Creating change at an institution is most effective and rewarding when there is a community of curious, knowledgeable, and action-oriented individuals at the core of the effort.

This workshop convenes that core and creates trust, shared understandings, and a common vocabulary while helping participants plan to generate and sustain institutional momentum for greater faculty approahcability and faculty-student engagement.

Attendees participate in an exercise to gauge the institutional-level knowledge about current practices and outcomes related to approachability and engagement. They will also identify challenges, opportunities, and possible ways to increase capacity for achieving these outcomes

The group will begin to think about how to measure key inputs and outcomes so that the institution can prepare to move towards empirical evaluation that will support future planning.

After you establish a core group of stakeholders, it’s time to expand. That includes starting to gauge interest in key elements of faculty approachability and faculty-student engagement and to prime the broader organization to be open to this effort .

In this session, core stakeholders will identify an organizational communication and persuasion strategy. We will build on previous change efforts at the institution and on models of change from other organizations.

This workshop is your launch pad for a plan to assess, analyze, and report key inputs and outcomes related to faculty approachability and faculty-student engagement.

Participants will be facilitated in defining concepts, inventorying institutional data and analytical tools, and considering the role of custom research including surveys and focus groups. Participants will also identify institutional partners required for a strong assessment effort and discuss an implementation plan.

This workshop focuses on ways in which your institution can start making change right away, but also institute a feedback-gathering plan to glean lessons from your initial actions. This will help you evolve your approach and support the formulation of an intentional, holistic strategy.

Workshop participants will create an initial launch and faculty support strategy to help achieve this mix of action and learning.

In this workshop, we bring together faculty, instructional designers, faculty support, and other teaching and learning players. We will create course content, activities, and assignments that promote faculty approahability and faculty-student engagement, as well as a sense of community within the course.

We also workshop the design of syllabus, outside-of-class communication strategy, and assessment approaches to promote community, engagement, trust, and the kind of emotional experience that promotes student learning.

The Faculty Approachability Project is, at its core, a student-centered effort. This workshop takes it to the next level by thinking about where students seek, obtain, and are exposed to advice and counsel — not just academically, but personally, in terms of their career, mental health, etc.

This session enables include a greater understanding of the whole student and ideas for how the institution can design its advisement strategy to reflect this broader picture and achieve increased relevance and effectiveness.

The students who major, minor, enroll, and/or have career and life interests in a discipline are ripe for being connected more tightly and fruitfully.

This workshop helps academic departments and programs think about forging community among their students. More generally, this workshop helps departments plan for faculty approachability and faculty-student engagement that increases enrollment and supports the learning objectives of courses and the major as a whole.

This session focuses on a convening of faculty and students to discuss the topic of approachability and engagement in general and in terms of the opportunities and challenges at your college or university.

This session will yield actionable ideas but it will also spark connections. All of our workshops aim to do that, but this session in particular makes that more of an explicit focus. Let your students and faculty find out how they are more alike than different, and about all the good they can do if they collaborate.