The Center for Teaching Excellence encourages and supports Teaching Circles. Teaching Circles are small groups of faculty who meet regularly over the course of an academic year for planned, purposeful conversation on pedagogy. They may choose to discuss discipline-specific pedagogical issues, or general issues about teaching. Teaching circles can decide to focus one single aspect of teaching and learning or change topics each meeting. Some departments at WPU have departmental Teaching Circles, or run regular departmental pedagogy workshops. Teaching Circles are a great way to work together to improve student learning, to compile teaching resources, and to discuss programmatic and pedagogical needs in the discipline. For individual faculty, participation in Teaching Circles gives opportunities to exchange ideas with colleagues in an informal, non-competitive setting, and helps to build a Portfolio for retention, tenure, or promotion. Upon request, the CTE can sponsor Teaching Circle meetings by providing resource, material, and/or food (through the campus food service). A one-page summary of the purpose, date, location, size of the group, and proposed activities will serve as an application for funding or for materials. Please forward your proposals to the co-directors, Bob Rosen (rosenr@wpunj.edu) and Keumjae Park (parkk4@wpunj.edu ) at the beginning of each semester.
