Pratt CTL Faculty Learning Communities
Pratt’s Faculty Learning Communities (FLC) are multidisciplinary research collaboratives with a strong commitment to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). Examining complex and pressing issues in academia, FLC participants engage in research-based implementations of models for responding to the complex dynamics in their classrooms and beyond through the lens of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), culminating in a research project ready for publication through the CTL. Throughout the two semesters, participants continuously engage in conversations with and support each other. Beyond the CTL publication, FLC participants share their research findings in conferences, presentations, and/or outside publications, not only with the Pratt community but beyond.
Faculty Learning Communities… “develop empathy among members; operate by consensus, not majority; develop their own culture, openness, and trust; engage complex problems; energize and empower participants, have the potential of transforming institutions into learning organizations; and are holistic in approach.
2025: Strength Based Education (FLC.SBE)
Strengths-based education (SBE) integrates VIA character strengths into teaching practices, offering a research-based approach that supports student learning and development on a holistic level. This FLC will explore how SBE promotes student success through multiple pathways: enhancing self-understanding, clarifying personal values, building resilience for stress management, facilitating social integration, strengthening self-concept, guiding career direction, and supporting overall wellbeing.
VIA character strengths, such as creativity, curiosity, love of learning, critical thinking, and more can feature prominently in student reflections, peer feedback and critique practices as well as interdisciplinary learning. Faculty who utilize a strengths-based approach may choose to begin their courses with character strength assessments, then adjust their assignments in ways that allow students to leverage their signature strengths while developing others. Intentionally weaving character strengths into a Pratt education can create more engaging learning experiences that prepare students for professional success and more importantly for personal flourishing beyond their classroom studies.
This FLC will be a small group of faculty and will rely heavily on collaboration, community and research to identify and work with character strengths in education. The final format of this FLC, as often is, a potential collaborative or individual research article to be considered for the iteratio (the CTL’s open-access journal) publication.
Participants:
- Yasmeen Abdallah, School of Art
- Yunyuan Deng, School of Architecture
- Toby Gardner, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Steven Pestana, School of Art
- Mitra Panahipour, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences
- Sophia Sobers, School of Art
Previous Faculty Learning Communities:
2024-2025: Open/Access Pedagogy (FLC.OAP)
Open/Access Pedagogy: Openness and accessibility are often touted as ideals that we should strive for in our pedagogy, but what do these concepts actually mean? And what can they mean for our classrooms, for our students, and for ourselves?
Resources shared by FLC.OAP:
The advent of digital technologies has created the potential for instant, (nearly) free-of-cost sharing of knowledge on a massive scale, and yet so many barriers to the sharing of knowledge remain in place. How can we contribute to breaking down these barriers (physical, financial, social/cultural, linguistic, etc.) in our scholarship, in our creative practice, and in our teaching?
We invite you to join our upcoming Faculty Learning Community: Open/Access Pedagogy (FLC.OAP) in which we will explore the worlds of open-access publishing, open educational resources, and open pedagogy as paths toward making higher education more accessible, decolonizing the curriculum, and developing radically inclusive pedagogies. We hope that you’ll join this year-long community with curiosity and a commitment to collaboration across disciplines as we investigate what it means for pedagogy to be open and accessible.
This FLC aims to collaboratively develop a resource that examines and/or models possible modes of making art and design higher education more accessible. As a requirement of completion, each participant will contribute to this collective resource. The final format of this resource will be determined by the learning community, but possibilities include an article published in iteratio (the CTL’s open-access journal) or a collection of open educational resources.
Co-Facilitators:
- Erica Morawski
- Amy Ballmer
- Amanda Matles
- Zach Slanger
Participants:
- Tim Cunningham
- Andrea de Toledo
- Cashel Campbell
- Matthew Garklavs
- Lara Allen
- Sophia Sobers
- Micki Spiller
- XaHara MeGod
- Anna Philip
- Todd Ayoung
- Yuxin Pei
- Corinna Kirsch
- Steven Pestana
- Maura Conley
2023-2024: Difficult Conversations (FLC.DC)
Difficult Conversations: What happens when a challenging topic comes up in the classroom? How can we work together to develop possible strategies for navigating these conversations?
When a topic comes up during class discussions that polarizes the classroom community, pushes back against established beliefs, addresses real-life issues that impact some students more than others, or otherwise challenges the classroom environment, how can we, as educators, continue maintaining the classroom community while encouraging the investigation of difficult conversations?
We present our 2023-2024 Faculty Learning Community: Difficult Conversations (FLC.DC) as an opportunity to reflect on times when difficult topics have come up, within larger class topics or as part of the unplanned generative discussions in the classroom. We hope that you’ll join this community with openness, as we work together to research possible modes of engaging with challenging topics ourselves and in the classroom while maintaining empathetic and inclusive environments for all students.
This FLC aims to collaboratively develop a resource that examines possible modes of engaging with challenging topics in the higher ed classroom and studio space. As a requirement of completion, each participant will contribute to this collective resource.
Participants:
- Todd Ayoung, Foundation
- Tim Cunningham, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SSCS
- XaHara MeGod, School of Art, Creative Arts Therapy
- Mel Skluzacek, School of Art, Fine Arts
2022-2023: Reflection Lab (FLC.RL)
What is your reflective practice? How does it serve you?
In these recent years of immense change – socially, pedagogically, personally – it seems we’ve hardly had a chance to catch our breath and look back on all this change for a chance to reflect and evaluate. Sometimes this reflective practice is a personal quest, with the aim of iteration or change. Reflection can also be a collective consciousness-raising effort, considering social forces and the influences they may have. Either way, we hope you’ll bring your reflective project to our 2022-2023 Faculty Learning Community: Reflection Lab (FLC.RL).
We present this Reflection Lab as an opportunity to reflect on classroom or studio practices or occurrences, large or small, that you would like to witness and reimagine through several iterative cycles of reflection, discussion, research, practice, and back to reflection over the course of a year. Whether on the micro or macro level (from an awkward or excellent moment, to an entire course or pedagogical approach consistently providing surprises), bring in something that you would like to spend time reflecting on and reimagining.
Participants:
- Anna Philip, School of Design, Fashion
- Brian Brooks, Foundation
- Caroline Matthews, School of Design, G/UG ComD
- Clelia Pozzi, School of Architecture, GAUD/GCPE
- David Smucker, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SSCS
- Julie Pochron, School of Art, Photography
- Natalie Moore, Foundation
- Rebecca Krucoff, School of Architecture, GCPE
- Renata Strashnaya, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SSCS
- Shireen Soliman, School of Design, Fashion Design
- Suzanne Nienaber, School of Architecture, GCPE
2021-2022: Seeding and Growing your Radical Pedagogies (FLC.RP)
What are you radically curious about?
Pratt’s upcoming Faculty Learning Community (FLC) for the 2021-22 academic year is going to take shape through a new, experiential model of building a virtual garden of our collective curiosities. Though a self-directed and self-determined project shared within a collaborative space, in this new FLC we will be working together to pose questions and ‘plant the seeds’ of creative ideas for new pedagogies to support learning in the post-pandemic world. We will be watering and tending our ‘plants’ together as well as individually, and watch them blossom into research-based collections of alternative approaches to art and design education. We’ll encourage FLC participants to use the Spring 2022 semester to engage in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) and through reflection, create and share their take-aways. These reflections will be published in our CTL Journal.
The structure of the FLC this year will not exactly follow the traditional approach for learning communities. Instead, we will be implementing a new online structure for collaboration, and building and exploring ways of tending to multidisciplinary connections and community. FLC participants should still expect to participate, share research, use examples from their classroom or studio teaching, share and receive feedback from colleagues. In the Spring 2022 we will engage in writing, peer feedback, and producing a scholarly piece for publication.
Participants:
- Joelle Danant, School of Continuing and Professional Studies, SCPS
- David Smucker, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SSCS
- Bethany Ides, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Humanities & Media Studies
- Lex Braes, School of Architecture, Interior Design
- Chelsea Limbird, School of Design, Interior Design and PIC
- Sebastian Kaupert, School of Design, UG ComD
- Layla Zami, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, Humanities and Media Studies
- Kim Bobier, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, History of Art & Design
- Analia Segal, School of Art, Fine Arts
- Fanny Krivoy, School of Design, COMD
- Shireen Soliman, School of Design, Fashion Design
- Julie Pochron, School of Art, Photography
- Clelia Pozzi, School of Architecture, GAUD – GCPE
- David Thomson, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences,Performance Studies
- Chloe Smolarski, School of Art, DDA – Digital Arts
- Dominica Paige Giglio, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences , HMS
- Brian Brooks, Foundation
- Kelly Gawel, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, SSCS
- Rebecca Krucoff, School of Art, Art and Design Education
- Maura Conley, CTL, and School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, HMS
- Holly Adams, CTL
- Judit Török, CTL
2020-2021: Ungrading and Embracing the Flux (FLC.UGF)
Ungrading Practices is a multidisciplinary research collaborative with a strong commitment to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The Ungrading Practices FLC will initially be focused around the provocations by Stommell in his article ‘How To Ungrade’, such as: 1/ Why do we grade? 2/ How does it feel to be graded? 3/ What do we want grading to do (or not do) in our classes? 4/ What would happen if we didn’t grade? Participants will engage in research-based implementations of alternative approaches to grading and assessment through the lens of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
Embracing the Flux: Responding to Complex Dynamics in Academia is a multidisciplinary research collaborative with a strong commitment to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). The Embracing the Flux FLC will examine ideas of belonging, building communities within a diverse classroom or studio, the influence of intersectionality and culture on the episteme within different spheres of the academia. Participants will engage in research-based implementations of models for responding to these complex dynamics through the lens of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).
Due to the pandemic and the need to consolidate resources and personel, these two FLCs now function as one group, now called Ungrading and Embracing the Flux: Faculty Learning Community.
Participants:
- Kim Bobier, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, HAD
- Robert Lee Brackett III, School of Architecture, UGArch
- Bethany Ides, School of Liberal Arts and Sciences, HMS
- Christopher Lee, School of Design, UG ComD
- Christian Rietzke, School of Design, Interior Design
- Kim Sloane, Foundation, Foundation
2019-2020: Exploring Inclusive Practices (FLC.EIP)
Pratt’s Faculty Learning Community (FLC) for the 2019-20 academic year, Exploring Inclusive Practices, followed the tradition of a multidisciplinary and collaborative approach to faculty development, emphasizing learning through community-building and action-research. The FLC participants engaged in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) as they posed problems about teaching and learning issues related to diversity, equity and inclusivity in the classroom and studio.
Participants:
- Fanny Krivoy – Undergraduate Communication Design
- Ane Gonzalez Lara – Undergraduate Architecture
- Gaia Hwang – Graduate Communication Design
- Migiwa Spiller – Foundation
- Natalie Moore – Foundation
- Kimberly Bobier – History of Art and Design
- Mrinalini Agarwal – Fine Arts
- Pirco Wolfframm – Undergraduate Communication Design
- Erica Morawski, History of Art and Design
- Judit Török, Director of Pratt’s CTL
2016-2019:
Transfer of Learning
Considered how the Pratt curriculum might be optimized in order to foster transfer of learning between all facets of the undergraduate art and design majors.
Publication: The Art of Designing a Curriculum
Crit the Crit
Explored studio-based critique typologies and methodologies used at Pratt, faculty considerations of pedagogical approaches, and the various methods used to perform critiques in different fields.
Publication: Critique Catalogue
Learning in the First Year
Considered the following inquiry questions: What classroom strategies promote learning how to learn, how can we effectively promote students’ integration of skills and concepts?
Learning Through Narratives
Explored how narratives allow us to explore and create shared realities and often the underlying structures of reality.