Penn State Intercom......October 17, 2002
Commonwealth College
faculty to meet at University Park
By Lisa L. Wiedemer
Commonwealth College
More
than 200 Commonwealth College faculty members are headed for University
Park Friday and Saturday, Oct. 25-26, for the rare opportunity to meet,
share ideas and discuss common concerns.
They are gathering for the third Commonwealth College Faculty Meeting, 24 hours of professional development workshops and division meetings, and the chance for colleagues located at campuses hundreds of miles apart to get to know one other.
The intent behind the Commonwealth College (CWC) meeting is to "build collegiality within the Commonwealth College and to support disciplinary unity," said CWC Dean Diane Disney.
One of the most important aspects of the meetings, which are scheduled every third semester, is that they provide the possibility for far-flung colleagues to gather. With nearly 15,000 students, 590 full-time faculty members and 12 campuses, the CWC is Penn State's largest college; it also is the only college within the University to have the dean's office at University Park, but all of its faculty and students located at 12 campuses, Disney noted.
It is this opportunity to network with colleagues that draws Teresa Balog, assistant professor and director of nursing at New Kensington and member of the CWC Faculty Meeting planning committee.
"The college is only five years old, and we spent a good deal of time putting the college together. This gives the opportunity for the entire college to get together in one place. We network on the telephone and at meetings -- but this gives us more of an appreciation of what the college is all about, more a sense of belonging."
Balog is especially proud of the workshops, which were developed from faculty comments and evaluations following the last CWC meeting. Faculty members will be able to attend two sessions Saturday morning, choosing among 20 topics covering such diverse subjects as developing international perspectives; seeking external funding; linking e-portfolios and instruction; dealing with academic dishonesty; and teaching with blended technologies and cross-campus collaborations.
Along with these workshops -- which, with few exceptions, will be facilitated by CWC faculty members -- the meeting also will feature the first-ever CWC undergraduate research symposium, a pilot project by the college's science division. Beginning with a poster session during the 6 p.m. Friday reception at the Penn Stater Conference Center Hotel and continuing until lunch the following day, the symposium covers the work presented in 11 refereed papers and published as proceedings. The proceedings will be distributed to the 98 CWC science faculty members; libraries at the CWC campuses and University Park; and the participating students and their parents; according to Haiduke Sarafian, professor of physics at the York campus, who led the project.
Sarafian said the goal of the symposium planning committee goes well beyond this pilot project. The committee hopes that participation by CWC disciplinary divisions will grow with each succeeding symposium.
"The vision is that we will eventually open it to the entire University, and then to the entire state," he added.
The symposium will conclude with the presentation of four papers during the science division meeting Saturday afternoon. These division meetings represent yet another important aspect of the CWC faculty meeting, as they provide much-appreciated intra-discipline contact seldom found at the home campus. As Norbert Mayr, associate professor of history at Worthington-Scranton and a member of the faculty meeting planning committee, explained, "I'm the only one on my campus who teaches history. Unless I go to a conference, I have no other contact with historians."
At CWC faculty meetings, he added, he can meet historians from other campuses, as well as discuss research interests and campus concerns.
"We can discuss such things as 'What are you doing in the classroom?' and 'What was your experience with that piece of computer hardware?'" and other issues of concern on campuses where faculty have heavy teaching loads.
Promoting divisional unity is considered so important that seating at the Friday night dinner is by division, and two-hour division meetings are scheduled for Saturday afternoon. President Graham B. Spanier will welcome faculty during the dinner Friday. Doug McCullough, president of the CWC Faculty Senate and assistant professor of exercise and sports science at Mont Alto, will greet the meeting attendees Saturday morning. That will be followed by a State of the College address by Dean Disney.
"I think these meetings are the best things we do for the faculty since the college was created," Mayr said. Before the college's creation, "we were 12 sometimes-autonomous units. We were so far apart and we seemed to never see our colleagues." The opportunities provided Oct. 25 and 26 are designed to help overcome the barriers of distance and isolation, creating a true Commonwealth College.