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Jordan: In this episode of Making Meaning, we welcome Mark Sciutto, the Director of the Muhlenberg Center for Teaching and Learning and Professor in Psychology.

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Mark, thank you so much for joining us.  (*music plays*). Mark:  Thank you for having me

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Jordan:  So, we're going to talk today about the Muhlenberg Center for Teaching and Learning, which we'll probably refer to as MCTL from here on out.

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Could you give us a little background about what MCTL is, and who is a part of this program?

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Mark:  MCTL, what it used to be called the Faculty Center for Teaching, was developed back in 1994.

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And recently we have changed the name to the Muhlenberg Center for Teaching and

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Learning or MCTL to better reflect the teaching and learning that happen in all sorts of places across campus involving both staff and faculty.

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Central to our mission is to support a sense of community that provides space and resources for colleagues

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to reflect on teaching and learning and provide a place for them to sort of learn from each other,

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to explore to experiment. It's been some of my most valuable moments from the time I walked on campus until now,

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and one of our goals is to be a presence and to communicate that we value teaching from day one until the day you retire.

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So we offer programing professional development around education and teaching and learning,

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starting with new faculty orientation all the way through a person's career.

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So that's kind of our central mission. And the other thing that I think is critically important that I try to emphasizes the

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importance of visibility of the kinds of things that we're doing in teaching and learning.

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We have such amazing colleagues all across campus, and it's often not visible to other people.

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So the things that you guys are doing in digital learning, like you're doing in other departments, a lot of that is not visible.

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And so one of the roles I think MCTL can play is to make that kind of work more visible.

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We're intentionally collaborative. We want to connect people and leverage our strengths, which is, we all value teaching.

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We all really enjoy reflecting on our teaching and thinking about it.

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So right now I serve as the director.

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Sherri Young serves as the Assistant Director, and we have in total, including the 2 of us we have a 10 person advisory board.

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And it's comprised of faculty and staff from all different areas of campus.

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And so we have divisional representation. We have differences across rank of faculty.

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We have now for the first time, we have staff members as formal members of the advisory board,

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which was intentional and it occurred as part of that shifts away from it being viewed as a purely faculty oriented programing.

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We we try to provide a range of programing,

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like I said from new faculty orientation was one of our most important programs that sets the tone from the person campus.

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And then we do programing all through the year and we hope that we sort of tap into the kinds of

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things that our our colleagues are thinking about and want to be thinking about at any given time.

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So a lot of what we do is about reading the room and saying what is needed right now and what can we offer?

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Jordan: So we went digital this year, right? We everything moved remotely online.

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How did that affect your the programing that you all do through MCTL?

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And is there anything that you hope to keep as a practice moving forward?

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Mark: Yeah, that's a great question. We were all just forced to reimagine everything we do from top to bottom in our in our classes,

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in our in our administrative work, all sorts of things, and it's no different for MCTL.

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So normally what we'll do will determine sort of topics that we want to cover for the year.

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We'll do that. The advisory board makes some suggestions. We usually solicit input from colleagues across campus.

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We might just be in the midst of a discussion here, you know, at a committee meeting or something, and somebody says something and that trigger that

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that you know, sparks an idea and we bring it back to the advisory board. And we also pay attention to

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what's going on in higher ed and the pandemic was was that kind of process

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you know, 10 times over. And so it sort of forced us to rethink every single thing that we do.

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So that started with new faculty orientation. Normally we would do two days in person and no one was in person this time.

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We had faculty who started at the college and had never set foot on campus, and we're not coming to campus and taught remotely for an entire year.

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So the sense of community and camaraderie and that face to face the relationships that we that we thrive on, that we I think we do best.

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All of a sudden that was just sort of thrown out the window. We had to rethink, how do we create that?

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How do we how we support that when we can't bring everybody together in person?

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And I think and and ended up with some really, in a really great place that's shaping what we're doing this year.

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So we're hoping that we're and we're assuming that we're going to be in-person,

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but we're still not going to do the new faculty orientation entirely in-person.

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We did some asynchronous programing over June and July last year, and we thought it provided a nice, slower on ramp.

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So what usually happens is you throw all the new faculty in a room for two days and they have a great experience,

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but they're totally exhausted and overwhelmed. And it's a week before the semester, so they don't have a whole lot of time.

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So they go to things like digital brew that I am assuming we will talk about and they want to do these things.

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But it's three days before the semester starts.

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And so we're going to keep some of the programing asynchronous and give new faculty a little bit more of an on ramp.

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And then we're going to focus the the in-person piece on topics that really will benefit most from being in the room together.

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So inclusive pedagogy for one. We have a panel with second year faculty every year that the new faculty can ask

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questions with no one else in the room of people who were in their shoes last year.

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So new faculty orientation is one of the biggest changes. The programing we did for the rest of MCTL,

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we decided that we were going to shift gears and rethink the nature program typically will do

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four or so programs the semester with formal events plus a couple sort of ancillary things.

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There were all in-person, you know, we we love food and drink, so we'd always have wine and cheese and things like that.

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And it was part of the community that we we try to create and seeing everyone a person going to

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events is always one of the things they're reporting on us knowing that we couldn't do that.

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We decided, what is it look like? What do we need as a community right now?

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So we did fewer formal programs. We still did a few and they were really well-attended.

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I think partly because it was more convenient to come on Zoom than to schedule and show up at a place,

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and that's something that we're wrestling moving forward. But the other thing we did was we did a series of drop in sessions every two weeks or so,

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and it was just a place we might throw out a general issue to, you know, hey,

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if you're interested in talking about in the discussions about keeping your camera on average and talking about issues of ratings,

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how issues of race are coming up in the midst of the events around this or the election or things like that.

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And it was really amazing.

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We had a really consistent attendance, and those informal drop in sessions were less work intensive in some ways than putting together full programs.

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But they serve a really important function, which is it was one of the few places where colleagues could just come,

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not have to do anything in preparation, just come and listen to each other and talk with each other.

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And that was really great,

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and I heard from quite a few people that it was one of the things that helped get them through this this semester and having that space.

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And so what we're wrestling with now is what does this look like next year?

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Drop ins in person are great, but we know that that's going to be harder for people to do than virtual.

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So we're wrestling with questions of what does the the next version of this look like?

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Jordan: I mean, you mentioned that community was a big part of what you do,

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and I will say that one thing I remember from this past year was seeing reminders about the drop in sessions for MCTL,

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like that will stick with me as a community building moment that you all really just did so wonderfully in a really difficult time.

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So I'm glad that others found them beneficial as well.

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Mark: There's probably a few people who have put me into their spam folder.

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They're trying to get an email from me at this point, but we wanted to make it very, like I said, very visible that this is a plant.

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And one of the things that was really rewarding about this was that there were quite a few people that came to sessions that I

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had not seen it in person sessions, and that was a sign of success from our perspective that this was pulling people into

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the conversation and this was bringing people into the community for whatever reason,

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whether it was personal schedules or other circumstances or they didn't,

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a lot of people weren't sure if I was able to come to these things because I'm a I'm an adjunct instructor or a staff member,

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and we just tried to make it very clear that this is an open space and we saw the payoff in that.

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There were a lot of fresh faces there and that was really encouraging.

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Jordan: So it's really fun about talking to you today is hearing you talk about the mission of MCTL because I do think

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that it overlaps with so much of what we try to do in instructional design and on the digital learning team.

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And for those reasons, that's probably why we have had some success with the digital brew program, which you mentioned.

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So we've been very fortunate to partner with MCTL for the last three or four years.

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I think we did virtual this past year, so maybe it's four years on the digital brew event.

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So how do you see this event fitting into the mission of MCTL?

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Mark: It's a great question. Digital Brew is one of my favorite events. It's it's great.

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And it's not just the brew part, but it's just one of the encapsulates some much of what we try to do with with MCTL.

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And then the digital learning team has been a great partner, and I think we share that vision for what you know, what space our work occupies.

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We place digital brew very intentionally at the end of the four day and new faculty orientation,

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and that's traditionally been because it's something that's it's a loose atmosphere.

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It's a chance. What we're trying to send over the course of the entire day is this is a place that loves teaching, that values teaching.

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This is a place where you're going to be surrounded by people who enjoy talking about teaching.

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And so then we spend the day kind of communicating this because I think that's not always what new faculty are expecting coming in,

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and it helps set the tone that I think is really helpful for them as they start their year.

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So they get to this session and they get to walk around and see all these cool digital tools,

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all these colleagues that are talking about how they use them in a very sort of light, loose but constructive atmosphere.

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And so they start to make connections with other people on campus in a way that is meaningful and they'll remember.

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And I always think of digital. There's these what I call drop everything moments, right?

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Right. I'll see something. And I just sort of I can't sit there like, pleasantly distracted.

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I can't stop thinking about it at that point because like some. I wonder if I could do that in my class where I could use this in this way.

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And that's where I miss my commute in the sense that I would I would go to digital brew and I have some time to think about it,

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and then I have about 45 minutes to sort of mull over that idea. And I couldn't think about anything else for awhile.

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I wonder if I could do this. And that's precisely what we're striving to do with MCTL to have programs

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where everybody gets that kind of drop everything feeling and where they want

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to rethink something that they're doing or they want to experiment with something

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where they want to go and talk to other colleagues about what they're doing.

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One of the things that we're thinking about for next year is ways to get people into other's classes so they can see how other people teach.

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Typically, right now, what Muhlenberg does is most observations happen in the context of the evaluation.

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And there's relatively little observation that goes on for purely developmental and curiosity purposes.

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And so Digital Brew is a great entry into that kind of thinking that you get to see

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people talking about how they use things and in a way that kind of piques curiosity.

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Jordan: It is definitely one of my favorite events as well. I think it's it's exciting to see people, as you say, get curious and excited about things,

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and you can see this moment where somebody is listening and thinking at the same time, how is this going to work for me?

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How could I do this too? And it's such a great event for visibility.

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I mean, I know we value it so much too, as a way of showcasing the hard work that faculty and students have done all you know in a previous year,

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but also as a way that we can say, look at how we can support the work that you want to do as well.

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So it is a great event for bringing people together, and I hope that we can continue it for many years to come.

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And speaking of the future, what partnerships would you like to continue or programs

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would you like to see MCTL continue to tackle in the future?

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Or even I know we touched on your currently thinking about how things are changing post-pandemic.

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What are some things that are even maybe just challenging to think about right now?

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Mark: One of the things that I've been thinking a lot about and I think could a partnership would be

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really valuable is this issue of visibility and one of the things that we're planning for the fall

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is a big celebration of teaching and learning. We're all coming back from a very, very long year.

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We're all still thoroughly exhausted. We're all relatively disconnected.

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And that's the piece of working at Muhlenberg that I've valued the most and its the piece that was hardest during the pandemic.

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So we thought, you know, let's take this opportunity as a follow up kind of to new faculty orientation.

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It's not really part of the new faculty orientation,

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but have a a day where we showcase the kinds of teaching and learning activities that are going on across campus.

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And so we're going to do some panels across the day.

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People can come and go as they please.

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But on things that have been going on on campus like initiatives related to anti-racism in courses, community engaged scholarship,

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but it would be fantastic to see a panel or an illustration of the adaptations that people have made during the pandemic.

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And I think you all are in the best position to sort of point to examples of people who are reimagined the way they've done things you've seen.

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I get to see a fair amount, one of things I love about MCTL is that I get to see more than just say,

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I love my colleagues in psychology, but I get to see outside of my department.

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And I think that the digital learning team is the best place to sort of say, I know, you know,

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this colleague is doing this, and that would be just amazing for people to see and what this what I hope we can do,

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either through that event or through events during the year is give new faculty a

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chance to see what colleagues are doing across campus that can connect with them.

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Give us a chance to see what is is going on on campus and give senior colleagues like myself that have been here for a long time.

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And I'm not necessarily aware of what's going on in the department across campus and some really amazing work.

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So we tend to silo ourselves a little bit, even though we're a small campus.

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I still am stunned when I when I see probably talking about their work, and I had no idea that they were reviewing this.

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This happened last night as a matter of fact in the conversation. I had no idea you were doing work on this.

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And so a lot of opportunities for collaboration and connection. And so I think partnering with the digital learning team around pandemic innovations

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and how they're going to shape teaching moving forward would be an ideal next step.

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Jordan: Well, I won't speak for all of my colleagues,

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but I think that sounds like an amazing program and I would definitely make the five and a half hour drive to campus to be there in person.

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So I hope that that happens and I will definitely mark it on my calendar.

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Mark: If you make the five and a half hour drive, we will publicize that as as how valuable the program is that Jordan made a five and a half hour drive.

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Jordan: Exactly. Yeah, it's proof of how important these things are on campus when you're willing to do that.

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Well, Mark, thank you so much for joining us for this episode. It has been fantastic talking with you,

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and I look forward to hopefully partnering as as you said further into this year and also just seeing where MCTL goes as we return this fall.

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So thank you. Mark: Thank you for having me and thank you and all the digital learning team for the monumental lift

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you all did this this year. It's it is truly appreciated, and I know that that's I'm speaking for all of my colleagues across campus.

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I I've heard that so much. So thank you all. (*music plays*)