Professional Development Meeting Notes from September 13-14

The following is my notes from our recent professional development meeting for the adjunct faculty. Feel free to make any corrections or additions in the comments to this blog.

1. Introductions - Everyone went around the room and gave their name and how long they'd been at UVU

2. Announcements

• --Make sure you submit your syllabus to Meredith Bennie either via email or a hard copy as soon as you can. As a reminder, you will also need to send a copy of your gradebook (either electronically or a hard copy) at the end of the semester.

• --In about a month or so, the Writing Program Administrators (WPAs) will send out the form to ask for your schedule preferences for the Spring 2012 semester. They will use this form to create the teaching schedule.

• --There was a typo on the recommended guidelines for the Exploratory Essay. The guidelines are that the paper should be approximately 6-8 pages in length (not 4-5).

• --This next semester, the WPAs will try to schedule a time to observe your class, especially if you're new to the faculty this year. This is a good opportunity to get some helpful feedback from the WPAs.

• --We were lucky enough to get a room on campus that can be used by the adjunct faculty to meet with students. The room is FA 742 (the Faculty Annex---the stand-alone buildings located in the southeast parking lot). It is occasionally locked, but we'll try to encourage the custodians to leave it open at all times.

3. Discussion about how to make the blog more effective (e.g. what kind of content you want and what would inspire you to add posts to the blog)

4. Discussion of any questions or concerns that have come up in the beginning of the semester

5. Discussion of the pros and cons of using student papers as models in class

• --How does peer review function to help students see examples of other students' writing?
• --Why do some (of the best) teachers avoid using model papers?
• --When teachers use models, how are they best employed?
• --What is the Graff & Berkenstein rationale for their "template" approach to teaching writing?
• --Can model papers constrain or limit students' creativity and thinking?
• --How can we ethically use examples of student writing?
• --Should students look at the best writers rather than at the writing of other students?
• --How was imitation used in classical rhetoric?
• --What are some of the best ways to use model papers in class?

Gae Lyn handed out the first two pages of an article discussing the value of imitation in teaching rhetoric by John Muckelbauer. The article was entitled "Imitation and Invention in Antiquity: An Historical-Theoretical Revision" from Rhetorica: A Journal of the History of Rhetoric 21.2 (Spring 2003): 61-88. You can view the full article online in JSTOR: http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.uvu.edu/stable/10.1525/rh.2003.21.2.61

(NOTE: This link will require you to login with your UVLink ID and password.)