The Summer Curriculum Institute

Is your program going through comprehensive program review?  Consider sending a representative to the annual Summer Curriculum Institute.  Faculty can collaborate together and/or with an instructional designer as they update their programs and course offerings.  The VPI office funds off-contract work during the summer if desired. Contact Jessica Hurless or Bianca Rowden-Quince for details.

Why the Summer Curriculum Institute?

• To guide/support faculty through the new Comprehensive Program Review process
• Encourage faculty to be thoughtful and collaborative, reflecting on “what’s needed” not just what’s necessary (compliance)
• Find natural time over summer to engage in a guided deep dive to focus on equity gaps
• Gives incentive for faculty to deeply and thoughtfully participate
• Offer opportunity to revisit teaching strategies for variety of modalities (post-pandemic, CVC-OEI exchange)
• OER and ZTC, low cost course materials strategic importance - Z degrees
• Professional learning opportunity to interact with colleagues across disciplines in synchronous workshop components
• GUIDED PATHWAYS - more analysis of course sequencing - student outcomes for degree completion, transferability
• Opportunity to involve instructional designers - use expertise!
• Alignment of PSLOs to SLOs and assessment/ typical assignment

Program Testimonial

“The Summer Curriculum Institute was very important in getting our CPR underway. The funds to pay adjunct faculty, in particular, made it a lot easier to ask for participation. I would not have felt comfortable asking them to take on additional workload (especially in the midst of this pandemic) if it had not been compensated at all. Having this in place made it feel like more of an opportunity that was available to them, and their input was invaluable (especially for a department with only 2 FT faculty).

In addition to funding, the SCI gave us a roadmap for the new CPR process. We had clear goals and understood the various steps of the process so we could plan better. It made the experience a lot richer. Having the continued support and enthusiasm of the SCI team really helped make the process something we could really use to make the department better, instead of a task of turning in an insipid report.

I hope you can get funding for another one this summer! Allocating time during the summer and getting some things done before Fall starts is also a good way to make the process less overwhelming. Both FT faculty were going through tenure evaluation, and Fall always gets really busy.“ - Dr. Emilie Hein, Physics and Astronomy