Friday @ the Center
April 30, 2010
Best Teaching Idea
Have a good teaching idea? Why not submit it for the third annual SPU Best Teaching Idea of the Year Award, sponsored by The Center for Scholarship and Faculty Development and the Faculty Development Committee. Eligible teaching faculty (who have taught at least two courses per year for the past two years) are invited to submit a brief, one-page description of an effective teaching idea, pedagogical practice, or instructional tool to be considered for the award. In addition, please briefly describe how your idea might apply to other disciplines and provide some evidence of its effectiveness, such as test scores, student comments, student engagement, changes in quality of student work, etc. Submissions should be emailed to Michelle Beauclair, chair of FDC, by May 7, 2010.
The FDC will select one award winner to receive a $500 honorarium and four runners up, who will each get a $50 Amazon gift card. Instructional Technology Services will work with the award winner to construct a brief video highlighting the idea to screen at the June faculty in-service. All five teaching ideas will then be featured in the fall Friday @ the Center e-newsletter.
TOY Award: School of Theology
*The fifth in a series featuring this year’s eight nominees for the SPU Faculty Teacher of the Year award.*
Dr. Kerry Dearborn has taught at SPU in the School of Theology since 1994. Like all SOT faculty, she regularly teaches two foundations courses—Christian Formation (1000) and Christian Theology—(3100), in addition to Women in Christianity; Christian Disciplines: Sabbath-Keeping; and a USEM in “The Adventure of Faith through Tolkien, Lewis, Sayers and MacDonald.” Kerry was the principal force behind securing a $100,000 grant from the Stewardship Foundation to launch a new Reconciliation minor at SPU, working tirelessly to design the program, usher it through the academic approval process, and encouraging faculty from across the campus to teach in the program. Students appreciate her use of handouts, movie clips, artwork, and song lyrics to help elucidate theological concepts. |
 Dr. Kerry Dearborn |
Advising Notes
Q: Why might transfer work be detrimental to a student’s pursuit of a minor?
A: The vast majority of minors fall right at the university minimum of thirty credits. If a three credit semester transfer course is brought back to SPU, the course transfers as 4.5 quarter credits. So, for example, if a student was pursuing the Sociology minor and transferred in Statistics from BYU to go along with twenty-five SPU credits that the student already took towards the minor, they would end up at 29.5 credits – 0.5 credits short of the minimum thirty needed. Since the university minimum must be met, a student would need to complete at least one more credit towards the minor.
Because the vast majority of majors far exceed the university minimum of forty-five credits, this specific situation tends to only involve minors.
Happy Teaching,
Susan Susan VanZanten |
