CAT+FD is pleased to welcome two new members to our staff this Fall!
Dr. Harish Ratnayaka joins us as the new Faculty-in-Residence for First-Year Faculty. In addition to supporting CAT+FD activities and initiatives, Harish will lead the programming for first-year faculty. This includes new faculty orientation, serving as a CAT+FD mentor to first-year faculty, and organizing the new faculty "brown bag" series.
Harish is from the Biology Department, and his research interests include plant ecophysiology. He studies the way different environmental conditions affect plant function. He is especially interested in how light-dependent and carbon assimilatory processes adjust in response to environmental stress, and how useful phytochemicals are elicited during such adjustments.
In addition, we welcome Dr. Lisa Shulte-Gipson as the Faculty-in-Residence for Service Learning. In this role she will work in close partnership with staff in Student Affairs to provide services to faculty incorporating the pedagogy of service learning into the curriculum and promoting civic engagement through meaningful community participation. In addition, she will serve as the CAT+FD liaison for implementation of the new core.
Lisa, a social psychologist by training, is interested in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Within this realm her past research has focused on community engagement and techniques associated with positive psychology (e.g., gratitude journals) as enhancing well-being, effects of motivation on performance, and effects of assuming responsibility for one’s learning on performance.
We in CAT+FD are enthusiastic about their contributions!