Chair Learning Community
The Chair Learning Community (CLC) is dedicated to helping department chairs understand how to effectively mentor and evaluate faculty members, particularly faculty members that are implementing alternative teaching practices and evidence-based pedagogies, and helping them identify strategies to encourage the adoption of these approaches by faculty that are not currently using them. Additional topics have been added in order to stay responsive to the needs of the participants. Some of the additional topics have included leadership styles, shared governance, methods of defining and evaluating effective teaching, university policies and procedures for evaluating lecturers and staff and for appointing lecturers, strategies for recruiting diverse faculty, self-care during the pandemic, and strategies and planning for syn-pandemic, transitional and post-pandemic teaching.
The CLC was originally planned to be offered in years 1 and 4 of the grant, but the chairs requested it to continue. Chairs report they appreciate the time and space the CLC provides and value the opportunity to have deeper discussions about a variety of topics related to their chair duties. In the meantime, a number of chairs have been replaced with new chairs, which has helped to keep the original learning goals of this community a priority. This group met monthly during the academic year prior to the pandemic and has met once or twice per term during the pandemic.