Get Out the Crowd to Initial Events

Kick off the SOTL initiative with a “Celebration of Teaching.” Send personal invitations to winners of teaching awards, recipients of teaching-related grants, teachers of pedagogy courses for graduate students, and all others who have demonstrated interest in teaching in an identifiable way. Send personal invitations also to deans, chairs, and P&T committee members. About 200 faculty showed up for our Celebration, more than in anyone’s memory for a teaching-related event. Personal attention has continually proved important in building a SOTL community “one faculty member at a time.”

Showcase Campus Scholars

Identify and encourage faculty who wish to pursue scholarly inquiries into teaching or have already done so. Make these visible as models and mentors in high profile events rather than bringing in outside speakers.

Identify Campus-wide Needs and Interests

Use information-gathering opportunities to learn the needs, goals and activities of people and units across the campus. How can SOTL help to fill their needs? Focus on issues for investigation that cut across disciplinary boundaries.

Partner with Stakeholders

Seek to make the SOTL initiative inclusive of all academic and non-academic units on the campus. Seek to involve undergraduate and graduate students, professional staff in academic affairs and student affairs, librarians, and faculty in all seasons of academic life. Seek as well to support and cooperate with all other teaching-related initiatives rather than to compete with them. Think of ways and themes for collaboration that advance the goals of stakeholders as well as those of the SOTL initiative.