Winter Faculty Development Conference

The Karen L. Smith Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning brings you the Winter Professional Development Conference.  Our event focuses on community building, interdisciplinary collaboration among faculty, and inviting new voices into conversations about campus and classroom challenges. 

Each faculty member will join a cohort of 12 or so colleagues from across campus, make prepared presentations about an aspect of professional practice, attend workshops, and engage in think tank sessions about issues of importance to the institution and the surrounding community.  The event will feature some elements of a typical academic conference and other elements similar to a working retreat.  Each day will end with optional activities such as film screenings.  Each day of the conference will have a distinct theme or focus.  All UCF faculty and staff are welcome to attend all or part of the event and a full conference schedule will be available on the FCTL website by late November.  Funded faculty participants are expected to attend all sessions on each of the three days to receive the $500 grant.

Conference Themes

• Day One:  Strategies for student/classroom management and other aspects of teaching and learning
• Day Two:  Managing faculty roles and responsibilities
• Day Three:  Understanding and enhancing campus culture

Proposal Criteria

Each applicant for funding will propose an 8-10 minute informal, discussion-based presentation about some aspect of teaching, research or service work that fits within one of the three themes listed above to be delivered at the conference.  New faculty members are especially invited to attend and may choose to frame their presentations in terms of a challenge they are facing in the classroom.

Applications will be reviewed by members of the Faculty Center Advisory Board using the following criteria: 

• Quality/clarity of presentation description
• Relevance of the presentation to one of the conference theme(s) and an interdisciplinary audience

Deliverables

from the conference will include 1) a brief write-up and other materials from the individual faculty presentation to be posted on the FCTL website as a faculty resource and 2) a collaborative conference product to be composed by each faculty cohort.  Possibilities might include a preliminary white paper, a draft of an article for Faculty Focus, or a formal plan for further investigation.