How a Center for Teaching program is promoting cross-campus collaboration and community.

Curious to learn more about the Center for Teaching’s Faculty Communities? These dynamic groups, such as the AI in Teaching Community of Practice (Co-sponsored by the Office of Teaching, Learning & Technology) and the Assessing Assessment Faculty Learning Community, allow for cross-disciplinary collaboration and connections for instructors who want to help shape the future of teaching at the University of Iowa.  

"I would be a part of all the FLCs if I could, I just don't have the time. All of them are so interesting. They all align with strategic goals and support student success and retention." – Jennifer Sterling, associate professor of instruction in American Studies and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication

What is a faculty community? 

Faculty Communities are founded on the premise that learning is a process, involves change, and is shaped by learners’ individual and social experiences. When well designed, these communities can be purposeful, open, just, disciplined, caring and celebrative (Boyer, 1990). Given the goals of the community, they can either take the form of a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) or a Community of Practice (CoP). All FLCs or CoPs feature the following aspects:  

  • Includes a cross-disciplinary group of instructors.  

  • Aims to enhance teaching and learning that entails opportunities for learning, development, scholarly teaching, and community building (Cox, 2004).  

  • Convened and facilitated by faculty scholar-practitioners in collaboration with an expert from the Center for Teaching to contribute to fostering teaching and learning excellence.  

An FLC may also pursue dissemination of their community's outcomes, while CoPs mainly focus on “deepening knowledge and enhancing the practice of their members” (Wenger et al., 2002). 

Impact of Faculty Communities on nurturing teaching and learning excellence

Decades of literature have demonstrated how faculty communities can offer instructors an invaluable opportunity to network with peers to discuss teaching (Johnson et al., 2021), create transformative values (Buch, 2021), and nurture their scholarly teaching practice (Tinnell, et al., 2019).  

Faculty Communities

Learn more about the FLCs and CoPs supported by the Center for Teaching. If you have any general questions, please contact the Center for Teaching at teaching@uiowa.edu.

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“Finding the community and connecting with instructors from other disciplines and with different teaching statuses has been really important for me in terms of agency and confidence,” says Sterling. 

Sterling has joined several FLCs and currently leads the Assessing Assessment for Equity and Student Motivation FLC. Her involvement in FLCs has allowed her to be more involved with teaching beyond the classroom or department and empowered her to become a teaching thought leader on campus. Sterling is now leveraging her experience and insights to volunteer to design a critical component of the curriculum for a new major – the capstone course.  

“I’m more likely to embrace myself as a teaching specialist now.” – Jennifer Sterling, associate professor of instruction in American Studies and the School of Journalism and Mass Communication

Sterling’s experience echoes a broader trend: faculty members eagerly join these groups to connect across disciplines, enhance their teaching practices, and contribute to a university-wide culture of excellence in teaching and learning.  

Margaret Chorazy, associate dean for academic support and clinical associate professor of epidemiology in the College of Public Health, found these communities to be highly impactful when her role expanded to include administrative leadership and teaching. Chorazy searched for communities that addressed the teaching, research, and service requirements of her position and then worked with the Center for Teaching to collaboratively convene and lead a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) FLC.  

“Co-creating and participating in the SoTL FLC has given me that supportive community, and this FLC has created a supportive space for others who are interested in learning more about SoTL or furthering their own SoTL research agendas.” – Margaret Chorazy, associate dean for academic support and clinical associate professor of Epidemiology in the College of Public Health

The ripple effect these communities have on student and faculty success at the university is significant. Research by Tinnell et al. (2019) suggests that faculty learning communities may play a part in increasing student retention and tenure rates.

“Our program assessment has found that engaging with Faculty Communities fosters members’ teaching identities through transforming them into agents of change who collaboratively pursue improving teachers and students’ experiences in their learning environment,” says Center for Teaching associate director Sara Nasrollahian.  

Half of the Center for Teaching’s Faculty Communities are co-sponsored by a cross-campus collaborator. Nick Benson, executive director of the Office of Community Engagement and liaison for the Community Engaged Teaching FLC, highlights how these co-sponsored groups thrive because each office is able to support the faculty learning community in different, complimentary ways.  

“Providing a multi-office structural support for faculty gives them what they need to be able to feel confident that they are going to teach a community-engaged course.” – Nick Benson, executive director of the Office of Community Engagement  

“I think in the community engagement space, good practices around community-engaged teaching only happen because of the partnership between the Center for Teaching and the Office of Community Engagement,” says Benson. “The Center for Teaching is ‘the’ place to go to talk through course design and to ensure that faculty have all the resources that they need in terms of developing a really strong community-engaged course. The Office of Community Engagement is able to help with partnership development with communities.”  

Visit our website to discover more about the FLCs and CoPs supported by the Center for Teaching or feel free to reach out to us at teaching@uiowa.edu.

Citations

Boyer, E.L. (1990). Scholarship reconsidered: Priorities of the professoriate. Princeton, NJ: Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching.

Buch, A. (2021). Etienne and Beverly Wenger-Trayner (2020). Learning to Make a Difference. Value Creation in Social Learning Spaces, Cambridge University Press: Book Review. Nordic Journal of Working Life Studies, 11(1), 129-132.

Cox, M. D. (2004). Introduction to faculty learning communities. New directions for teaching and learning, 2004(97), 5-23.

Johnson, K. G., Jakopovic, P., & von Renesse, C. (2021). Supporting teaching and learning reform in college mathematics: Finding value in communities of practice. Journal for STEM education research, 4, 380-396.

 

Tinnell, T. L., Ralston, P. A., Tretter, T. R., & Mills, M. E. (2019). Sustaining pedagogical change via faculty learning community. International Journal of STEM Education, 6(1), 1-16.

Wenger, E., McDermott, R. A., & Snyder, W. (2002). Cultivating communities of practice: A guide to managing knowledge. Harvard Business Press.