Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellows Program

Overview

The Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellows (HTEFF) Program is offered by the Center for Teaching & Learning (CTL) and the BU Hub, Boston University’s university-wide undergraduate general education program, to support interdisciplinary inquiry and faculty collaboration through Hub course design and implementation.

The HTEFF Program provides greater opportunities for peer-to-peer conversations among instructors — allowing faculty to receive customized feedback from multiple pedagogical perspectives — while responding to institutional priorities concerning interdisciplinary learning and the Hub. Interdisciplinary thinking and content are at the heart of many Hub courses, and the HTEFF Program provides faculty with opportunities to “stretch” their teaching practice by creating Hub courses that highlight different skill sets in relation to their disciplinary comfort zone.

Interdisciplinary approaches to the Hub can also involve priority Hub areas where further development of the Hub curriculum is needed, such as Digital/Multimedia Expression and Creativity/Innovation. The HTEFF Program promotes the design and implementation of interdisciplinary Hub courses in these and additional priority Hub areas, such as The Individual in Community, Social and Scientific Inquiry II, and Writing-Intensive Courses.

Goals

The primary goals of the Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellows Program are to:

  • cultivate teaching and learning networks among BU faculty around research-based pedagogical principles
  • provide faculty (and students) with structured opportunities to experiment outside of traditional disciplinary boundaries via the Hub curriculum
  • support the creation of new interdisciplinary, innovative Hub courses
  • open up institutional pathways for faculty leadership on the Hub and interdisciplinary inquiry
  • create additional digital resources for faculty teaching in the Hub

Program

The Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellows Program is open to any full-time faculty (tenured, tenure-track, or non-tenure-track) from any Boston University school, college, department, or program teaching undergraduate students. The program is broken into two cohorts: a smaller Year-Long cohort and a larger Fall 2020 cohort. The roles and responsibilities of the two cohorts are described below.

Year-Long Cohort (Spring 2020 – Fall 2020):

  • Targeted faculty: faculty from various BU schools/colleges who have successfully proposed Hub courses involving an interdisciplinary approach to their discipline. (These are courses involving unexpected and innovative Hub areas combined within a single course.) Faculty are especially desired for their experience developing courses in priority Hub areas, as described above. In agreement with department chairs and the Associate Provost for Undergraduate Education, Beth Loizeaux, CTL staff will nominate faculty to serve in the Year-Long Cohort.
  • Stipend: $7,000 for Spring-Fall 2020 (likely to be dispersed in two payments; one at the end of each semester).
  • Roles and responsibilities for the Year-Long Cohort (during Spring 2020 + Fall 2020 semester):
    • Meet bi-monthly as a group throughout the fall semester with CTL staff
    • Develop digital videos to be housed on the Hub/CTL websites, create CTL guides, and/or speak at Hub & Pub events, for the purposes of 1) publicizing their own innovative and interdisciplinary Hub courses, and 2) developing resources in their “expert” Hub area of need (e.g., Writing-Intensive Courses) for other BU instructors to be shared through the Hub and the CTL.
    • Collaborate with departments to identify useful new or existing Hub courses to be featured via digital guides, videos, Hub & Pub events, etc.
    • Help to identify and recruit faculty within and outside their departments to apply for the Fall 2020 HTEFF cohort, and help review applications for the Fall 2020 HTEFF cohort with CTL Staff.
    • In addition, Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellows may decide to:
      • Co-facilitate a Hub workshop or CTL Course Design Institute,
      • Host a Hub faculty forum event, or
      • Design a Hub-related event of their own choosing
  • Roles and responsibilities for the Year-Long Cohort (during the Fall 2020 semester):
    • Work closely with ~3-5 Fall Cohort fellows to sustain their development of new, innovative, interdisciplinary Hub courses in their Hub area of expertise. In practice, this could mean:
      • Meeting monthly with members of the Fall 2020 HTEFF cohort
      • Reviewing their Fall Cohort fellows’ course syllabi and CourseLeaf proposals
      • Exchanging class observations with other fellows.

Fall 2020 Cohort (Fall 2020 semester only):

  • Targeted faculty: Open application process. Faculty in the Fall 2020 Cohort will be selected, in part, by 1) their desire to create a new Hub course or revise an existing course to include a priority Hub area; and 2) their desire to combine Hub areas in interdisciplinary and innovative ways with regard to their course content.
  • Stipend: $4,000 for developing a new Hub course (contingent upon the course’s approval by the department chair and dean) OR $1,500 for revising an existing course for the Hub (contingent upon the course’s approval by the department chair and dean).
  • Roles and responsibilities may include:
    • Regular meetings with their assigned Year-Long Cohort fellow
    • Observation of other fellows (from both cohorts) in an “open classroom” exercise
    • Submission of Hub syllabi and course proposal by the end of the Fall 2020 semester

For questions about the Hub Teaching Excellence Faculty Fellows Program — and to apply in May 2020 for the Fall 2020 cohort — please contact Deborah Breen, CTL Director (dfbreen@bu.edu).