Our mission is the development of faculty across all career stages and areas of professional responsibility.

What People Are Saying

Selected feedback from various workshop evaluations:

• [The Blessing and the Burden was] maybe the most important event CAT has hosted. The conversation was phenomenal. I love the honest discussion and openly talking time on issues.
• Test construction table really helped in looking at the percentage of the various types of Bloom's taxonomy.
• I liked the fact that a real professor shared with us her experiences mentoring students.
• Open discussion of experience and challenges is awesome! It is great to hear that XU prepared our students well to perform at another institution like UCSD.
• Lots of discussion and real world examples of what did and did not work in the classroom.
• I loved the way in which you (as a team) presented step by step, each topic on Brightspace. The organization of material was excellent.

What the Numbers Are Saying

Faculty Attendees	72.20%
A&S Faculty	66.30%
Pharmacy Faculty	97.62%
Total CAS Academic Departments/Units Represented	19 of 20
Total COP Academic Divisions/Units Represented	3 of 3

Faculty in Residence

CAT+FD is pleased to offer thanks to Dr. Florastina Payton-Stewart and Mr. Jeremy Tuman for their service as Faculty in Residence at CAT+FD as their terms draw to a conclusion at the end of the spring 2019 semester.

Book Club

For our tenth annual Fall Faculty Book Club, we read Backlash: What Happens When We Talk Honestly about Racism in America by George Yancy. Dr. Jason Todd facilitated the book club.

Teaching Portfolio Working Group

Instead of our traditional Course Portfolio Working Group (which has been in place since 1994), we broadened our scope by implementing the new Teaching Portfolio Working Group (TPWG).

Portfolios provide documented evidence of teaching from a variety of sources — not just student ratings — and provide context for that evidence.

The TPWG is a two-semester project for faculty at any stage of their careers. The group meets five times in the fall semester and four times in the spring semester. Meetings focus on:

• Structuring the portfolio
• Summarizing teaching responsibilities
• Articulating one's approach to teaching
• Documenting teaching strategies and methods
• Demonstrating student learning
• Activities to improve instruction
• Peer observations of teaching
• Continuous improvement plans

The outcome of this work is a foundational collection of teaching materials upon which faculty members can build going forward, innovating and experimenting with teaching. In addition, the group uses the e-portfolio feature in Brightspace to build portfolios.

Staff Spotlight

During the 2018-2019 academic year, Dr. Tiera Coston published two book chapters and two conference proceedings papers. The topics addressed in these publications were mentoring and broadening the participation of underrepresented groups in the biomedical workforce. She also conducted two invited talks and a conference workshop on mentoring. Dr. Coston presented a poster on the online mentor training program currently under development and was awarded third place for outstanding poster. ~ Dr. Coston attended the Facilitating Entering Research Workshop on February 7-8, 2019 at the University of Wisconsin Madison. The Workshop focused on developing facilitating skills that will assist her in converting Xavier's current Entering Research Workshops to a for-credit course. ~ In February 2019, Dr. Coston was granted the status of Certified Facilitator by the National Research Mentoring Network based on her application demonstrating her skill and effectiveness as a facilitator of mentoring-themed workshops. ~ Dr. Coston was awarded support for her participation in the NSF INCLUDES Quality Education for Minorities (QEM) National Summit to Survey and Stimulate Broadening Participation Research at Historically Black (HBCU) and Tribal (TCU) Colleges/Universities summit in March 2019 in Baltimore, MD. The summit included 59 faculty and staff from 32 HBCUs and TCUs who assembled to contribute to the synthesis of current STEM Education Research in an effort to diversify the nation's STEM workforce.

In November 2018, Mr. Bart Everson facilitated an interactive workshop on "Developing a Personal Vision" at the annual meeting of the POD Network in Portland, Orgeon. He also presented at in Savannah, Georgia, at Meaningful Living and Learning in a Digital World in February 2019, on the topic of "Technopathology and the Mindfulness Movement: Lessons for Educators."

Ms. Janice Florent (Technology Coordinator, CAT+) attended two conferences: D2L Fusion and E-Learn. The advanced skills and information about industry trends acquired at the D2L Fusion conference increases her Brightspace knowledge and is a direct benefit for the training she provides to faculty. At the E-Learn conference she was able to attend sessions and network with other education professionals to gain insights on the latest technologies, applications, research, development, issues, and challenges related to online learning.

Dr. Elizabeth Yost Hammer (Director, CAT+FD) authored the teacher's edition to Myers' Psychology for the AP Course (3rd edition). This is a text used by AP Psychology teachers across the country. In addition, she authored the teacher's edition to the Blaire-Broeker & Ernst's Thinking About Psychology (4th edition). She was also an invited speaker at a number of conferences including the Mid-Atlantic Teaching of Psychology Conference, the American Psychological Association, Psychology One Conference and the Eastern Teaching of Psychology conference.

Jason S. Todd co-wrote a chapter for the book Assessment: Individual, Institutional, and International Approaches with Dr. Elizabeth Yost Hammer. The chapter, titled "The A-Word: The Role of Faculty Developers in Assessment," is the only chapter in the book that considers assessment from the perspective of faculty development. (The book will be published by APA Books in the spring of 2020.) Todd published a number of blog posts through the academic year, both to the CAT+FD blog, CAT Food, and by invitation to blogs hosted by outside groups. "Unerasing Gert Town" was posted to the WikiEdu Blog in July and described the work Dr. Todd's XCOR 1012 class contributed to the Wikipedia article about the Gert Town neighborhood. "Making Writing Assignments Meaningful and Transparent" was posted to the GTSA Blog in August and discussed evidence-based techniques for creating better writing assignments. In November, Todd chaired the panel "Heroes from the Gutter: Comics as Activism" at the South Atlantic Modern Language Association Annual Conference, at which he also read his paper, "Changamire's Bookshelf: Intertextual Advocacy in Ta-Nehisi Coates's Black Panther." In May, Todd co-presented with Dr. Hammer the workshop "Making Writing Meaningful in the Psych Classroom" at the 26th Annual APS-STP Teaching Institute. Todd also hosted a number of episodes for the CAT+FD podcast Teaching, Learning, and Everything Else.