2022 - 2023 Activities
In 2022-2023, we continued revising our programming, services, and practices to center educational equity and inclusive teaching and sought participant feedback across programs to understand where we can continue improving. One of our overarching revisions across programs this year was the revision of our program applications and grant processes to ask applicants to explicitly attend to educational equity. Below are the specific areas in which we revised our work and translated our values into practice.
Programs, Services, & Practices
Ignite. In collaboration with CTE Faculty Fellow and Associate Professor of Sociology, Rose Buckelew, we redesigned Ignite to support instructors in developing equitable teaching practices. Specifically, Professor Buckelew co-facilitated the program; the day-long retreat was held at Charlottesville’s African American Heritage Museum; readings included bell hook’s Teaching to Transgress as well as writings of Black student activists; and we consistently integrated discussions of structural barriers, institutional and local context impacting racial justice-oriented teaching.
Spark. We created a new pedagogically-focused 2-day program for faculty new to UVA that centered inclusive and equitable teaching practices throughout the sessions. Some of the session titles included “Equitable Approaches to Common Teaching Challenges” and “Guided Learning and Educational Equity with Policy”.
Course Design Institute. We developed an equitable teaching survey and equity-focused program feedback questions that have helped us understand who and what we are centering in the program.
Grants Programs: SoTL & Thrive. We revised our Thrive grant application processes to include questions that ask applicants how their teaching innovation addresses educational equity. Our SoTL grants application was also revised to ask applicants how their SoTL project seeks to address equity-focused questions about teaching and learning.
Consultations. With support from CTE Faculty Fellow and sociologist of race Rose Buckelew, we revised the content and approach to our consultation program to weave in equity practices throughout the consultation process and consultant training.
Trauma-Informed Teaching. Following the November 2022 shooting at UVA, we developed trauma-informed resources to support instructors, which are now housed as a collection on our Teaching Hub website (see “Teaching in the Days After a Crisis”). We also developed a 2.X session for faculty on the fundamentals of trauma-informed teaching practices, which also includes a set of resources on the Teaching Hub website (see “Basics of Trauma Informed Teaching”).
Innovations in Pedagogy Summit. We revised the proposal process to ask presenters how they will attend to educational equity in their session and provided feedback on their approaches. We also aim to select a keynote speaker who directly talks about the oppressive systems in higher education, and gathered accessibility information in a prominent, dedicated page.
Faculty Fellows. We updated the criteria for applications to include demonstrated experience and efforts in diversity, equity, and inclusion or accessibility as part of the criteria.
Organizational Development
The CTE has partnered with other units across grounds to offer faculty opportunities to further engage in topics related to equitable teaching. Some of these partnerships include the Library, with whom we supported an open educational resources (OER) learning community, and the Office of Accessibility, who offered a suite of Universal Design for Learning (UDL) workshops.
CTE Workplace in Context
We engaged with the Vice Provost for Academic Outreach to create a historical exhibit in Hotel D. This exhibit is being reviewed by descendants and will be complete in Fall 2023.