From CETLS to the Faculty Collaboratory: A Space for Connection, Exploration, and Growth

When I arrived at BMCC in 2013, I knew that one of the first things I wanted to do was to find the people who could support me in my continued growth as a higher education faculty member. Before coming to BMCC, I had been teaching at the college level for nearly 9 years, and was grateful to have worked at institutions where I had been mentored in my ongoing development as a teacher of adult learners. 

At the college where I worked as an adjunct before BMCC, one of the deans convened a monthly Faculty Inquiry Group. At each session, we dug into questions of practice in our teaching. One month we looked closely how a particular faculty member was approaching giving students feedback on their written assignments. At another meeting we workshopped making changes to a capstone assignment to more closely align it with the values and mission of our program. We spent a year in an exploration of our own identity development and how that impacted our capacity to support our students’ healthy identity development. At times these conversations were messy. It took time and care to work through contradictions and tensions. We returned to questions month after month, in a layered process of collective inquiry that inspired me to grow in my teaching.

When I attended my first faculty meeting at BMCC, I was excited to meet with my colleagues. After a couple of weeks of meeting with our students, I looked forward to connecting with faculty and staff. I quickly learned that faculty meetings are jam packed with the necessary business of each department. As a former adjunct, I wasn’t always privy to the important administrative work that faculty and staff contribute, much of which is coordinated through these monthly meetings. While I was glad to be joining my colleagues in this service, I left the meeting wondering where I would be able to engage with other educators in discussions that would support my ongoing development as a teacher. Then I found CETLS!

At CETLS, I met colleagues from across the campus and engaged in interdisciplinary conversations about our work to support adult learners. CETLS gave us a space to consider questions of practice in a low stakes environment that wasn’t connected to the high stakes feedback we get from student evaluations and peer observations. We have supported each other in thinking through how we hold space for challenging conversations in the classroom, how we assess and evaluate student learning, and how we face the joys and challenges of new technologies. We’ve shared our research findings and writing process, and participated in ongoing conversations about integrating open educational resources and anti-racist pedagogy into our teaching. In short, CETLS has taken us out of our discipline based silos and into a collaborative space that has informed our growth as educators.

I love my department, and have been nourished by the discipline specific questions of curriculum and pedagogy that we have explored together over the years. But I am so grateful to have found the space of CETLS to connect with the wider BMCC community. At a CETLS Advisory Board meeting last spring, we brainstormed responses to the prompt “What CETLS means to me…” We expressed our gratitude for this brave and safe space where we have engaged in work that grows from faculty interests and supported each other in the exploration of our research and pedagogy. Perhaps most importantly, CETLS has welcomed us to be part of a community of educators. Teaching is a truly wonderful profession, but it can feel isolating, especially as we rebuild from the post-pandemic conditions that fractured the campus community. As one colleague explained, “CETLS is a space for collegial collaboration and growth. It has also fostered bonds among faculty and the sharing of innovative approaches.”

As CETLS is evolving and expanding into a natural partnership with Digital Learning in the form of the Faculty Collaboratory, it felt like a good time to celebrate the vital role that this space has played in our development as educators. What does CETLS and the Faculty Collaboratory mean to you? Share a comment to let us know. And keep an eye on the calendar for many great opportunities to get involved in this vibrant community.