Constance Cook - Böcker

Written by the director and staff of the first, and one of the largest, teaching centers in American higher education – the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) – this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies for making a teaching center integral to an institution’s educational mission. It presents a comprehensive vision for running a wide range of related programs, and provides faculty developers elsewhere with ideas and material to prompt reflection on the management and practices of their centers – whatever their size – and on how best to create a culture of teaching on their campuses. Given that only about a fifth of all U.S. postsecondary institutions have a teaching center, this book also offers a wealth of ideas and models for those administrators who are considering the development of new centers on their campuses.Topics covered include:• The role of the director, budgetary strategies, and operational principles• Strategies for using evaluation to enhance and grow a teaching center• Relationships with center constituencies: faculty, provost, deans, and department chairs• Engagement with curricular reform and assessment• Strengthening diversity through faculty development• Engaging faculty in effective use of instructional technology• Using student feedback for instructional improvement• Using action research to improve teaching and learning• Incorporating role play and theatre in faculty development• Developing graduate students as consultants• Preparing future faculty for teaching• The challenges of faculty development at a research universityIn the concluding chapter, to provide additional context about the issues that teaching centers face today, twenty experienced center directors who operate in similar environments share their main challenges, and the strategies they have developed to overcome them through innovative programming and careful management of their resources. Their contributions fall into four broad categories: institutional-level challenges, engaging faculty and students and supporting engaged pedagogy, discipline-specific programming, and programming to address specific instructor career stages.

Written by the director and staff of the first, and one of the largest, teaching centers in American higher education – the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) – this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies for making a teaching center integral to an institution’s educational mission. It presents a comprehensive vision for running a wide range of related programs, and provides faculty developers elsewhere with ideas and material to prompt reflection on the management and practices of their centers – whatever their size – and on how best to create a culture of teaching on their campuses. Given that only about a fifth of all U.S. postsecondary institutions have a teaching center, this book also offers a wealth of ideas and models for those administrators who are considering the development of new centers on their campuses.Topics covered include:• The role of the director, budgetary strategies, and operational principles• Strategies for using evaluation to enhance and grow a teaching center• Relationships with center constituencies: faculty, provost, deans, and department chairs• Engagement with curricular reform and assessment• Strengthening diversity through faculty development• Engaging faculty in effective use of instructional technology• Using student feedback for instructional improvement• Using action research to improve teaching and learning• Incorporating role play and theatre in faculty development• Developing graduate students as consultants• Preparing future faculty for teaching• The challenges of faculty development at a research universityIn the concluding chapter, to provide additional context about the issues that teaching centers face today, twenty experienced center directors who operate in similar environments share their main challenges, and the strategies they have developed to overcome them through innovative programming and careful management of their resources. Their contributions fall into four broad categories: institutional-level challenges, engaging faculty and students and supporting engaged pedagogy, discipline-specific programming, and programming to address specific instructor career stages.

This richly illustrated book provides a glimpse into the belief system and the material wealth of the social elite in pre-Imperial China through a close analysis of tomb contents and excavated bamboo texts. The point of departure is the textual and material evidence found in one tomb of an elite man buried in 316 BCE near a once wealthy middle Yangzi River valley metropolis. Particular emphasis is placed on the role of cosmological symbolism and the nature of the spirit world. The author shows how illness and death were perceived as steps in a spiritual journey from one realm into another. Transmitted textual records are compared with excavated texts. The layout and contents of this multi-chambered tomb are analyzed as are the contents of two texts, a record of divination and sacrifices performed during the last three years of the occupant’s life and a tomb inventory record of mortuary gifts. The texts are fully translated and annotated in the appendices.A first-time close-up view of a set of local beliefs which not only reflect the larger ancient Chinese religious system but also underlay the rich intellectual and artistic life of pre-Imperial China. With first full translations of texts previously unknown to all except a small handful of sinologists.