Leigh Graves Wolf

I’m excited to kick off a new initiative today: the Online Presence and Public Scholarship Working Group.  In my new role as an academic specialist in the Dean’s office in the College of Education (I’m still with the Hub, 25%, 75% College of Ed!) one of my charges is to: Develop capacity and community among faculty, students and staff around innovative practices in teaching and learning to support innovation and inclusivity in instruction and program development. So, this is the first of many opportunities.  (I’m also really excited that A Domain of One’s Own is a part of this initiative.)

The Working Group is kicking off (right now!) with Dean Chris Long’s workshop: Cultivating an Online Scholarly Presence. We will then follow up with weekly co-working sessions over the next 9 weeks to support faculty in the development of their online presence. The original call for participation is below – we have 21 faculty members who will be working with us – along with others who will informally drop in and out when their schedules allow. The underlying purposes here are to provide a safe, fun, intellectual and supportive space to grow and to evaluate this facilitation format as a sustainable model for professional development.

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Original Call for Participation:

Dear colleagues, we invite your participation in our newly created Online Presence and Public Scholarship Working Group during Fall 2016. We will be accepting five faculty members from our college into the program who will then participate with colleagues from the Colleges of Natural Science and Education in a semester long program designed to help you plan (or revise) and implement a digital online presence and public scholarship routines, mindsets and workflows.

Online presence and public scholarship are ways to enhance your own research and reputation, along with that of the University.  While many workshops start with the “how to”, this program is designed to help you navigate challenging and nuanced questions like: Why should you have a digital presence? Who is interested in my work and scholarship?  How can this work be recognized professionally? Once we navigate these discussions we will move on to discovering which platform(s) match your goals. In addition, this experience will provide you with resources and collaborators to start your presence now and help evolve and sustain your presence into the future.

Topics

The program will cover a variety of topics associated with planning and developing your personal public scholarship strategy. We will start by focusing on your pathway to intellectual leadership in your field and what the components of a successful strategy are, then moving into more of the detailed logistics of setting up digital tools and accounts to support the strategy you have developed. We welcome faculty at all stages of thinking about this work and will help ensure that each person is able to move forward with their own plans.

What is expected?

Fellows will be expected to attend two workshops over the course of the semester and 6 one-hour co-working sessions that will focus on a general topic and work strategy each week and provide an open dedicated forum for support. Fellows will also have the opportunity to attend other optional workshops, and will have access to one-on-one mentorship from the workshop facilitation team.

Applications are due by Friday, September 23 and we will be notifying participants early during the following week.

If you are unable to commit to the full time commitment of the fellows program, but are interested in starting to develop your online presence, please respond to this message and we will include you on an email list which details other learning opportunities.

Facilitators
This program is a collaboration between the Colleges of Arts and Letters, Education, and Natural Science, along with the Hub for Innovation in Teaching and Learning. Main facilitators for the program will be Drs. Leigh Graves Wolf (Education/MSU Hub), Scott Schopieray (Arts and Letters), and Stephen Thomas (Natural Science). We will also be joined by guest facilitators and faculty from across campus. In addition to the specific goal of mentoring faculty in their online presence goals, we are experimenting with new models for faculty development and support structures and will be gathering feedback on this mode and method of training and mentoring.