Instructional Ecology

We've wrapped up Chapter 3 for the FSL Common Read so we'll take a little break before we begin Chapter 4. Listen in to hear about the new season of Instructional Ecology that's currently in production! We'll reveal our season topic and tease a few stories you'll hear from professors and staff around the college.  

We wrap up Chapter 3 of Relationship Rich Education by Peter Felton and Leo Lambert by looking at two of the most challenging components to change at any institution: climate and culture. What do the authors say about these two elements of institution mission and what can we learn from them? Listen in for where this part of the book arrives.

This 6-minute episode puts some pressure on the authors of our Common Read book not just to tell us what we should “value” as a community but what action we would have to take to put that valuing into action. This helps us as the questions: what we do we want our culture of work here at the college to be like? What would we be willing to do to achieve it? Crucial questions to ask ourselves. 

We continue with Chapter 3: Making Relationships a Cultural Priority and touch on a topic we didn't get to in our in-person discussion. The authors find that in order to fully support students, institutions must invest in high quality teaching practices. Let's explore how the college is working to do this now and in the future.

Let's begin Chapter 3 of Relationship-Rich Education, our FSL Common Read book. We'll greet the midpoint of the book and the program by a refreshment of purpose. Then we'll begin with the chapter epigraph and finally begin to turn to how to address change at higher ed institutions. Don't forget - all MTC faculty, staff and leadership are invited to our bi-monthly zoom Friday, January 20th at 11am!...

Happy new year, my community! For our first episode of 2023, we close out Chapter 2 of our FSL Common Read book, Relationship-Rich Education. We'll look at how the chapter ends on a crucial meditation: that the work is already happening and that we need more ways of making it visible in our teaching culture. How could that look at MTC? Let's think together about possibilities.

This story begins with an act of service.  This episode is about another absolutely vital part of our college and instructional ecology: our MTC network of administrative specialists.  This episode is going to take you all over the college. It will take you to London. To a little town in West Virginia. It will take you to a part of the campus that can feel a bit like a doctor’s waiting room. To an...

We continue with Chapter Two of Relationship-Rich Education by Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert, called "Why Is This So Hard?" Today, we take a look at a few seemingly small issues that students encounter when they enter a higher education institution that can grow into serious barriers to their success and well-being. Even small, common institutional bits of jargon like "office hours" can become a...

Today we begin a look at Chapter Two of Relationship-Rich Education by Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert, called "Why Is This So Hard?" We'll kick off with the focus for the chapter, the seemingly baked-in negative emotions and higher education practices that drive students to isolation. And not just students; faculty and staff can also become isolated by similar circumstances. I'll share a few word...

This story begins with a paradigm shift. In 2019, the college moved from department-based advising to centralized Advising. This shift removed formal advising as a faculty duty and placed it in the hands of dedicated advisors. Further, these advisers would be imbedded in each School of the college, learning as much as they can about those pathways so they can be as helpful to students as possible....

This is our last look at Chapter One of Relationship-Rich Education by Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert. This week's Sustainable Connection looks closely at a topic we haven't discussed together: questions of meaning and purpose. The authors have found that faculty and staff regularly offering students opportunities to think and talk about the meaning of their studies and their purposes as they cha...

Further into Chapter 1 of Relationship-Rich Education by Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert, this week's Sustainable Connection looks closely at a central feature of the book: the webs of student relationships the authors have observed that college culture needs to nurture for greater student success. Who makes up these webs of relationship at the college? What do these multi-point webs offer student...

Hello, my community. Here is a little subseries of our podcast for you that will run every week except for when an episode of Instructional Ecology posts. These are weekly micro-episodes about five minutes each that connect to our college-wide Faculty, Staff & Leadership Common Read book.  Our book this academic year is Relationship Rich Education by Peter Felton and Leo M. Lambert. You’re inv...

This is a story that begins in the community. We begin with an issue that effects everyone living in the state, even the nation, personally: a critical shortage of emergency medical professionals (EMTs and paramedics). The state needs excellently trained EMT and paramedic workers in large numbers to fill the empty positions. Our communities need excellent local emergency medical professionals to p...

This is a story about innovation at the college.    We begin with a professor who is increasingly concerned with a big barrier to student success: the cost of textbooks. He decides to do something with his own classes to address that issue and ends up drawing in the rest of his department and connecting with staff and administration in other places of the college who all share his interest in the...

We created this podcast to find new ways of connecting our teaching community. The CTE is also a part of community of instruction so it seemed the thing to do to end with the creators of the podcast and those of us who both teach and support the teaching community. The CTE grew fourfold in 2020, right before the pandemic began and in the haze and haste of the last few years of survival, we wonder...

Christine Witkoski teaches Sociology and Geography in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. Our conversation is intensely connected to the metaphor of ecology and interdependence. Her teaching is thoroughly integrated into her life and her values and her imagination. All of these pieces of her identity touch each other. She did me the honor, as others have, of considering my questions care...

Andrea West has been teaching composition and English courses at MTC for two decades. She's explored and developed many creative, effective methods to help her students with core skills that they'll use in many aspects of their education and careers. She sees great value in the versatile and fundamental skills the School of English and Humanities provides to students. Regardless of their goals, th...

At MTC, we look into the college and our teaching and we look outward into the community to align our classes with who our students are and what they need. Janie Kronk, who teaches Architectural Engineering, lives in this doubleness, often moving back and forth across the college’s threshold. Janie is an architect who only recently joined our teaching community. That freshness of perspective is an...

Robert Marchi, another community professional who left his practice to become an educator, teaches in the School of Healthcare.    He sees our college as a vital component of healthcare in our state. MTC confers certifications that gets people directly into the workforce at many levels. Being a part of sending good healthcare workers into our communities is a source of joy and satisfaction for Rob...

Kari Beaty, child of and grandchild of teachers, swore she would never teach. Her teaching career has now spanned 47 years.  In the second of our conversations with life-long instructors, Kari charts the way she discovered teaching and how it's stayed alive for her over the years. Kari teaches Math in the School of STEM. She also teaches those learning to be K-12 Math teachers. The creativity and...

Drew Casper is another trained expert, a psychologist, who left his practice to go into teaching the community. In my conversation with Drew, you can hear the myriad subtle and deliberate ways he's observing his classes and individual students and responding to needs as they arise. The humanist base of Drew's teaching philosophy is crystal clear: the humanity of his students comes first - and his...

Greg Colley, originally a professional engineer, teaches Math in the School of STEM. He approaches teaching with an engineer's eye for design and solutions. When I talk with Greg about his teaching and his students, I hear him consistently asking, what is needed? What's the best way to get there? In my conversation with him, I heard the value of this patient, persistent evaluation and search for s...

Leah Norris Teaches Economics in the School of Social and Behavioral Sciences. She has a particular talent and determination to show her students how the theories she teaches are not just abstractions; those theories are describing and predicting patterns that we participate in and are touched by every day. Our conversation reminded me that in most instruction, one of our first jobs to to encounte...

This is a short excerpt from my original conversation with Errol Alger. In it, Errol offers close reading and interpretation of two paintings: The Red Studio by Matisse and Starry Night by Van Gogh. Through them, he explains how he connects this kind of learning to the important skill of critical thinking.