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We officially launched the 2018-2019 Faculty Fellows program. We have 15 fellows from 13 disciplines across Arts and Sciences. The departments include APS, EBIO, ENVS, GSLL, IPHY (2), PSCI (2), PWR (3), Honors RAP, SLHS, SOCY, THRD, WGST, and ETHN. At our first meeting, Eve-Lyn Hinckley, a 2017-2018 Faculty Fellow provided perspective on the program, why it was important and useful for her, how it has helped her realize and achieve significant educational transformation in ENVS, and what she is doing towards the goal of advancing the educational mission of ENVS.

One of the important goals of the Fellows program is to develop a network of people committed to advancing a relevant educational mission at CU. An important aspect of achieving this goal is for faculty from different disciplines to learn from each other and find areas of synergy and opportunities for examining axes of divergent thinking. During the last cohort’s tenure, the cumulative network of the group revealed most faculty members’ interactions happen with other members from their own department. While this makes sense, we need to be conscious of our tendency to adhere to a silo structure imposed by the departmentalization of our college, a structure that is out of alignment with where education needs to be. In The New Education, Cathy Davidson, the director of the Future Initiative at the City University of New York, makes the plea “We need educators and administrators committed to redesigning an ethical, democratic, pragmatic, forward-looking education, one that not only uses technology wisely and creatively but also understands its limits and its impacts and addresses its failings. We need individuals and institutions to work together to rejuvenate an antiquated system for our accelerating times and to ensure that the solutions we craft address the real problems rather than generating new ones.” In short, we need to be agents of change that anticipate rather than react. “We are called to be architects of the future, not its victims.” Buckminister Fuller.

Andrew Martin
Professor and ASSETT Advisor