Consulting

In addition to my speaking engagements, I am available to consult with academic leaders around a variety of teaching, learning, and faculty development topics. My consulting engagements are always tailored to the needs of the institutions I work with, but here are some of the capabilities I can bring to consulting work:

  • Listening tours with faculty, staff, and students to uncover and understand the specific teaching and learning challenges and opportunities at an institution
  • Benchmarking elements of an institution’s teaching and learning landscape against national trends in higher education
  • Recommending research-based strategies, structures, and resources as potential solutions to the problems and questions facing an institution
  • Serving as a search consultant, advising on the design and implementation of effective and equitable staff search and hiring process
  • Facilitating the building of consensus and the development of action plans across groups of institutional stakeholders
  • Consulting directly with faculty and other instructors on matters of teaching and learning through individual consultations or group workshops

In short, I’m a one-person teaching center for hire. I’m available for both short-term and long-term consulting projects. Recent clients have included

  • Indiana University at Bloomington, Dartmouth College, and New Mexico State University, for whom I served as an external evaluator for a center for teaching and learning;
  • Princeton Theological Seminary, where I served in a yearlong program to support thoughtful adoption of educational technology;
  • Vanderbilt University’s Wendland-Cook Program in Religion and Justice and Virginia Commonwealth University’s da Vinci Center for Innovation, for whom I consulted on the design of online learning environments;
  • Davidson-Davie Community College, where I twice facilitated a four-day summer virtual course design institute for small groups of faculty from particular departments; and
  • the University of Mississippi, where I am serving as a two-year visiting associate director at their teaching center, working with STEM faculty on the adoption of active learning strategies and contributing to ongoing strategic planning efforts.

If you’re interested in bringing me to your campus, either in person or virtually, please reach out to me via my contact form to discuss your needs. And keep reading for more examples of the kinds of projects with which I can help.

Building or Expanding a Center for Teaching and Learning

Is your institution looking to start a faculty development effort aimed at supporting effective teaching? Or could your existing teaching center benefit from new energy, new direction, or new programming? Having directed a center for teaching for 11 years and served as an external evaluator for other teaching centers, I can help your institution identify its faculty development needs and I can recommend structures and programming for teaching centers to meet those needs. And if you already have a teaching center, I can work with your teaching center staff to help them build on strengths and expand their impact on campus.

Supporting Instructors’ Educational Technology Use or Online Teaching

While some instructors readily take to using educational technology or teaching online, others need more support, resources, and sometimes motivation to do so. The teaching center I directed was the administrative home and primary source of technical and pedagogical support for a variety of educational technologies, and I led a variety of efforts to help faculty adopt and use educational technology and shift from in-person to online teaching. I can work with your institution to identify strategies for empowering faculty to use technology in the service of student success.

Designing Courses and Curricula for Different Teaching Contexts

With nearly two decades of experience consulting with faculty on the design of courses, I can consult with academic leaders, course directors, and faculty instructors on refining learning objectives, developing assessment strategies, and implementing evidence-based teaching practices for online, in-person, and hybrid courses and programs. Launching a new program or moving an existing program online involves a lot of moving pieces, and having a little outside help in instructional design and faculty development can go a long way toward success.

Facilitating Teaching-Focused Strategic Planning Processes

Colleges and universities love to have faculty members chair strategic planning committees, but not all faculty have the time and expertise for the project management that such committees require. As a long-time faculty development professional, I have often served as an “executive chair” on key committees, supporting the work of faculty chairs through agenda planning, meeting facilitation, report writing and other project management work, often done behind the scenes, that moves committees forward productively. If your campus is, say, launching a general education overhaul or deciding the next steps of your digital education strategy, I can help.