Faculty Development Committee
Annual Report for 2003-04
Kathy Shea, Chair
Overview
The Faculty Development Committee (FDC) had a productive year. Our main activities included sponsoring two successful Mellby lectures and a grant writing workshop, distributing brochures to all faculty on FDC programs, reviewing and making recommendations on funding requests, revising grant writing guidelines posted on the website and making recommendations for activities for next year. These activities and suggested future agenda items are described below.
FDC Publicity/Webpage
St. Olaf Faculty Development opportunities were publicized in a brochure distributed in the fall to all faculty through campus mail. We sent emails to all faculty about grant proposal deadlines, Mellby lecture events and FDC meetings. Information about the committee membership, deadlines, grant proposal guidelines, minutes and Mellby lectures is available on the committee website:
http://www.stolaf.edu/committees/facdev/index.html
Committee Membership
The revisions to the committee structure approved by the faculty last year were helpful to this years committee. We benefited from the insights and perspective provided by adding the directors of CILA and GFR as non-voting member of the committee. Their presence also insures more communication and coordination of faculty development activities on campus. We also think changing the terms of committee members from two to three years will be helpful for providing institutional memory on the committee.
Grant-Writing Workshop
FDC sponsored a grant-writing workshop on October 9, 2003, before the fall proposal deadline. We reviewed FDC Grant Proposal Guidelines and had suggestions from successful applicants: Karen Cherawatuk and Paul Jackson. Paddy Dale spoke about how GRF can help with external funding and then we had time for questions. In the workshop handout we listed previous recent recipients and encouraged those applying to talk with these people.
Recommendations for Funding
We were pleased to be able to recommend four faculty for released-time awards for 2004-05. Because fewer faculty will be on sabbatical, more funding was available for released time awards and four were awarded instead of the normal two. Two awards went to untenured and two to tenured faculty. We had fewer than normal applications for summer grants and grants for teaching and curriculum development. Awards are listed below.
Because some of the funding was not used, we recommend a faculty development program next fall, with cooperation between the St. Olaf and Carleton libraries, on changes and alternatives in scholarly publishing in light of the availability of the internet and the expense of traditional journals.
Released-Time Grants
Rich DuRocher, Mapping the Emotions in Miltons Major Poems Steve Reece, Homeric Etymology in the Light of Oral-Formulaic Theory Jason Engbrecht, Time-Resolved Doppler Broadening Studies of Positronium-He Scattering
Jean Porterfield, Population Genetics of Minnesota Fishes
Summer Grants for Scholarly & Artistic Activity
Jo Beld, Improving the Evaluation of State Child Support Guidelines: Meeting the Challenge of Systematic Case Data Analysis
Mary Carlsen, Global Social Response to Loss, Grief and Disease
Charles Gray, Melius Trio Recording Project
Heather Klopchin, Standing Alone The Solo Project
Timothy Mahr, Dominick Argentos Burlesca from the Mask of Night: A Transcription for Wind Ensemble"
Gary Wicks, Edited Volume of Invited Papers from the Sport/Religion Conference at St. Olaf, June 24-26, 2004
Grants for Teaching & Curriculum Development
Christopher Brooks, Political Science 282: Russian Politics
Grant Writing Guidelines
We were asked to clarify whether Special Appointment faculty were eligible for applying for released-time grants. We reviewed the RPC minutes on this issue and supported their recommendation. We will change the criteria for released time grants to reflect this change. Special Appointment faculty will be eligible to apply for released-time grants after their first six-year review.
Mellby Lectures
David Wee, English, presented the fall lecture, Sport (Mostly Baseball) in Culture and the Curriculum: Sea Biscuit and the Babe, Corked Bats and Teddy Ballgame, Dr. Strangeglove and a Little Chin Music on November 13, 2003 and Amy Kolan, Physics, presented the spring lecture The Pleasures of Seeing: Making Light of the World Around Us on February 26, 2004. Both lectures were in Viking Theater, which was filled to capacity. We added a list of all the previous Mellby lectures to the brochure and have posted it on the FDC website. In this way we continue to honor the previous lecturers as well as Carl Mellby.
We chose the Mellby lecturers for 2004-05: Paul Humke, Mathematics, on November 11 and Jolene Barjasteh, French, on February 24. In asking for nominations we requested more information in the nomination letter on why the person would be a good choice and explained that we would also review copies of each persons CV, obtained from files in the Deans office.
Future Recommendations
For publicity the committee needs to make sure that the webpage is updated in terms of deadlines, proposal guidelines, Mellby lecture information and committee membership. Sending a brochure to all faculty in the fall is important so that everyone is alerted to deadlines. Email reminders, at appropriate times, are also important. We encourage having both a fall and a spring grant-writing workshop. We had fewer proposals than last year for the spring deadline and think that a workshop would have helped encourage people to apply.
Planning is underway, led by Kris MacPherson, on inviting a speaker(s) to talk about how scholarly information will be obtained and published. We hope to announce this faculty development opportunity at the opening faculty meeting in the fall. We encourage the FDC to continue to co-sponsor events with CILA, such as the Provosts Sabbatical Series and a conference on Teaching Innovation to be held next spring, April 1-3. Pat Hutchings of the Carnegie Foundation will speak at this event, sponsored by CILA and Carleton.
In choosing Mellby lecturers we encourage the committee to rotate faculties represented and note that there has not been a speaker from Social and Applied Sciences recently. The committee should also consider making the lecture available from a web site for those who cannot attend.
We recommend that the committee continue present activities and coordinate work with other groups, especially CILA and GFR, interested in faculty development.
FDC Committee, 2003-04
Marty Hodel, FA
Kris MacPherson, IGS
Karen Marsalek, HUM
Bill Thornton, SAS
Kathy Shea, NSM, Chair
Arnie Ostebee, Dean's designate, ex-officio
Paddy Dale, Director, Government/Foundation Relations, ex-officio
David Schodt, Director, CILA, ex-officio
