Lawrence Today magazine, Spring 2006
The Teagle Foundation of New York City has awarded Lawrence a $100,000 grant
to underwrite an assessment study of its new postdoctoral teaching fellows
program.
Lawrence is one of five institutions the Teagle Foundation has recognized through
its Working Groups in Liberal Education Program, which supports projects designed
to generate fresh thinking about how to strengthen liberal education.
Announced
in June 2005, the Lawrence
Fellows in the Liberal Arts and Sciences program provides recent Ph.D.
recipients with mentoring relationships, teaching opportunities, and research
collaborations to better prepare them for professorial careers at selective
liberal arts colleges (Lawrence
Today, Fall 2005). Pictured: Lawrence Fellow in theatre arts Annette Thornton
with students rehearsing the First Term play, Language of Angels.
The program also seeks to enrich student learning, more quickly introduce
the newest research techniques being pursued at distinguished graduate
programs
to the Lawrence curriculum and its student research programs, and further
enhance Lawrence’s extensive offerings of one-on-one learning experiences
for students.
The Teagle Grant will support a working group of faculty, staff, students,
and administrators who, over the course of the next 20 months, will study
the fellows program and assess the degree to which it is achieving its intended
goals.
The group will analyze data gathered through a variety of methods, including
self-assessment of teaching and scholarship, video and in-class observations,
course evaluations, surveys, and other reports. The results, when compiled,
will be disseminated through a variety of means, including a webpage dedicated
to the project, as well as a conference that Lawrence will host.
“The results of this study are expected not only to provide beneficial
information on the Lawrence Fellows program but to be helpful to postdoctoral
fellowship
programs at other institutions as well,” says Bill Skinner, director
of research administration, who will oversee the
study. “The impact
of postdoctoral programs has rarely been assessed, and this study will place
Lawrence
in a unique position to demonstrate the role liberal arts colleges can play
in preparing the future professoriate of higher education.”
Eight fellows were selected as the program’s first appointments and
joined the faculty in September. They were chosen from a pool of more than
240 applicants,
who had pursued their doctorate or terminal degree at top-ranked research
institutions in the United States, as well as Australia, Canada, Germany,
Italy, Switzerland,
and the United Kingdom.
Lawrence Fellows are appointed for two years, during which time they teach
courses, offer individualized instruction opportunities to students, and
continue their professional activities as scholars and or performers. A goal
of the program is to have up to 20 fellows on campus in any given year.
The Teagle Foundation was
established in 1944 by the late Walter C. Teagle, longtime president and
later chairman of
the board
of Standard Oil Company (New Jersey), now the Exxon Mobil Corporation.