Engagement, elections and redeployment
So lots going on at the moment: been asked to contribute to an international panel on student engagement for this year's ISSoTL conference, standing for election as treasurer in ISATT and facing redeployment as they close our Centre at Coventry University!Last year's ISSoTL conference saw the creation of a student engagement SIG by interested parties in attendance. We were asked to contribute our own, our colleagues' and our students' definitions of student engagement, you can see our take on it by visiting our group page (I think it's open access). Connections made there gave Elizabeth the idea of bringing together four collaborators to discuss "Terms of Engagement":- Elizabeth Barkley, Foothill College, Los Altos, U.S. (Chairperson)
- Norman Vaughan, Mount Royal College, Calgary, Alberta, Canada
- Kelly E. Matthews, University of Queensland, Queensland, Australia
- Sue MorĂ³n-Garcia, Coventry University, UK
I'm going to be looking at our PGCert in Higher Education Professional Practice to add a different flavour to the usual focus on undergraduate students.
I was recently approached to stand for election for Treasurer in
The International Study Association for Teachers and Teaching (ISATT). This is a friendly, welcoming, multi-national group of researchers and teachers I discovered through their excellent and thought provoking conference on "Totems & Taboos" two years ago (follow
this link and scroll down to find out about that). We won't know the result until
this year's conference in late June / early July.
And finally ... we recently found out that they are "reorganising" us and shutting down our Centre. We're currently in the "consultation" period and all feeling a little raw, angry and anxious. Some of us are taking more proactive attitudes and looking around us, as you might understand if I say we don't exactly feel valued around here, although we are promised redeployment.