Joy Shechtman Mankoff Center for Teaching & Learning

Faculty Comments on the Johnson Seminar

The early years of the CTL’s work coincided with the hiring of nearly 40 tenure-track faculty members, virtually all of whom participated in the seminar for incoming faculty. Their enthusiastic responses attest to the success of the program.

"I have attended several different seminars on teaching during the past three years, but none have been as helpful as the Johnson Seminar at Connecticut College. The Johnson Seminar is an outstanding forum during which academics in their early career are able to explore teaching strategies to use in their own classes." — Assistant Professor of Italian

More than half of the college’s faculty have participated in one of the CTL’s year-long programs on teaching. Faculty now share a common vocabulary surrounding teaching, and this is transforming the culture of Connecticut College. Faculty from across academic disciplines collaborate on their teaching, share ideas, visit each other’s classes, and even team-teach courses. Collaboration and interdisciplinary work are key to the CTL’s success. Where, traditionally, faculty felt isolated in their classrooms, teaching has now become community property, and teaching is now discussed in the halls or over lunch.

“We’ve got the power to help our students become more actively involved in the learning process, and the Johnson Seminar is the place that helped me realize that I could be a part of that.” —Associate Professor of Art History

The CTL has become a national leader in teaching and learning at small colleges; the CTL’s Director coordinates a national group dedicated to small college faculty development, and Connecticut College hosts the small college faculty development listserv. Participants in the CTL’s programs have made presentations at regional, national, and international professional meetings and have received the campus’s most prestigious teaching awards. “Alumni” of the CTL’s programs have even been recognized as national leaders in teaching; for example, in 2000 one of our faculty members was named Connecticut Professor of the Year by the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching and the Council for Advancement and Support of Education and another received the Excellence in Teaching Award of the American Academy of Religion in 2001. At professional conferences and through on-campus visits, the CTL is helping other small colleges across the country create learner-centered teaching cultures.

“The Johnson Seminar is just wonderful and thoroughly rewarding, and I hope it becomes an institutionalized part of new faculty life.” —Assistant Professor of Government

From 2002-2003 through 2004-2005, Connecticut College will hire approximately 15 new faculty members. While most of them will have some teaching experience, they will all benefit from the CTL’s efforts to acclimate them to the local teaching culture, support their efforts to refine their pedagogical strategies, and keep them in conversation with each other about both their teaching and the burgeoning research on teaching and learning. The Center for Teaching & Learning is poised to build on its past successes as it continues to serve all the faculty and students at the College as the home for conversation, research, and reflection on the art of teaching.

“The Johnson Teaching Seminar has been the single most important factor in helping me make the transition from Teaching Assistant to Assistant Professor. The probing discussions on pedagogy, the input from my peers and collegial connections established during the seminar meetings have changed my teaching and definitely shaped my career. . . . I have learned a great deal about teaching strategies, about ways to structure assignments, and about methods to productively respond to student writing. However, by far the most important thing I have gained is the reality that I am one of a community of scholars committed in a core way to becoming better teachers. That is invaluable.” —Assistant Professor of English