Annual Reports

Annual Report 2019-2020

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Workshop Participation – 2019-2020

GOAL 3.3: Foster a culture of collaboration, continuous improvement and individual growth

Number of Participants by College

Summary

The Center’s workshop attendance number was an increase of 619 of from the 1699 in the previous year. This increase can be attributed to several factors, the DEAL cohort and most notably the sudden transition to online teaching in the Spring semester. 

Programs

Teaching and Advising

• GOAL 1.1: Broaden access for underrepresented populations and increase academic success for all students through excellence in undergraduate education.
• GOAL 1.3: Implement evidence-based high quality, high impact teaching and learning practices for every student

Four Teaching Innovation Grants were awarded to six faculty members and one postdoctoral associate in the spring.

What Your Students Want You to Know… The CFE developed a new series called “What Your Students Want You to Know…” to connect with knowledgeable persons in student services positions across the university. Each facilitator or panelist uses their professional experiences and expertise to help participants better understand their students’ total experiences at MSU, including those shaped by the students’ intersecting identities and backgrounds.

Steve Swinford and Sarah Heller were given Academic Advising Awards to recognize their significant contributions to academic advising. This award closely follows the National Academic Advising Association’s core values and criteria for national outstanding advising.

MacDonald Burgess was awarded the Teaching Innovation Award, designed to honor faculty who have incorporated outstanding innovative teaching practices into their classes at Montana State University.

Sweeney Windchief was awarded the President's Excellence in Teaching Award to recognize excellent teachers who have made exemplary contributions to instruction and student learning at Montana State University. 

Lucia Ricciardelliwas given the President's Award for Excellence in Service Learning recognizing her partnership with the Chippewa Cree, Blackfeet and Crow tribes that has engaged students in quality service learning. Through service learning, students apply their academic skills and knowledge to address the genuine needs of a community organization. 

Research & Scholarship

• GOAL 2.1: Enhance the significance and impact of scholarship
• GOAL 2.2: Expand interdisciplinary scholarship
• GOAL 2.3: Strengthen institutional reputation in scholarship

Faculty Excellence Grants were changed to being awarded two times per year. We had 21 faculty awardees in the spring. The next round of proposals will be due in October.

11 faculty, staff and postdocs participated in the fall Grant-Writing Bootcamp.

A special Granting Writing Bootcamp for the Institute for Science, Technology, Ethics and Society (STES) was offered with five sessions in November, December and January. A total of

10 faculty and students participated from STEM, Social Sciences and Humanities.

The Women in STEM Faculty Learning Community met four times throughout both the Fall and Spring semesters with 58 participants.

20 grants were submitted (5 NSF Career proposals) by faculty who received assistance from the Research Resources Coordinator. 

The Research Grant Coordinator worked with the Office of the Vice President for Research, Economic Development and Graduate Education to bring MSU researchers together to opportunities to enhance our research programs to better support SARS-CoV2/COVID-19 response and recovery efforts. Within this team space, there are 7 focus groups around particular topic areas (101 participants). 

Collaborations

The Center has continued its many collaborations and added new partnerships focused on faculty excellence. Most frequent collaborations involved:

Academic Technology & Outreach: CFE and ATO collaborated on 49 specialized programs to enhance faculty online teaching skills, including 12 sessions with 511 participants specifically designed to help faculty navigate resources and tools as all courses transitioned to an online teaching and learning during the outbreak of the Covid19 pandemic.

GOAL 1.1: Broaden access for underrepresented populations and increase academic success for all students through excellence in undergraduate education.

Office of the Vice President for Research, Economic Development and Graduate Education: We continued the strong connection with the Office of Sponsored Programs with the Research Coordinator joining OSP’s weekly meetings and coordinating on grant submissions. In FY20, the partnership has grown to include supporting VPREDGE efforts to promote interdisciplinary collaborations and grant submissions. CFE has also created a close collaboration with the Dean of the Graduate School working on graduate student communications in the face of the pandemic, Graduate Teaching Assistant training and mentor training for faculty.

• GOAL 1.2: Expand high-quality graduate education
• GOAL 2.2: Expand interdisciplinary scholarship

Office of Diversity and Inclusion: The ODI and CFE collaborated on several workshops this year including the Inclusive Teaching, Mentoring and Research workshop in February and the “Incorporating “Indian Education for All” into MSU Courses: A Faculty Learning Community” in May/June. Also, CFE has two representatives on the iChange team that has put together an action plan for increasing the diversity of faculty and strives to create a more inclusive MSU culture. One project has been to start communicating with new faculty before they arrive at MSU in the fall so that they feel a part of the community and creating a website specifically geared towards new faculty (http://www.montana.edu/newfaculty).

Inclusion: We create a civil, supportive and respectful environment where difference and diversity are sources of strength.

Other notable collaborations involved:

• Writing Center, Disability Services, Library, Leadership Institute and Facilities

Committees

Teaching Excellence Action Committee: Worked to improve faculty teaching by allocating funds for faculty development projects; support assessment and outcomes on campus by sponsoring teaching improvement activities; support attendance at instructional development workshops which provide the potential to impact teaching methods on campus

Research Capacity Team: The RC Team met monthly to focus on supporting mid-career faculty and interdisciplinary research teams. The RC Team recommended that the Faculty Excellence Grants be offered 2 times per year and we implemented that process with the spring 2020 call and will have another call for proposals in fall 2020. The team worked with Liz Shanahan and her graduate course on scientific methods to put together a survey on interdisciplinary scholarship in fall 2019. The results of this survey and additional work by the RC team will inform the MSU Strategic Plan goal of

• Action 2.2.4 - Montana State University will review current policies, resources and facilities that affect interdisciplinary scholarship and develop sustainable models for shared interdisciplinary resources by 2022.

Service Learning Committee: The Service Learning Committee meets regularly and offered a training about how to implement service learning in one’s class as a high quality high impact practice (HQ HIP). In 2020, Professor Marvin Lansverk was selected as one of three faculty from the MSU community as a Montana University System Regents Teaching Scholar to lead a faculty learning community (FLC) exploring service learning at MSU.