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Profs go to corner
McCartney Library is setting aside the northwest corner of the West Reading Room for a resource center for faculty members. Known as Prof’s Corner, it includes books and articles to help Geneva’s professors become better teachers. The library will host a ribbon-cutting ceremony for the resource center on September 22.
Prof’s Corner is an initiative of Excellence in Learning and Teaching, a grassroots faculty group that works to facilitate better teaching skills. Keith Starcher, associate business professor and a leader in ELT, explains that there is little training available for college teaching. Grad schools rarely focus on imparting teaching skills. Holding an advanced degree means you’re an expert in your field but not necessarily in teaching, he says.
Prof’s Corner is designed to bridge this gap and to answer the question: “If I want to spend a half hour trying to learn something new, improve my teaching, where would I go?” Starcher hopes that professors take advantage of this accessible resource collection to improve their teaching and keep abreast of advances in the field of education.
Prof’s Corner will contain books on teaching, both philosophical and pragmatic; journal articles; and information about conferences. Eventually the center could include a computer to provide access to online resources. Faculty will be encouraged to contribute items they find helpful while using the other resources Prof’s Corner has to offer.
The ELT group expects Prof’s Corner to make it convenient for professors to come together and talk about teaching. ELT also offers other services to faculty: periodic e-mails with teaching tips; four lunchtime forums a semester on topics such as group work; and a traveling club that encourages professors to visit other classrooms to give informal peer reviews and offer suggestions.
Ultimately, Prof’s Corner is about helping professors fulfill Geneva’s mission of “glorify[ing] God by educating and ministering to a diverse community of students for the purpose of developing servant-leaders, transforming society for the kingdom of Christ.”
“We need to know how to do that better,” Starcher says.