshop Series
• Known Course Development Standards: Know the outcomes, ensure they are on the syllabus, intentionally integrate them into the course, and create rubrics to assess each
• Authentic Assessment

Foster Community Dialogue around Curriculum
Examples of community dialogue opportunities:

• Task Force Open Sessions
• Faculty Information Sessions (Online and Face-to-Face)
• Student Information Sessions, presented by students
• Annual Executive Briefings for Senior Leadership
• Campus-wide Updates as Launch Parties for Assessment Results

Student-based Collaborations that inspire faculty engagement

• Make collaborations written and tangible
• Use a common language across campus
• Employ iterative change
• Identify a champion
• Mapping with Student Services
• Utilize centers and special programs

Thanks to Sharon McGuire and Susan Shadle from Boise State University and Jose Donis, John Frederick, and Marina Rodriguez from Miami Dade College for these specific and tangible ideas.

I thought this set of talks might give strategic and specific examples of ways that universities might “build cultures of faculty engagement” (which incidentally was the title of the session). Instead, I left with a list of current trends and controversies that threaten and impede innovation and engagement:

1. Productivity: “A narrow conception of productivity threatens to trump student learning and innovation in the curriculum,” Gano-Phillips continues. “Students hate this, Faculty hate this. Yet, we continue to do it.” This threat can be diminished through a learning-outcome-based model of education.
2. Contingent Faculty: Faculty employment also threatens curricular reform. Universities cannot rely on contingent faculty as pinch-hitters or liabilities. Rather, we need to view them as allies in reform processes and innovation.
3. Changes in Technology: Both a threat and a rallying force, technology is daunting for some and an experimental laboratory for others.
4. Disparity in Faculty and Student Identity: Minority faculty appear more in contingent ranks than full-time positions. Yet, student profiles are increasingly diverse.
5. Disciplinary Silos: Faculty departments, libraries, and student affairs leaders tend to silo themselves and divide themselves into like parties. All need to be included in the conversation through integrated general education programs.
6. Surrounding Communities: Major events and crises in a college’s surrounding community can hinder innovation, but if successfully harnessed, can create opportunities for faculty to collaborate, innovate, and engage the community.

These trends were compiled from the collected presentations on this panel, which included Robert Collins, Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences at Dillard University; Michele Cuomo, Associate Dean of Academic Affairs at CUNY Queensborough Community College; Cynthia Gomez, Instructor at Portland State University; and Norman Jones, Professor of History at Utah State University, in addition to Gano-Phillips.

At Clemson, creative inquiry is for all students at all levels. Faculty and staff mentors work with small teams of students over multiple semesters. Creative Inquiry projects are either faculty-developed projects or department-embedded projects. The team-orientation of this program is one of its key characteristics.

Clemson’s creative inquiry projects are available on the program’s website.

Connection to the institution became a core component of Ohio Wesleyan University’s attempt at creative inquiry, says the university’s Dean of Academic Affairs Charles Stinemetz. According to Barbara Andereck, Associate Dean of Accreditation and Assessment, the OWU Connection Program includes a first-year seminar, course connection networks, travel learning courses, student individualized projects, and theory-to-practice grants.

Course connection networks combine faculty members toward discussion and collaboration on shared learning outcomes. Theory-to-practice grants include travel (both abroad and in the US), supplies, and resources to support individual students in the programs who want to continue the work initiated in the program’s experiences.

Core issues for developing institutional creative inquiry programs:

• Funding for or endowing these programs
• Examining budget models for faculty load time
• Maintaining both team-based and individualized approaches for students
• Embedding requirements for inquiry across general education and/or within individual majors