A common decision of journal editors when faced with promising papers is that the author revise-and-resubmit. Responding thoughtfully and strategically to this invitation improves the probability of eventual acceptance dramatically. However, in the rush-to-publish, early-career educational researchers may lack awareness and skill in managing the…

This study explores the climate for teaching at a major Midwest research university. Teaching climate is generally defined as the shared perceptions of current organizational processes that affect the institutional environment for teaching (Peterson et al., 1991; Tagiuri, 1968). Three types of distinguished teaching awards were used to select…

While the literature on self-authorship has focused on the development of college students and young adults highlighting various developmental tasks associated with the ages 17 through 30 (e.g., Baxter Magolda, 2001, 2003, 2004), in this article, we explore the exercise and development of faculty members' self-authorship as educators, proposing…

This study sought to uncover the career readiness and professional development needs of Ph.D. students at a large, Midwestern research university. Findings indicate that career goals of graduate students change over time, skill preparation for academic and non-academic careers continues to be inadequate for many students and professional…

The importance of mentoring has been consistently emphasized in American higher education especially at the graduate level. Increased emphasis on research and teaching for faculty as well as migration to distance education delivery formats has affected the amount of time that faculty can devote to mentoring graduate students. Some graduate program…

The University of Missouri (MU) participated in the Ford Foundation's Difficult Dialogues Initiative (DDI) supporting faculty development projects at over 40 institutions of higher education from 2006-2010. This paper reports findings from an evaluation conducted with instructors who not only engaged in faculty development workshops but also…

The Threshold Concepts Framework acts as a catalyst in faculty development activities, energising and provoking discussion by faculty about their own courses in their own disciplines, and often leading to the discovery of transformational concepts that occasion epistemic and ontological shifts in their students. The present study focuses on…

Scholarly teaching, the act of systematically examining the links between one's teaching and student learning, remains a challenging idea for many faculty members. We argue that two threshold concepts--teaching as an inquiry-based process and teaching as a public act--serve as powerful hurdles to the more wide spread adoption of scholarly teaching…

Even though many curricula are built on a foundational assumption that students will transfer knowledge from one course to the next, faculty often struggle with teaching for transfer. This article introduces the design of courses for transfer as a threshold concept that is conceptually difficult and cognitively troublesome, yet potentially…

Requiring and fostering shifts in perspective, practice, and identity, the counter-normative pedagogy of service-learning can be challenging for faculty to learn. Meyer and Land's (2003, 2005) work on threshold concepts may enhance understanding of the troublesome yet transformative nature of learning to collaborate reciprocally with students and…

For over a decade, Western Washington University has sponsored the Teaching-Learning Academy, bringing students, faculty, staff, and community members together as co-inquirers into overarching questions about teaching and learning. In this safe space, participants frame one research question of interest each year; sharing their perspectives and…

This study explores the interpersonal faculty development interactions of university faculty as a function of their demographic representation (with regard to gender and ethnicity) in their home departments. For one academic semester, a small sample of 30 tenure-track junior faculty participated in a weekly diary checklist study in which they…

Developing a course with a service-learning component includes several factors. One common mistake among faculty members involves the practice of sending students into the community without a plan for connecting the experience with the learning objectives of the course. Invariably, the service component is where the experience ends for the…

Meetings have a bad reputation with faculty. Rarely does one hear a positive word uttered about an upcoming or past meeting. That reputation has metastasized throughout higher education. The primary reason is because meetings can be major time wasters, accomplishing very little, often deteriorating into just another social event, or they may be…

The purpose of this article is to describe the impact of a three-day academic writing retreat on the writing lives of four female university faculty members. Goals of the retreat included rejuvenating their writing lives, focusing their research agendas, improving their writing, and engaging in concentrated blocks of writing and collaborative…