{"id":19252,"date":"2025-03-26T10:51:13","date_gmt":"2025-03-26T15:51:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/?p=19252"},"modified":"2025-03-31T15:08:39","modified_gmt":"2025-03-31T20:08:39","slug":"alison-k-staudinger","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/2025\/03\/26\/alison-k-staudinger\/","title":{"rendered":"Alison K. Staudinger"},"content":{"rendered":"

University of Alaska Southeast<\/h2>\n

Interim Dean, School of Arts & Sciences and Associate Professor of Social Sciences\"\"
\n<\/strong>Wisconsin Teaching Fellow, 1999-2000
\nCo-Director, Wisconsin Teaching Fellows & Scholars, 2018-2020<\/h5>\n

Interim Dean by Accident, SoTL by Design<\/strong><\/h4>\n

After five months at my new institution, I became interim Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. I never really wanted to be a Dean. How did this happen? I blame SoTL. I blame WTFS. This blame is not wholly misplaced, as SoTL helped me gain some of the formal and informal experiences that facilitated my current and past roles. But, if SoTL can be blamed, it also has helped provide me the tools and people I need to survive this unexpected promotion. WTFS, and SoTL, have offered collaborators, friends and an intellectual community. Engaging in SoTL also helped me with my ability to deal emotionally with big unexpected changes; I grew as someone able to reframe failure and dwell more comfortably in ambiguity (which is the fundamental position of an interim Dean) through reading and practice or SoTL scholarship, especially in the Humanities.<\/p>\n

During my first term as a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, I was teaching a 75-person section of Introduction to American Government, and I was overwhelmed. I loved facilitating seminar-style conversations\u2013not lecturing for 50-minutes three times a week. I\u02bcm sure my students could tell I felt silly as a \u201csage on the stage.\u201d Dr. Aeron Haynie (University of New Mexico), an English professor, had led faculty orientation, which gave me the courage to wander over to the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CATL) which she directed. I walked in with distress and questions–how can I make this course more fun? What other options are there beyond multiple-choice tests for big classes? Is there an alternative to lecturing for 50-long minutes three times a week? I walked out filled with joy, and toting articles and books. It turned out that I didn\u2019t have to experiment on my own with teaching but could join a bigger conversation about engaging students in learning (SoTL!)<\/p>\n

Although I might have been a little over-eager (ask me about how I re-designed the final project to be entirely choose-your-own-adventure and then spent all of Winter break figuring out how to grade 75 of them), my sense of joy in SoTL has only grown since this first year on the tenure-track. I was also lucky enough that year to have joined the UWGB Teaching Scholars program, a program modeled after WTFS but available locally. Facilitated by Dr. Ryan Martin (now a Dean himself!) and Dr. David Voelker, I spent a year on a project considering student reading habits which eventually, with much support and revision, was published in Teaching and Learning Inquiry. <\/em>This project both changed how I thought about the support students might need to engage in disciplinary, or sub-disciplinary reading practices and <\/em>solidified my interest in developing and practicing humanities or interpretative social scientific methods for SoTL. I became a CATL regular, and served on the faculty governance committee that helped advise the Center, which was next directed by Dr. Jennifer Lanter (Fox Valley Technical College) and then for much of my time at UWGB by Dr. Caroline Boswell (University of Louisville).<\/p>\n

I next applied to be a participant in the WTFS program. After I was accepted, I attended the Spring Conference, at that time held in Greenlake, Wisconsin (where I saw my first loon). To be honest, I was a little dismayed to see that the product of the work was a poster. I\u2019d never made one, nor wanted to. Was this the right choice for me? These fears melted away when I showed up for Faculty College, at the beloved (now closed) UW-Richland Center campus, where faculty slept in the dorms and stumbled over to the cafeteria. While the experience felt like camp for teachers\u2013because it was camp for teachers\u2013 it also provided a warm welcome to WTFS. Cindy Kernanan and David Voelker met us for lunch and brought high-quality chocolate bars for the afternoon session where we all introduced ourselves. I knew immediately that this was the right program for me because the leaders devoted so much time in that first meeting to community-building. It was the first of many large go-rounds of a circle. We also dug into a piece of writing together\u2013 engaging in what I now know, from working with David, is a form of reflective dialogue.<\/p>\n

Although, the rest of Faculty College included intensive engagement with SOTL project planning and methodology (thanks to Regan Gurung!) and a power outage that Peter Felten and students handled with grace\u2013 it also led to a late-night conversation over wine with Katia Levintova, who was then working on a volume on pedagogy, women, and political science. I somehow ended up co-editing this book with Katia. This publication became an essential part of my package for tenure and promotion, and it laid a foundation for engaging around questions that mattered to me, as a faculty developer and SoTLer. When I knew it was time for me to leave Wisconsin, I had the experience needed to land a position as Director of Faculty Development in the Office of the Provost at the University of Denver (DU). After three years doing this teaching and learning work full time, I shifted back into a hybrid role: associate dean of Arts & Sciences at the University of Alaska-Southeast, in Juneau, Alaska. Although there are challenging aspects to my work, the basic set of skills, and orientation to student learning, from SoTL made it possible.<\/p>\n

There are all sorts of names peppered in this essay, many of which you may know from SoTL publications or having attended their keynote sessions. SoTL is a relationship-rich endeavor, and many of us stay involved because we find communities that are lacking other places we\u2019ve looked at\u2013whether that is disciplinary societies, toxic departments, or rigid academic cultures. Two relationships born out of SoTL are both intellectually and personally essential to me. First, I have grown so much thanks to the mentorship and friendship of David Voelker. He is arranging this essay collection, so that might feel a bit awkward\u2013 but learning from him, then collaborating as a peer when we got to direct WTFS together for a year, then a similar program at St. Cloud State in 2021-2022, co-presenting at multiple conferences, and now staying connected even as I\u2019ve moved away from Wisconsin is a joy in my life. And I have an equally important friendship with Dr. Kayoung Kim, formerly of UW-Fond du Lac\u2013who I met when she was part of the WTFS cohort that I co-directed with David. I think that somehow Kayoung and I are linked, as she emerged back into my life five years later after a stint in Tennessee when she applied for the position of Director of SoTL and Faculty Learning Communities at DU. Having always admired Kayoung and her determination\u2013 it was magical to get to work with her as a peer and friend in Denver, and now she is a core support for me as I navigate new territories. These two, and the other networks from SoTL, help keep my current academic life somewhat sustainable. For example, I am currently part of an ISSOTL Writing group working on a revise and resubmit article that emerged from our time together in Utrecht, Netherlands, as well as co-directing the ISSOTL Grand Challenge #5 Interest Group: The Practice, Use, and Growth of SoTL. These communities help me stay engaged beyond my campus and focused on student learning.<\/p>\n

Finally, I think I ended up as an interim dean (for better or worse), because of some of the mindset shifts that came from SoTL. I remember getting \u201cfacilitating feedback\u201d on my first submission to TLI <\/em>(I think from Nancy Chick), to focus less on what \u201cI\u201d was doing while teaching and instead emphasize what \u201cstudents\u201d were doing as learners. This gestalt shift has shaped how I think about the classroom but also epitomizes how I think about leadership. How is the ecosystem of my school, including the policies and practices, in combination with the \u201cassignments\u201d and \u201cassessments\u201d that I am offering to faculty and staff, helping to promote growth, agency, and communication? The focus on learning also helps me reframe what often feel like cascading failures; I can both consider what there is to learn from them and <\/em>consider whether failure itself, in conditions where there aren\u2019t the proper supports to succeed, might be okay. This focus on failure and sharing failures has been an aspect of SoTL that I really appreciate\u2013 as in too many other academic contexts, we are pressured to present only success, statistically significant perfection.<\/p>\n

So yeah, SoTL is how I ended up in my current role, but also how I have gained the support and mindset I need to survive it. I don\u2019t know what is next for me, but I do know I want a position that foregrounds learning for myself and my academic community. One of my goals in Alaska is to see if building a SoTL program, ala<\/em> WTFS might be possible for our small system, and to provide for others the sort of opportunities that have been deeply meaningful for me.<\/p>\n

Biography:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Alison Staudinger is a political theorist who is currently serving as the Interim Dean of Arts & Sciences at the University of Alaska-Southeast (UAS) in beautiful Juneau, Alaska. Prior to that, she was Associate Dean of Arts & Sciences and Associate Professor of Social Science at UAS, after three-years as Direct of Faculty Development & Career Advancement at the University of Denver. Previously, she was Associate Professor of Democracy and Justice Studies at the University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, where she served as a department chair. Her academic interests include mid-century political thought and literature, the practice, use and growth of SoTL, student reading practices, and use of metaphors for learning.<\/p>\n

Selected SoTL Publications:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u201cTowards a Transdisciplinary, Inclusive, Research Agenda in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning\u201d (In review), ISSOTL International Collaborative Writing Group ICWG, which met in Utrecht, Netherlands in November 2023.<\/p>\n

Levintova, Ekaterina and Alison Staudinger, eds. 2018 Gender in the Political Science Classroom<\/em>. Bloomington, ID: Indiana University Press.<\/p>\n

Staudinger, Alison Kathryn. 2017. “Reading Deeply for Disciplinary Awareness and Political Judgment.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 5 (1): 1-16.<\/p>\n

\u201cProblem-Focused Learning in a First Year Learning Community\u201d with Denise Bartell and David Voelker, in Redesigning Liberal Education: Innovative Design for a Twenty-First-Century Undergraduate Education. eds. William Moner, Phillip Motley, Rebecca Pope-Ruark. United States: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2020.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Selected SoTL Presentations:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

\u201cStudent Focused Learning and Assessment\u201d Workshop, University of Alaska Southeast (2024)<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting into SoTL\u201d& \u201cMethods for SoTL Inquiry\u201d for the DU SoTL Faculty Fellows Program with Kayoung Kim (2021-2023)<\/p>\n

\u201cTeaching with the Trouble: A Reflective Dialogue on Affective Learning\u201d University of Wisconsin System Office of Professional & Instructional Development Spring Conference, Madison, WI (2023)<\/p>\n

St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, Keynote Speaker, Provost Summit (2023)<\/p>\n

St. Cloud State University, St. Cloud, Minnesota, Co-Director with David Voelker, \u201cSoTL Scholars\u201d program (2021-2022)<\/p>\n

Invited 2-day workshop, Texas Christian University, Fort Worth, TX, \u201cDiversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Political Science\u201d (2020)<\/p>\n

\u201cGetting into the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning\u201d workshop, American Political Science Teaching and Learning Conference, Albuquerque, NM (2020)<\/p>\n

Related Awards & Grants:<\/strong><\/h4>\n

DU-MERISTEM: Mobilizing Equity to Raise Inclusivity in STEM,<\/p>\n

University of Denver (CO-PI), NSF ADVANCE grant), ($1 million) (2022)<\/p>\n

Department of Education, Child Care Access Means Parents in School (CCAMPIS) Grant, University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (2020)<\/p>\n

American Association of Colleges and Universities, \u201cCivic Learning in the Major by Design,\u201d University of Wisconsin-Green Bay (2018)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

University of Alaska Southeast Interim Dean, School of Arts & Sciences and Associate Professor of Social Sciences Wisconsin Teaching Fellow, 1999-2000 Co-Director, Wisconsin Teaching Fellows & Scholars, 2018-2020 Interim Dean by Accident, SoTL by Design After five months at my new institution, I became interim Dean of the School of Arts & Sciences. I never […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4665,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[65,45,47,51],"class_list":["post-19252","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sotl-25th-anniversary-narratives","tag-2014-15","tag-uw-green-bay","tag-wisconsin-teaching-fellow","tag-wtfs-co-director"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19252","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4665"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19252"}],"version-history":[{"count":8,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19252\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19356,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19252\/revisions\/19356"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19252"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19252"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wisconsin.edu\/opid\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19252"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}