Conversations About Teaching

Teaching Seminars

LES offers approximately six opportunities each semester to talk about a specific aspect of teaching.  Recent topics have included how to comment on student essays, teaching discussion, creating syllabi, promoting critical thinking, uses of technology, and incorporating gender and multicultural issues. Suggestions for seminar topics are always welcome.

Most of these sessions begin with a brief presentation by one or more faculty members who have a particular expertise/interest in the day's topic.  The presentation is followed by an extended conversation that allows the participants to share their experiences and to learn from each other.

Teaching Seminars, which usually begin at 4:15pm, generally last for an hour or so and, if the exceptional discourse isn't inducement enough, refreshments are always served.

LES Forums

Each year LES presents a Forum on a broader issue connected to our mission.  Most recently, we initiated a conversation on the nature of our current students, drawing on historical and contemporary date on student values, as well as perspective from the Admissions and Counseling offices.   Other topics have included grade inflation and the stages of student intellectual development.

Forums begin at 4:15pm, with a presentation which is followed by a general discussion of the topic.  The program is followed by a dinner, partially subsidized by LES, during which conversations encompass an array of topics.

Master Teacher Sessions

Each year LES asks the winners of the annual campus teaching awards (the Sister Mary Grell Award at CSB and the Robert Spaeth Award at SJU) to invite other faculty members to attend one of their classes.  This provides an opportunity for us to see these award winners in action and then to ask questions about goals and techniques in the conversations that follow.

So we don't disrupt classes, attendance at these sessions is always limited.  The timing is determined by the teaching schedule of the award winners.

Reading Groups

LES periodically sponsors faculty/staff reading groups on books that are particularly germane to our mission.  Recent reading groups have read works by Parker Palmer, bell hooks, and Jane Tompkins.

Faculty Interest Groups

If you would like to have an opportunity to explore a pedagogical issue with a group of colleagues, LES is ready to help you organize a Faculty Interest Group (FIG).  We will provide help with arrangements and a limited subsidy for materials.

In the past, we have had  FIG's on such topics as teaching spirituality, integrating gender perspectives, fostering undergraduate research, and using WebCourse in a Box.