Starting the Spring Semester with Incremental Change
Welcome to spring semester! I hope your winter break offered some genuine rest. As we step into this new term, I've been thinking about the power of small changes—not dramatic reinventions or overwhelming overhauls, but modest adjustments that make our daily work more sustainable and our teaching more responsive to what our students actually need.
This semester, you'll notice some shifts in our programming at CAT+FD. These aren't radical departures; they're incremental improvements designed to meet faculty where they are. And that same principle applies to teaching practice more broadly: you don't need to rebuild your courses from scratch or adopt entirely new pedagogies to make a meaningful difference. Sometimes the most effective change is adjusting one assignment, rethinking how you use the first five minutes of class, or finding a single new way to check in with struggling students.
What "Think Small" Looks Like at CAT+FD
Here's what we're trying this semester:
Coffee & Chat Mondays continue as our low-barrier entry point. Faculty can spend time with our staff for refreshments and conversation every Monday morning. No agenda, no registration, just connection.
CAT Talk Tuesdays are our experiment in brief, focused online presentations: 20 minutes, one key concept, delivered live but recorded for asynchronous access. This month we're covering "Attendance & Participation" and "Classroom AI Policies," the teaching questions that land in our inbox most often. We're not trying to provide comprehensive coverage; we're trying to give faculty quick, research-grounded answers when they need them.
Wellness Wednesdays consolidate our walking club and contemplative practice into one memorable pattern. Same offerings, just easier to remember when they happen.
We're also maintaining our drop-in formats for those pre-semester challenges. Faculty can stop by our Brightspace and Simple Syllabus drop-ins when they need help, rather than committing to a session weeks in advance that may or may not align with when they actually hit a roadblock.
None of these changes required significant new resources. Most emerged from listening to what faculty told us about when and how they could actually engage with professional development.
The Invitation
So as you plan your own semester, I want to encourage you to think small. What's one thing you could adjust that would make your teaching feel more aligned with your values? What's one practice you could try that might lighten your load rather than add to it?
You don't need to rebuild everything. You don't need to adopt the latest pedagogy or match the innovation happening in someone else's classroom. Sometimes the most effective change is the modest adjustment that makes tomorrow's teaching a little more sustainable than today's.
Pick one thing. Try it. See what happens.
That's how sustainable improvement actually happens.
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Dr. Abdulahad earned his B.S. in chemistry from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA in 2006. He then received his Ph.D. in polymer chemistry at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY working under the guidance of Professor Chang Ryu. Subsequently, Dr. Abdulahad worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Integrated Science at Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, VA. Here, he helped to develop laboratory curricula for the Integrated Sciences Curriculum at Virginia Tech and performed research on synthetic polymer materials for high performance and biomedical applications. Dr. Abdulahad spent three years as an instructor of General Chemistry and Organic Chemistry at Jefferson College of Health Sciences prior to joining the Department of Chemistry at Xavier in the Fall of 2017.
Dr. Schulte received her BS from Muhlenberg College (Allentown, PA). She attended SUNY Albany where she earned both her MA and PhD in Social/Personality Psychology.
Dr. Salm teaches courses in African history and popular culture, the Black Atlantic World, modern colonialism, and research methods. He has conducted fieldwork in several West African countries, including Ghana and Sierra Leone, and has received a number of awards and fellowships for his work, including a William S. Livingston Fellowship and a National Endowment for the Humanities grant. He has published six books, as well as chapters and articles on topics as diverse as gender, youth, music, literature, religion, urbanization, and popular culture. He currently holds the Alumni Class of 1958 Endowed Professorship in the Humanities and serves as the Department Chair of History and the Division Chair of Fine Arts and Humanities.
Elizabeth Yost Hammer is the Director of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Faculty Development and a Kellogg Professor in Teaching in the Psychology Department. She received her Ph.D. in experimental social psychology from Tulane University.
Jay Todd studied writing with Frederick and Steven Barthelme and Mary Robison at the Center for Writers at the University of Southern Mississippi. He teaches English and serves as Associate Director of CAT+FD.
A conversation between Cathy Mazak (UPRM) and Elizabeth Manley (XULA) on academic writing.
