Lehman’s New Faculty Seminars started with a warm and social gathering of new and second year faculty, deans, program directors, and senior administrators, who came together to share greetings, a campus tour, and a hot meal catered by Caridad.

Lehman is welcoming 22 new faculty this fall, including the Dean of Education, Harriet Fayne, the Chair of African and African American Studies, Mark Christian, three new assistant professors in the Leonard Lief Library, nine new Natural & Social Science faculty, six new Arts & Humanities faculty, and three new Education faculty, ranging from lecturers to associate and assistant professors. Added to last year’s new faculty cohort of 27, this year’s new faculty continue transformational changes taking place for Lehman.

At the first seminar meeting, new faculty mingled with second year faculty guests and with senior and mid-level administrators to share Irene survival stories, moving experiences from country and state to New York, and of course the usual first day of classes anecdotes about students, classrooms, and online information requests. Deans Fayne and Timothy Alborn offered advice to new faculty about making the most of CUNY and its sister universities as well as about the opportunities for collegiality and faculty development offered by the Teaching & Learning Commons. Associate Provost Robert Whittaker and Chief Information Ronald Bergmann encouraged faculty to make use of resources already available and to be active in developing new sources for communication and research.

Special Collections Librarian Janet Munch led a campus tour with historical and contemporary notes on buildings and public art around the College. Wopo Holup’s Intersections installation and Jackie Ferrara’s Covered Walkway provided particular points of interest as did the juxtaposition of Gothic and contemporary architecture. Lehman’s New Science Building inspired questions regarding the integration of green and cutting edge laboratory technologies into the new space.

Our new faculty bring a variety of continental (Europe, Australia, Asia, Africa) and cultural experiences and education to their research and teaching, reflecting and complementing Lehman’s remarkable student diversity. We are already beginning passionate discussions of football dominance (soccer to those who have an NFL and AFL to follow), global politics, and of course, the challenges of public and local transportation.

Over the next weeks, we will begin exploring academia as a profession. Supported by ePortfolios and online discussions, faculty will read about institutional environments and academic communities as well as faculty mentoring. Experienced faculty and staff will visit the seminar to answer questions and provide further resources for new faculty to thrive in Lehman’s beautiful and stimulating atmosphere.

Diversity applies to Dean’s and Chair’s Reviews for tenure and promotion: Lehman’s new faculty discovered the differences in their year-end review processes through discussion in May’s new faculty workshops. Faculty from Natural & Social Sciences, Education, and Arts & Humanities took a few hours to explore documents and forms from their deans and chairs in their faculty resource ePortfolios, followed by partner activities with inventory matrices. Gina Rae Foster, the Director of the Lehman Teaching & Learning Commons, shared lists for organizing and prioritizing review materials to build on the findings from the matrices. Each of the two faculty groups (one Tuesday, one Wednesday) offered advice, found direction, and clarified their individual research and teaching emphases for presentation.

We found that the review process varies a great deal across divisions/schools and departments/programs. Some deans actively engage faculty in preparing review materials throughout the academic year; others work more closely with the chairs to disseminate review information and expectations. Chairs of some programs may provide self-analysis questionnaires and planning forms while others may offer more general guidelines. We realized that the Provost’s information for all faculty members was not sufficient for the review processes in individual departments and programs and that having both the College’s guidelines as well as one’s own chair’s and dean’s expectations was a key part of preparing a successful review that reflected one’s work and career progression.

Two highlights of the session: Rebecca Arzola, one of our new Library faculty members, won a Distinguished Faculty award, and Cameron McNeil, a new Assistant Professor in Anthropology, passed around an ancient piece of chocolate (A.D. 347, from a Mayan archaeological dig). McNeil is working with Ed Kenelly in Biological Sciences to test the chocolate in a combined research project.

Our new faculty workshops this term built community among our new faculty and helped many of us to begin to see our academic careers in terms of gradual steps towards developing our research, service, and teaching over time. We shared resources, knowledge, and a great deal of sympathy and laughter over the challenges of higher education. Next year, we are looking forward to a series of fall workshops on mentoring, student resiliency, and research alliances.

The inventory matrix and planning guidelines can be found in the Files section of the Lehman Teaching & Learning Commons group on the CUNY Academic Commons. Here are links to the photos from May’s workshops:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/grfoster/sets/72157626727026953/

Short URL: http://flic.kr/s/aHsjuMFBRt

April’s New Faculty Workshops on Teaching brought together passionate teachers with much to share! We began each workshop by listing three words that described excellence in teaching on the whiteboard; we followed with a round-robin discussion of each list, making connections and extensions between our emphases.

From here, we began looking at two sets of questions, one designed to help faculty identify themselves in their teaching roles and one designed as a self-reflective inventory. We thought about what we would most like to teach and shared our most effective teaching strategies. We dreamed about the strategies we want to try and traded advice on how to make things work. We shared our best and worst examples of mentoring and were re-inspired by the humor, passion, and determination we bring to our work.

We argued with the faculty member who said his teaching was limited and “traditional” when we realized he meant that he did not use much technology in the classroom. He uses half a dozen teaching strategies every class and emphasizes student engagement—hardly traditional! We laughed when two professors gave each other tips on time management and then posed for the camera with one giving the other “rabbit ears” (to promote active listening). We shared our concerns for our students who are continually facing trauma and questions of balance between family, work, and studies.

Our final workshop for the spring will cover the Dean’s and Chair’s Review planning for the next two years. We will take a look at faculty resource and planning ePortfolios as we discuss departmental and divisional expectations. This year’s new faculty cohort will be ready!

The inventory and introductory questions are attached in the Files section of this group. Photos can be found at

Lehman’s new faculty workshops are bringing faculty together across disciplines to share their projects and questions in research, service, and teaching. Last week’s workshops focused on service, an area of academic life that counts towards promotion and tenure yet has few guidelines about what counts and how much is counted in review discussions.

We came together from a different perspective: what service do we do, inside and outside of our academic lives, and what makes that service meaningful? Each afternoon of the workshops, we explored these questions through partner and small group discussions, matrices, informal quizzes, and boardwork. All service activities were included: for example, academic and institutional committees, professional organizations, mentoring, consulting, and community service outside Lehman and CUNY.

The faculty who participated brought a wealth of experiences to the discussions. Human rights, the arts, fundraising for causes, support for survivors of domestic violence, work with children and adolescents, and technology training are a few of the outside service projects keeping our faculty active in their communities. Connecting these to committee work and professional organization memberships led to discussions of the ways in which service affects us as teachers and scholars and creates a different kind of community in our workspace.

The matrix and quiz can be found in the documents area of the blog. Take a look at the photostream from Flickr through the link on the announcements page: we laughed; we thought; we brainstormed.

Our April workshops will offer teaching activities and conversations to connect new faculty with what they do well and which strategies and approaches they can offer their peers.

The LTLC is off to a great start this spring with new and ongoing projects. The Math Department faculty, Math Lab tutors, and WAC participating faculty in upper division writing intensive course received a CUNY grant for nearly $40,000 to introduce high impact practices in faculty mentoring, in-class tutoring, and tutor training. A combination of workshops, trainings, and tutoring sessions will be implemented in the three programs between February and June.

Our new faculty orientation seminars in the fall were a hit—21 of 27 new faculty participated in discussing Lehman and CUNY resources with representatives from faculty, staff, and student programs. Our new faculty are continuing their freshman year at Lehman with a series of workshops this spring on research, teaching, service, and preparation for their first Dean’s Review. All seminars and workshops are peer-focused with an emphasis on discussion and collaborative learning. The new faculty are working with resource ePortfolios on Digication to keep track of their professional development and service activities.

In Anatomy & Physiology, Assistant Professor Maryam Bamshad, Doctoral Lecturer Ayanna Alexander-Street, and Adjunct Lecturer Naliza Sadik are piloting experiential lab protocols in Anatomy & Physiology that require students to work with RealAnatomy, a software program designed by WileyPlus, and with group scenarios that ask students to apply their learning to real-life medical challenges. Maryam Bamshad is also piloting a hybrid lecture/lab course in Anatomy & Physiology 2 this term, with students taking half of their lecture sessions online.

In Education, Assistant Professor Amanda Gulla is leading a team of teachers in extending their professional development in teaching and learning about art, while in Chemistry, Professor Marc Lazarus, Assistant Professor Andrei Jitianu, and Senior College Lab Technician Sharif Elhakem are redesigning General Chemistry lab activities to integrate new technology and best practices for students in their courses.

These are only a few of Lehman’s teaching and learning projects for the spring. Faculty, staff, and graduate students are encouraged to post news of their projects on the Commons group—we know there are stories to share!