Faculty & Staff Learning Community

The Faculty Staff Learning Community (FSLC) Program was created five years ago following faculty and staff participation in a Lilly Summer Conference Institute. Our FSLC incorporates many of the principles and concepts of effective learning communities and adds some innovative components. The program's primary goal is to bring together faculty and staff as well as student associates to study a topic related to teaching-learning processes and to develop innovative academic and co-curricular learning experiences.

The initial focus of the program was the first year experience; its current theme is integrative co-curricular experiences with emphasis on leadership, community service, cross-cultural learning and research. Recent faculty and staff projects incorporate a variety of experiential and active learning pedagogies including service learning, grant writing, community research, peer-assisted instruction and upper class tutoring, job search and money management workshops as well as practicing leadership and oral communication skills.

Program assessment results reveal that the faculty-staff fellows, student associates, and participating students overwhelming agree that the projects stimulate student engagement beyond the typical college learning experiences, lead to positive working relationships, and contribute to a heightened sense of community.

Faculty-staff fellows report high levels of satisfaction with their learning community experience; they contend that it has increased their knowledge of the teaching-learning process and led to meaningful changes to their courses, curriculum, and co-curricular programming. Faculty-staff fellows are selected by committee and commit to a May and summer workshop as well as periodic meetings throughout the academic year to discuss common readings on the learning community theme, implementation and assessment issues, and to provide feedback to one another on their individual projects. Fellows earn a modest stipend of $1000, are awarded $600 travel funds to attend a conference related to the theme, $100 for membership in a professional association, and an additional $200 for books and other materials. Student associates earn up to $600 for their work and some earn academic credit by working extra hours and completing additional research related to the project.

For more information, please contact:
Kristi L. Hoffman, Ph.D., Director, Faculty Staff Learning Community 
khoffman@roanoke.edu | phone 375-2027