Grinnell College has created three, two-year, postdoctoral teacher/scholar
fellowships in the sciences to serve as a catalyst for new interdisciplinary
curricular development. Appointments have been made based on applicants
understanding of the synergistic relationship between research
and education and the value of integrating them at the undergraduate
level, their experience in the interdisciplinary areas of scientific
inquiry being solicited, and their career intention of teaching
at the undergraduate level at a liberal arts institution. Each
teacher/scholar has been matched with a faculty member who is
working with a member of another department on developing interdisciplinary
teaching and research projects.
The teacher/scholars share teaching loads with their mentors.
Teacher/scholars are asked to teach full courses or team-teach
with their mentors. Mentors, who receive conditional release time
equal to the number of courses or parts of courses taught by the
teacher/scholars, are asked to devote that time to working on
a cross-disciplinary project with the teacher/scholar. The project
may be to develop or substantially revise a course to reflect
the combined and extended areas of inquiry that result from the
collaborations. Teacher/scholars also conduct research with students
in the summer student/faculty research program, thereby expanding
the number of student participation opportunities.
The following are short descriptions of interdisciplinary collaborations
which our faculty are currently developing and that are being
seeded under this proposed postdoctoral teacher/scholar mentoring
component.
The college has a long history of conducting summer workshops
in which faculty share their ideas and expertise on various pedagogies.
As a component of our Integrating Research and Education project,
we hope to hold faculty development seminars during each summer
of the grant period. A major objective of these seminars is to
give the science faculty a forum for sharing the results of their
efforts to integrate research and education and to work toward
defining and articulating science and science education in liberal
arts settings. Another objective of the seminars is to encourage
faculty to discover and further develop common ground among various
methods of research. Seminar discussion focus on sharing examples
of doing science across disciplines, exploration of similarities
and differences in research methods, and application of this broader
understanding to constructing, understanding, and evaluating student
research. The Science Division plans to continue the seminar series
by holding regular academic year workshops at which occasional
outside speakers will be asked to provide fresh experiences and
ideas on student learning.
A three-year study is being carried out of our current student/faculty
research collaborations of which will result in a description
of a model of our research program and the effects of that program
on student learning. This research is being conducted by David
Lopatto, Professor of Psychology, who is assisted by four
students during each year of the grant period. The study is initially
directed at the summer research program in the Science Division
but could be expanded to include academic-year independent research
undertaken by students and course-related research. The goal of
this study is to illuminate learning outcomes that result from
the research experience. The results of Professor Lopattos longitudinal
study will be made available to the NSF as a part of this grant.
To the GC AIRE Award page
To the Grinnell
College Homepage