Teaching Underprepared Students and The Hidden Curriculum

By Tiffany Kolba (Math & Stats), Jenna Van Sickle (Lilly Fellows), Jesse Sestito (ME), & Lauren Sestito (ME) This academic year, fifteen Valpo faculty and staff members met biweekly for a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) on “Teaching Underprepared Students and The Hidden Curriculum.” During the fall semester, we focused on reading two books: Teaching Unprepared […]

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Reimagining the Curriculum

By Theresa Carroll (CONHP), Alberto López Martín (World Lang & Culture), and Karen Hernes (CONHP) Several of your colleagues have been working to increase underrepresented voices in their courses as part of the “Reimagining the Curriculum” (RIC) Initiative. These faculty attended a three-part workshop series last spring and then implemented their curricular projects this year. […]

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Fostering Community and Student Engagement

By Natalie Krivas (English) & Stacy Hoult (World Languages & Cultures) For the past year, a group of Valpo faculty and staff have been meeting as a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) to discuss Fostering Community and Student Engagement. FLC members learned about and experienced the Solutionary Process, to “identify inhumane, unsustainable, and unjust systems and […]

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Inside-Out Prison Exchange – A Class Like No Other

By Dawn Jeglum Bartusch, Department of Sociology and Criminology In 1995, Professor Lori Pompa from Temple University took 15 students to a prison in Pennsylvania for a tour and conversation with incarcerated men. My colleague, Danielle Lavin-Loucks, and I have been doing similar prison tours and conversations with our Valpo classes for many years. The […]

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Talking is Teaching

By Abbie Thompson, Department of Psychology In this article Abbie Thompson (Psychology) describes how students in her service-learning courses support new mothers in Porter County to teach our youngest learners: babies and young children. The name says it all. Talking is teaching as many of us faculty know. We share nuggets of our knowledge with […]

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Saving Your Students Money By Using OERs

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL Jon Bull decided to make using open educational resources (OERs) a priority for his work at VU in order to help with student retention. That is why Jon instituted the OER Development Awards. This program, now in its sixth year, awards faculty from $500-$2,000 to move their […]

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Why Quality Matters Matters

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development We all know that enrollment in traditional in-person university classes has declined across the country. But did you know that there has been a corresponding increase in enrollment in online and hybrid courses?  Despite this growing demand, many faculty have little or no experience designing online and hybrid […]

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Valpo Faculty Perspectives on Simple Syllabus

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL This fall Simple Syllabus debuted university-wide. For our students this means consistent syllabus navigation across all their courses and the ability to easily access their syllabi via Blackboard or SS directly using their device of choice. A print option is also available for students who prefer a […]

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Valpo Faculty Respond to Generative AI

By Cynthia Rutz, Director of Faculty Development, CITAL At the faculty workshop this August, our keynote speaker Derek Bruff spoke about four possible faculty responses to AI: Red Light: I’ll prohibit the use of AI. Yellow Light: I’ll permit the use of AI, but with limitations. Green Light: Let’s see what AI can do! No […]

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