Another week, another opportunity to voice your vote about an important leadership position at the college. This coming week (Monday to Wednesday, anyway) you’ll find another ballot in your mailbox, but this time for the election of a Chair for CAST (a.k.a., Center for the Art and Science of Teaching). HWFC’s Jess Bader (Art) asked me to post the following statements from the two worthy candidates, and so, with no further ado:
Megan Ritt
I am honored to be nominated to serve as CAST Coordinator for a second term, as CAST has always been near and dear to my heart. I’ve been an active member since I was hired full-time, and I have served as co-coordinator for 2014. In that role, I performed duties including planning and organizing meetings, coordinating with presenters, organizing the Make It Stick book club, maintaining the calendar for room 1046, and planning and organizing HW Faculty Development Week and TiE Day.
The best part of it all for me has been getting to know more of my colleagues in different departments while hearing about their own areas of expertise. I’ve also enjoyed the chance to introduce new programming ideas, like the bake-off and the many tours we were able to offer at FDW. Outside of CAST, I am a faculty member in the English Department, a member of the Developmental Education Committee and the Student Success Council, and co-chair of the Developmental English Committee. I also take part in mentoring new full-time faculty and reading student placement exams, and have participated in my department’s DEC and Rank & Promotion Committees.
If I am chosen to continue as co-coordinator in 2015, my goals for the committee are to increase the number of hands-on workshops offered and to offer more sessions that appeal to STEM faculty and adjunct faculty. Thank you for your consideration.
Kamran Swanson
I believe that the best way to facilitate professional development for faculty is to stimulate curiosity and the joy of learning by providing opportunities for stimulating and educational inter-disciplinary discussions on learning, teaching, and thinking. I plan to bring this to CAST by instituting a series of discussions, once every two weeks at a convenient time, centered on quality short essays in a seminar format, which discuss learning, teaching, and thinking in and from the humanities, sciences, math, and arts. I am very much in support of Megan Ritt’s Spring 2015 Make it Stick book club, and I would like to see more of this in CAST’s future. My concern for a long time is that too much of our faculties’ non-teaching time is devoted to administrative-centered committees and task forces, and that there is insufficient support for bringing together faculty from across the disciplines to talk about the essence and highest goal of our occupation: education. I wish to place less focus on the various tools we use to accomplish that and more focus on the ideas and modes of thought themselves. There is great potential for us to learn about teaching from one another, and I do not think we have tapped it as substantially as we could. With this position and the dedicated release time, I would like to facilitate this.
The Harold Lounge 