I got a response from JT Torres, who recently began a new position as the director of the Houston H. Harte Center for Teaching and Learning at Washington and Lee University and was excited to share his plans to support professors who want to learn something new through a revamped faculty fellowship program. Selected instructors will have support, including a stipend, for two years. In the first, they’ll go on a “learning journey” of their choice — one unrelated to their expertise or job. In the second, they’ll share what they have learned and how it connects to their teaching, say by publishing an article or presenting at a conference.
Torres was inspired by talking with Carrie Finch-Smith, a professor of mathematics at Washington and Lee who had been selected as a fellow under the existing program. Finch-Smith shared with Torres how taking a Russian-language course a few years back and learning to sail had helped her to understand what her students were experiencing, among other benefits. That discussion pushed Torres to try something new with what had been a more standard fellowship, where fellows helped the teaching center in its professional-development work.
The idea is to help professors remember what it’s like to learn something unfamiliar, which can be frustrating, but also joyful. The fellows will meet together with Torres, who will provide just-in-time pedagogical context for their learning.
The learning experiences, naturally, are expected to benefit the fellows’ teaching. But they’re also meant to be fun. And that piece is important. Many professors have found teaching less joyful in recent years, between the stresses of the pandemic, the student mental-health crisis, and the dawn of generative AI. And faculty developers have also been recalibrating, as tired instructors chafe at the idea of sitting in a workshop to learn about another technique they’d use if — so they are told — they really cared about students.
One of Torres’s goals as a faculty developer, he says, is to “bring back that joy.” The fellowship is meant to give professors freedom, time, and money to pursue something they’re simply interested in, he says. “And then all I’m asking in return is that you help me share that wisdom and knowledge with others.”
The fellowship will start this year, with professors who were grandfathered in from the previous version of it, Torres said. Going forward, fellows will be selected using a new application process, and the hope is to have five in a cohort.
Just like a student can learn content from a textbook or a video, professors can access information on effective teaching from plenty of places, Torres says. But a teaching center — like a college classroom — is valuable because of the “social connection, and the empowerment, and the reminder of the things that we can do together.”
There’s more to life
During the pandemic, Natalie Dorfeld drew a pie chart with four quarters. Each was labeled with an “A,” marking her four priorities: academics, adventures, athletics and animals. Academics, she realized, didn’t outweigh the others.
Like many instructors, Dorfeld, whose promotion to full professor of English at Florida Tech takes effect for the fall semester, saw the demands and stress of her job increase dramatically during that time, in part because a number of her colleagues left. Dorfeld also lost six family members during the pandemic years. She decided not to let her job overtake her life, and to pursue what a colleague called “aggressive self care.”
That meant making time for her passions. She takes care of the campus turtle pond (“turtle caretaker” is listed alongside “professor of English” in her email signature). She is training for an ultramarathon swim. Sure, being a professor means working outside of traditional hours. But she can do some of that work outside, and some of it via Zoom while she travels. She blocks her time, something she never did before the pandemic.
Dorfeld, who reached out after reading my recent profile of a professor who burned out, told me she doesn’t like the term “quiet quitting,” which suggests doing the bare minimum. The problem, she says, is that professors see no benefit for going above and beyond.
She credits her new system with enabling her to continue teaching, which she enjoys and wants to do well. It just isn’t her whole life. She believes that professors should take their time off, not wait until retirement to do the other things they love. They should take advantage of the rec center and the salad bar and the natural beauty of their campus.
Taking this approach, she adds, has made her a better professor: calmer, more relaxed, more patient with students.
Dorfeld also underscored that she’s able to do this as a full professor, and that the majority of college instructors are adjuncts who don’t have vacation to take. Anyone in that position, she thinks, should see what else is out there.
Teaching, in the end, is a job. And it’s not the only one.
Dorfeld’s message anticipated the questions I asked in my last newsletter issue, about how professors are finding balance. I wonder what you think of her approach — and what yours looks like. Write to me at beckie.supiano@chronicle.com and your example may appear in a future issue of the newsletter.
Summer plans
Recently, I asked what you are doing to recharge and find balance this summer.
Deborah Beck, a professor of classics at the University of Texas at Austin, shared that she and her husband have adopted two kittens and that she frequently bakes pie, especially peach. “We invite friends over to eat pie and play with the kittens,” she wrote.
Beck wasn’t the only one to mention the benefits of helping animals. Kathi Groenendyk, a professor and chair of the communication department at Calvin University, serves as a volunteer dog walker at a local animal shelter. “The shelter has been full (and over-full) and has needed more volunteers to ensure all dogs get walked three times a day,” Groenendyk wrote. “I help once a week for 2 – 3 hours, walking several dogs during that time. Also, once a week, I take one of the shelter dogs on a ‘doggy field trip’ to give the dog a break from the kennels. These experiences have been rewarding. The dogs are loving and lovable, and I can instantly tell I’m making a difference by spending time with them.”
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Thanks for reading Teaching. If you have suggestions or ideas, please feel free to email us at beth.mcmurtrie@chronicle.com or beckie.supiano@chronicle.com
—Beckie
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