UW-La Crosse
Assistant Professor, Comparative Animal Physiology
Wisconsin Teaching Fellow, 2023-2024
Finding Belongingness as a STEM Educator
The Wisconsin Teaching and Fellows and Scholars (WTFS) program is a meta experience where instructors can both experience and explore pedagogical innovation. The WTFS program is also a community of practice by which participants can support one another and access the collective expertise of the community to accelerate the development of their teaching acumen. The WTFS community is comprised of not only the members of that year’s cohort, but 25 years of participants from across the state who have been touched by the program and gratefully give back to that community. Ultimately the WTFS embodies the ideals of high-impact practices. Passionate and eager participants hungry for professional growth can spend a year serving each other and feeding that hunger. What I find truly special is that the area we seek to develop through the WTFS program is our educational effectiveness and the quality of our teaching and learning. Through our own growth in the WTFS program, my colleagues and I have improved our praxis as educators and the imparting of knowledge to our future leaders.
I entered the WTFS program as a post-COVID faculty hire, disillusioned by my professoriate and the diminished sense of community on my new campus. I had transitioned from a prominent position at a diverse polytechnic institution. I had been involved in the strategic planning and accreditation process at that university, which increased my sense of purpose and connection to that institution. In the wake of remote teaching and the transition to a new position at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse (UWL), I had lost my compass. I found the demographics, politics, and approaches at UWL differed significantly from my previous institution. Those differences made navigating the campus climate hard and easy to withdraw from. Rather than seeking fulfillment from outside the classroom I focused more on my teaching.
I had experience with the assessment of student learning, but in practice I was married to my PowerPoint slides and speaking at my students. After all, that is the way that I had been professed to for my own STEM education. I found that these new students, in a new state after a period of remote instruction, were not responding as I assumed they would. Frustrated with their “lack of success,” I saw the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and my assessment background as tools to help me fix my students. After all, I assumed, the issue must be their study skills and not my teaching. I even presented on this topic at a national conference (Use and Perception of Peer Recommendations to Improve Study Skills in Undergraduate Anatomy and Physiology Courses). I applied for the WTFS program to develop my SoTL skills.
My first reality check was very early in the WTFS program, perhaps even the first day. I was presented with the notion that there were aspects of navigating an institution that may be more difficult for some students. The ideas that there was a lack of transparency, or hidden curriculum that put some students at a disadvantage was novel to me at the time. I recall going back to my syllabus and highlighting all the sections where jargon and ambiguity could potentially limit student understanding.
The next transformative concept I recall, was data demonstrating how “imposter syndrome” and a belonging uncertainty impacted student performance. This realization was made even more poignant by the fact that I, was dealing with my own belonging uncertainty as a new hire in a new state. It became clear to me how much I still didn’t know about education and that making a student struggle was not a way to weed out the good from the bad. Rather my ineffective teaching was a way to keep students from being successful.
Inspired by the WTFS directors and with the support of my WTFS colleagues I took a deep dive into the concept of student belongingness. Despite being right after safety and security on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs I don’t believe belongingness has gotten enough attention in STEM education. The more that I, with the help of my WTFS colleagues, discussed and explored the experiences of our students, the more I realized that my archaic approach to teaching was the issue not my students.
Prior to WTFS my experience with my students had been transactional. I started implementing strategies to connect more with my students and connect them with each other and the material. I invited a group of my STEM students to present a workshop with me on these strategies at as a Social Justice week event (Student Retention and Sense of Belonging with Study Strategy Support in an Upper Division Anatomy and Physiology Course).
My time in WTFS was drawing to a close, but I was hooked. I couldn’t and can’t imagine going back to the educator that I was prior to the WTFS program. I applied for and was accepted into a student affairs administration Educational Doctoral (Ed.D.) program. I am frequently told that it is uncommon for STEM faculty to return to school for a doctorate in a non-STEM field. My counter to that is that we are all educators, why would we not want to be the best at educating and understanding our students as we can?
In addition to presenting at the OPID Spring Conference on Teaching and Learning (Improving Student Retention and Sense of Belonging Through Study Strategy Capacity Building in an Anatomy and Physiology Course) I presented at the UWL conference on teaching and learning. I now see my goal is not only to continue to improve my own teaching but also to share strategies and help other STEM instructors improve as educators. I was invited to speak to junior stem faculty at the Universities of Wisconsin Alliance for Inclusion, Diversity, Equity & Advancement in STEM (IDEAS Alliance) Fall 2024. I have presented mini-conference for the UWL Center for Advancing Teaching and Learning (Establishing Community Agreements and Classroom Norms) and I now am the principal investigator for my department’s Institutional review board (IRB) SoTL efforts. All of this is to help instructors in my department, institution and across the state, improve their relationship with students and their effectiveness as educators.
I was looking for own purpose and sense of belonging. Because of the WTFS program, I found not only a community where I could thrive. I also found a community committed to the success of all the WTFS participants. Although I am extremely grateful for the inspiration, encouragement, collaboration, and community that that I have gained from the WTFS program, I am even more grateful for what WTFS has done for our students in Wisconsin. Because of WTFS, hundreds of instructors have made intentional improvements in their teaching and inspired others to do the same. That must translate into thousands if not hundreds of thousands of students who have benefited from engaged and intentional teaching practices. That is truly amazing.
Biography:
Cord Brundage is a Biology Department faculty member, physiologist, veterinarian and education doctoral student at the University of Wisconsin-La Crosse. Cord started at UWL in 2021. Prior to that he was a practicing veterinarian and Associate Professor in Animal and Veterinary Science at Cal Poly Pomona. Cord participated in the 2023-2024 WTFS cohort. He is passionate about and studies student development, engagement and success especially in STEM disciplines.