Mount Royal University Centennial

Focusing on teaching and learning

Ron MacDonald has been teaching journalism at Mount Royal University for over 25 years. He’s never been more passionate about his work though, than he is today.

“Ron MacDonald was in the first cohort of Mount Royal Teaching and Learning Scholars, and has had his entire professional profile changed as a result of engaging in scholarship of teaching and learning,” says Director of the Institute for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, Richard Gale, PhD.

MacDonald will be talking about how the scholarship of teaching and learning has boosted his class room work this week in Banff at the Centennial Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Symposium. More than 150 scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) practitioners from around the world are expected.

MacDonald is one of three keynote speakers at the event.

"I'll be testifying, as a faculty member quite new to Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, on the impact of SoTL work on teachers — especially on their assumptions, their practices in the classroom, and their identities as teachers,” says MacDonald.

“SoTL can be powerfully and excitingly transformative on all of these capacities."

Reminding academics why they do what they do

"SoTL conferences build and diversify the knowledge base of a research practice still only a couple of decades old, at least in its self-conscious guise as SoTL. They help keep alive the drive to be better and better at facilitating learning,” says MacDonald.” And lately they have begun to provide a stimulus for direct student involvement in SoTL research--a very promising evolution."

Richard Gale, who is also the conference organizer, expects this conference to become an annual event, ideally featuring a Mount Royal scholar of teaching and learning as keynote speaker each time around.

The timing of this inaugural symposium is perfectly timed with Mount Royal’s transition from college to university.

“By launching this symposium in the first year of the Institute, the centennial year, the year of transition to university status, we are essentially reaffirming that understanding and improving student learning was, is, and always will be job-one at Mount Royal,” says Gale.

Renowned keynote speakers join MacDonald at podium

That is another reason Gale is thrilled to be presenting SoTL speakers such as SoTL pioneer, Pat Hutchings and Susan Elrod, renowned researcher / director of Project Kaleidoscope at the Association of American Colleges and Universities.

“Among other things, Pat Hutchings was one of the architects of the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) Higher Education Program — probably the most influential training ground for faculty doing work in the scholarship of teaching and learning over the last twenty years.

“And Susan Elrod is a strong advocate for improving STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) education through systematic scholarly inquiry,” adds Gale.

“She has written extensively on improving student learning in the sciences, she has engaged in scholarship of teaching and learning herself (at Cal Poly), and she provides a nice bridge to our newly announced project in undergraduate research.”

Trevor Davis, Mount Royal’s associate vice president research says Elrod’s engagement at the Centennial SoTL Symposium and her presentation on campus on Nov. 15 on undergraduate research are intrinsically connected.

In a way, Elrod’s presentation is a formal announcement that Mount Royal University’s undergraduate students will be engaging in research opportunities that simply isn’t available to them at many universities.

“This is more of a way of life than a project,” says Davis. “The idea is to systematically focus on research and related skills as key elements in an undergrad education — something most universities reserve for their grad students. It is a great fit with our undergrad-only mission, our focus on integrating research and teaching, and our relative newness — allowing us to implement the idea into our criteria quickly.”

— Steven Noble, Nov. 10, 2010