April 2003
Volume 16, Number 4
Todd Zakrajsek is the first director of academic excellence at Central Michigan University in Mt. Pleasant, Michigan. Zakrajsek was previously director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at Southern Oregon University, where he also taught in the psychology department. Zakrajsek received his PhD in industrial/organizational psychology from Ohio University and currently teaches learning and memory, statistics,and a graduate teaching seminar.
I have one of the best jobs in academe: directing a faculty development center at Central Michigan University. Faculty development directors support faculty and the mission of the university with respect to quality instruction in a number of ways, including personal consultations, providing resources, delivering teaching/learning workshops, and serving as a consultant on matters of student learning.
My training in industrial/organizational psychology provided a phenomenal foundation for this job. The major aspects of faculty development involve issues very similar to core issues in I/O psychology:
- organizational change (dealing with increased class size)
- motivation (developing systems to help faculty to encourage students to do course work)
- job satisfaction (coaching "burned out" faculty)
- performance evaluation (consulting on evaluation of teaching effectiveness)
- assessment/program evaluation (designing classroom assessment techniques)
- interpersonal communication (methods to maintain civility in the classroom)
- research methods (helping faculty to conduct research on pedagogical issues).
Although faculty development directors come from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds, I find my training as a psychological scientist especially well suited.
I received my PhD in I/O psychology from Ohio University in 1992. Aside from outstanding disciplinary training, I gained extensive experience teaching while in graduate school. After graduate school I taught as an adjunct for 2 years: at a prestigious private college, a small public college, and a medium-sized university. This variety helped me get my first tenure-track job, and also served as a solid foundation from which I drew on my experience to help faculty with their teaching.
My road to faculty development started shortly after securing tenure in the psychology department at Southern Oregon University. I had a close colleague in the psychology department with whom I frequently discussed teaching philosophies. Soon, I was facilitating brown-bag lunch conversations with faculty from across campus. The provost, a huge supporter of faculty and faculty issues, gave me a small allocation of money to "see what would develop." Within a few years I had a faculty development center with release time and a small budget. Recently, I accepted a full-time job as the inaugural director of the faculty center for academic excellence at Central Michigan University.
I quickly realized this new job would be very different from the traditional academic jobs I had held. First, there were few people on campus with whom I could consult on issues related to faculty development; after spending years in departments surrounded by colleagues, I am now in a position with little peer support. Second, faculty with whom I work come from literally all over the university. I thought there were vast differences between clinical and experimental psychologists, but now find those differences minor compared to back-to-back conversations with a brand new faculty member in physics followed by a full professor in art.
The lack of inherent peer support and the variety of issues involved in this job necessitates the continual formation of collaborations. I quickly established contact with a variety of faculty, staff, and administrators from across campus. I find collaborating with a variety of individuals to be particularly rewarding. I now have a much better appreciation for multiple "ways of knowing." Although it is obvious faculty from different disciplines have different perspectives, I never really understood the depths of the differences until I began to work closely with faculty from dozens of different departments.
I am lucky to have a solid relationship with a great psychology department. I teach one course each semester and find it comforting to remain in contact with my "home" department. A friend from another university recently asked if I felt that I had "given up anything to work in an interdisciplinary teaching/learning center." My first response was an emphatic "no."
From the beginning, I have enjoyed the eclectic nature of a job that really opened my eyes to all the positive aspects of the diversity within academe and am reminded daily of the importance of embracing diversity. Now I realize that it does come at a cost. There are times when I miss daily interactions with colleagues in psychology, but that said, I am extremely lucky to have this opportunity. Every day, I get to help a variety of faculty who are good teachers and who want to be even better. After more than a decade working in higher education, I still run up the last few stairs some mornings, anxious to get to my office and begin the day.
