Special Projects – Office for Faculty Excellence

Belonging as a Graduate Student at Montclair: Results of the 2024 Survey

seninav — Fri, 28 Feb 2025 21:05:37 +0000

In 2024, Academic Affairs expanded its research on belonging by surveying 725 graduate students on their experiences at Montclair. In addition to answering questions on belonging, they also told us why they chose Montclair for their graduate studies as well as how highly they rated us on factors like diversity, student success, variety of programs, and teaching quality. They also told us about their work demands, their educational goals, and their academic self-concept (e.g. rating their mathematical ability). Join Christopher Donoghue and Eunice Park as they unpack these findings about graduate education at Montclair and offer insights on how we can improve the student experience.

This study was commissioned by Provost Junius Gonzales to provide insights to all Montclair faculty and staff in their work ensuring student success. Understanding the insights gained from this survey will be helpful as we craft and hone our programming and work in and outside of classrooms. All members of the Montclair community are welcome. Light refreshments, sponsored by Chris Donoghue, will be provided.

Strategies and Pedagogies for Belonging & Inclusion

seninav — Fri, 07 Feb 2025 18:45:14 +0000

It’s well known in Higher Education that students feeling a greater sense of belonging experience greater student��success and overall well-being. But what do we mean when we say belonging? And what can faculty and staff do in the classroom to enhance feelings of belonging? Join Christopher Donoghue and Eunice Park to learn about classroom strategies and pedagogies that can raise feelings of belonging and inclusion. In this session, you will learn about culturally responsive teaching, scaffolding, place-based learning, transparency in learning, and more. You will also hear what our students had to say about belonging in a series of Belonging Brainstorming Sessions held in the last few months.

This study was commissioned by��Provost Junius Gonzales��to provide insights to all Montclair faculty and staff in their work ensuring student success. Understanding the insights gained from this survey will be helpful as we craft and hone our programming and work in and outside of classrooms.

All members of the Montclair community are welcome. Light refreshments will be provided.

Dialogue Across Difference: Fostering Civil Discussion After the Election

seninav — Sat, 26 Oct 2024 04:17:32 +0000

Drawing on different disciplinary traditions, Emily Isaacs (Writing and Rhetoric), Jessica Brater (Theater), and Patricia Virella (Education) will share their strategies for building connections and fostering dialogue. We will also review and discuss what to do when things go awry and suddenly the room feels very hot. How do we diffuse difficult moments without sweeping important conversations under the rug? We hope this will be a participant-active panel and a place where instructors can share their challenges and dilemmas.

This event is included in the��Dialogue Across Difference Series, offered in AY24–25 for and by faculty as part of��an initiative by��to nurture civil discourse, which President Koppell recently joined.

More about Dialogue Across Difference

This event is co-sponsored by the OFE and the Office of the President.

Using Engage to Connect Students to Your Organization or Department

seninav — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 16:51:39 +0000

Looking to increase student attendance at your events? Want to help the University community see what your organization, department, or college is doing? Interested in tracking attendance data? Join OFE for this special session on Engage, the University’s student engagement platform. Casey Coleman, Assistant Director of Student Involvement, will explain the benefits of using Engage for your events, community service opportunities, and resources, and provide an overview of using it.

The Human Flourishing Workshop Series

seninav — Fri, 18 Oct 2024 15:04:01 +0000

Human Flourishing

Inspired by the transformative work of the��at the University of Wisconsin, led by psychologist and neuroscientist��, human flourishing is the development of well-being through cultivating mindfulness, awareness, connection, wisdom, and purpose. Well-being is a skill that can be learned and enhanced through training and practice.

Human Flourishing is an interdisciplinary field, and many at Montclair are already doing work in human flourishing. This series supports like-minded faculty and staff to share their wisdom and expertise so more students can gain from the art and science of Human Flourishing.

The Series

Workshops in the Human Flourishing Series will be offered monthly. Attendance is open to all Montclair faculty and staff. Attend any or all of the workshops in the series.��Workshops will be facilitated by Elenice DeSouza Oliveira, with guest speakers from the Center for Healthy Minds at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

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Dialogue Across Difference: Engaging Strategies that Center and Embrace Differences in the Classroom

seninav — Fri, 04 Oct 2024 13:12:56 +0000

This roundtable addresses the importance of centering and embracing differences in the classroom. Panelists will talk about best practices and provide examples used in their classroom. This panel will be interactive, so attendees are welcome to bring questions and suggestions.

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Speakers:

Dr. Jason Williams is a Professor of Justice Studies at ��Ʒ��˸�� University.�� He’s a passionate activist criminologist deeply concerned about racial and gender disparity and mistreatment within the criminal legal system.�� He’s published various articles on returning citizens and incarceration, policing and race, gender, and social control, and the broader implications around racialized social control. He is a qualitative criminologist who engages in community-grounded approaches to research.�� His perspectives and research has been quoted by media outlets around the nation.

Sandra Bodin-Lerner��is a communication coach with a background in instructional design. Her focus is in interpersonal and public communication skills training including listening, speaking, leadership, and presentation technique. She has been teaching the MSU Listening course since 2015. The listening course studies what constitutes effective listening: why it is crucial; what makes it so difficult to achieve; and methods to develop communication competency to enhance work; academic; romantic; familial; and social relationships.

Klara��Naszkowska,��Ph.D.��is��a��cultural and oral historian of women exploring the intersections of gender, sexuality, Jewish studies, psychoanalysis, migration, memory, and postmemory. Founding��Director��of��the��InternationalAssociation��for��Spielrein��Studies, and recipient of a Fulbright Fellowship and a��Harvard Radcliffe Institute’s��Schlesinger Library Research Support Grant. Her most recent book is an edited��anthology,��Early Women Psychoanalysts: History, Biography, and Contemporary Relevance��(Routledge, 2024). In her current research project, she uses archival materials and interviews to reconstruct biographies of Polish Jewish women psychoanalysts who fled the Nazis to the United States. She focuses on their accounts of the past, and the retellings of their stories of loss and survival by their children and grandchildren.��Klara is an Adjunct Professor of Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at ��Ʒ��˸�� University

2024 Faculty Showcase

seninav — Mon, 06 May 2024 18:29:33 +0000

The 2024��Annual Faculty Showcase highlighting the work of Montclair faculty took place on Wednesday, May 8. It was organized and supported by��the��Office for Faculty Excellence (OFE),��the��ADP Center for Learning Technologies, and the Challenge Based Impact Lab (CBiL).

Showcase Program Session Recordings

Got questions? Please contact Catherine Keohane or faculty@montclair.edu

Mindset & Motivation: Psychological Factors in Learning

seninav — Fri, 22 Mar 2024 21:18:25 +0000

Seeking to learn techniques for engaging students in meaningful learning? Daniel Martin Rynerson, Adjunct Professor of Psychology, will explain the science behind tapping into students’ intrinsic motivation and curiosity to help them more easily integrate and retain new information. With evidence-based psychology and neuroscience practices, Daniel will guide participants in ways to implement a mindful approach to the learning environment to foster students’ knowledge acquisition.

Reflecting and Improving Critical Thinking with Gen AI

seninav — Fri, 08 Mar 2024 07:04:18 +0000

Join OFE and Patricia Virella for the March session of our Fostering Intellectual Engagement through Active Learning (FIEAL) series.�� The series focuses on developing strategies for guiding students in active learning toward intellectual engagement.

In the March workshop, , participants will design learning opportunities for students that encourage critical thinking. They will identify how to create assignments that improve upon a GenAI response by prompting revisions and additions to GenAI output.

When:��Wed, March 20, 10-11am

Where: online/Zoom

NOTE: everyone is welcome to attend this event — including those who are completely new to FIEAL series and/or communities of practice!

Past workshops & More about the project >>

PARTICIPATING IN THE SERIES
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1. Workshops
The workshops are offered monthly in the Fostering Intellectual Engagement through Active Learning [FIEAL] series. All Montclair faculty and staff are invited to attend as many or as few workshops in the series as they choose.

2. Community of Practice
The Community of Practice (CoP) meets twice a month. During the meetings, instructors discuss and strategize implementation of the monthly topics. Participants, including faculty and staff, work together to deepen their use of active learning in their courses, documenting and reporting outcomes of their experimentations.

*Interested in joining? Please complete .

NOTE: You don’t need to be part of the CoP to attend the workshops. All are welcome!

ABOUT THE FIEAL FACILITATOR
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Dr. Patricia M. Virella, an assistant professor in the Department of Educational Leadership, has joined OFE as a Faculty Leader for AY24. Dr. Virella’s research focuses on implementing equity-oriented leadership through leader responses, programmatic interventions, and preparation. Dr. Virella also studies equity-oriented crisis leadership examining how school leaders can respond to crises without further harming marginalized communities. She seeks to answer research questions to enable transformation and liberation in school leaders, districts and policies.

Black History Month and Beyond: A Faculty Panel

seninav — Wed, 07 Feb 2024 21:32:54 +0000

Without explicit attention to diversifying our courses, most faculty find that relying on the models we’ve had for many years inadvertently message students that our courses and disciplines are not welcoming of diverse people. Of course this is not our intention – but we have to work explicitly to enact our inclusive intentions. Inspired by Black History Month, we’ve invited several faculty to talk about how they have diversified their courses. Research has shown that small interventions to explicitly and thoughtfully incorporate diverse perspectives, examples, and readings are powerful in improving diverse students’ experiences in our classes. Our faculty panelists share their strategies for making Black History and Heritage more than a month.

Presenters:

Tanya Maloney, Associate Professor, Teaching and Learning

Jeff Strickland, Professor of History and Department Chair

Leslie Wilson, Associate Dean, College of Humanities and Social Sciences