At Washington University in St. Louis (WUSTL), our focus on transforming how students learn about science includes changing the way in which faculty develop their knowledge of effective, evidence-based teaching. Faculty success at navigating the change to newer instructional methods requires the institutional leadership (chairs, deans, provosts) to support the infrastructure for pedagogical research, for fostering a feedback cycle of continuous improvement, and for a reward system to promote innovation in teaching. Our programs, currently supported by the AAU Initiative on STEM Education, are creating a culture in which faculty can feel comfortable taking risks with new teaching practices—a culture in which faculty find support and the opportunity to collaborate with one another. Our programs aim to provide information on evidence-based active-learning pedagogies, assistance with implementing and evaluating these pedagogies, and the collegial support of a faculty learning community. These programs include the CIRCLE Fellowship.<br/> <br/>The CIRCLE Fellowship has been launched via collaboration between two WUSTL centers focused on teaching and learning: The Teaching Center and the Center for Integrative Research on Cognition, Learning, and Education (CIRCLE). CIRCLE Fellows engage long term (two-year minimum) in a learning community that brings together the Fellows with a graduate-student intern, The Teaching Center, and CIRCLE to design, implement, and evaluate a teaching innovation. This project group meets during the academic year in a laboratory-research-meeting style format to discuss the project. Fellows also attend The Teaching Center’s Summer STEM Faculty Institute on Teaching (STEM FIT) in their first fellowship year and present their project at STEM FIT during their second year. Our goal is to put structures (such as the CIRCLE Fellowship) in place to accomplish institutional and sustained changes in STEM, and to establish a culture at WUSTL where teaching is a shared and collaborative endeavor (not a solitary one).

Development of a structured support fellowship for faculty innovation in teaching

249th National Meeting (2015)

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