Making Your Work Plan Work for You

Making Your Work Plan Work for YouSpring Faculty Workshop 2014

The VITAL Team

• Cynthia Rutz– Faculty Development

• Jen Gregory– Instructional Design

• Jodie Reminder– Instructional Technology

Work Plan Background• WPs in place since last spring• VITAL did not create them• BUT this year we realized that we

could help faculty use WPs to their advantage

Tips for Not Making This Hard on Yourself

• Make your wish list and then cut it in half

• Focus on what will make the greatest impact on your career goals

• Different career stages call for different areas of focus

• Only pick 1-2 goals for each category• Use things you already plan on doing

like attending conferences or redesigning a course you already teach

Where Do Goals Come From?• What are you actually working on?• What do your course and peer evaluations say?• What are your peers doing that you admire?• What you feel you need to add to your

teaching?• What is boring you/frustrating you in your

teaching? What can you do instead?• What are you passionate about? What do you

feel is lacking on our campus that you think we need?

• Look for problems…not solutions.

Keep Things Small

• Each year’s goals will build on the previous year’s goals.– Don’t redo an entire class, redo

a few lectures or activities.– Don’t write an entire book in

one year, focus on a chapter or section at a time.

How Can We Help

• You don’t have to do this alone: use VITAL and other campus resources to help, for example:– Teaching Goal: Improve class

discussions– Action Step: meet with Jen

Gregory to brainstorm solutions (work through the Instructional Design Process)

How Can We Help

• Another Example:– Scholarship/Creative Work

Goal: polish up and submit an article this summer

– Action Step: Attend summer writing circle and workshop the whole article

How Can We Help

• Another Example:– Professional Development Goal: I

want to learn more about how my students learn

– Action Step: Join Kieth Carlson’s FLC on Applying Memory Science to the Classroom

How Can We Help

• Another Example:– Campus Citizenship Goal:

citizenship off campus: partner with a local business to give your students real-life work experience

– Action Step: Work with Elizabeth Lynn, Director of Leadership and Service to identify and introduce you to a good local partner

How Can We Help

• Another Example:– Campus Citizenship Goal: On-

campus: use your passion: To make campus more welcoming to diverse populations

– Action Step: To partner with another faculty member to work on this, example: Liz Wuerfel and Allison Schutte create The Welcome Project

For More Help

Please contact the VITAL team at [email protected].