The Mokakiiks Centre for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning is recruiting a Postdoctoral Fellow in SoTL for a full-time, 12-month fellowship beginning November 1, 2026. Working with the Mokakiiks Centre and MRU’s Academic Development Centre, the Fellow will develop a program of SoTL research while contributing to faculty development and SoTL capacity building at MRU through research, program evaluation and development, faculty consultation, and community-building initiatives. We welcome applications from early-career scholars with experience in SoTL or related educational research, curriculum or learning design, and scholarly dissemination. Review of applications begins October 15, 2026 and will continue until the position is filled. For more information please contact mokakiiks@mtroyal.ca.

Book Study: SoTL Research Methodologies

Join the Mokakiiks Centre for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning this fall for a collaborative book study exploring the research methodologies that shape SoTL inquiry. Facilitated by Dr. Cherie Woolmer, this series offers a welcoming space to deepen your understanding of SoTL research, explore methodological approaches that may be new to your disciplinary practice, and bring questions from your own projects into conversation with colleagues. Whether you are new to SoTL or an experienced scholar looking to expand your methodological toolkit, we invite you to join the conversation.

Book Study Dates: October 2, 16 & 30; November 13 & 27; December 11; January 8 & 22
Time: 12:00–1:00 p.m.
Location: ADC Boardroom

Register today to reserve your place. Registration includes a complimentary hard copy of Yeo, Miller-Young, and Manarin’s SoTL Research Methodologies: A Guide to Conceptualizing and Conducting the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2023), which will guide our conversations throughout the series.

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Fall 2026 Mokakiiks SoTL Studio Sessions

October 13–15, 2026

The Mokakiiks SoTL Studio is a three-day series of workshops and clinics designed to support and amplify Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at Mount Royal University.

Hosted by the Mokakiiks Centre for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, the Studio provides opportunities for faculty at different stages of their SoTL practice to build their knowledge, develop their scholarly practice, connect with colleagues, and receive focused support for work in progress.

Whether you are beginning to explore SoTL, developing your first inquiry, or advancing an established project or program of scholarship, the SoTL Studio is intended to provide opportunities to learn, develop, and advance your SoTL practice within MRU’s scholarly community.

The Fall 2026 SoTL Studio includes two streams:

 

Getting Started in SoTL: SoTL Foundations Certificate Program

The Getting Started in SoTL series is designed for faculty who are new to SoTL or who would like to strengthen their understanding of its foundations.

Across six workshops, participants will explore the history and scope of SoTL; developing research questions and selecting methodologies; data collection and analysis; working in partnership with students; conducting ethical SoTL; and knowledge mobilization. Together, the sessions provide a foundation for developing rigorous, ethical, and meaningful inquiries into teaching and student learning.

Participants are welcome to attend individual workshops. Those who complete the full series will earn the Mokakiiks Certificate in SoTL Foundations.

Date	Time	Session
October 13	9:30 - 11:00	Getting Started in SoTL Series: What Is The Scholarship of Teaching And Learning?
	1:00 - 3:00	Getting Started in SoTL Series: What Research Questions and Methodologies are Utilized in SoTL?
October 14	9:30 - 11:30	Getting Started in SoTL Series: Data Collection and Analysis - Possibilities and Pitfalls
	1:00 - 2:30	Getting Started in SoTL Series: Working in Partnership With Students in SoTL
October 15	9:30 - 11:00	Getting Started in SoTL Series: Conducting Ethical SoTL
	1:00 - 2:30	Getting Started in SoTL Series: Knowledge Mobilization as a SoTL Scholar

 

Mokakiiks SoTL Clinics

The Mokakiiks SoTL Clinics provide practice-based support for members of the MRU SoTL community who have scholarly work underway and would benefit from focused consultation, feedback, and dedicated working time.

Rather than traditional workshops, the clinics are structured as collaborative working sessions. Participants bring a project, application, or scholarly challenge in progress and work alongside experienced SoTL scholars and colleagues with relevant expertise to develop their work and identify next steps.

The Fall 2026 clinics include:

Grant Writing Clinic: Strengthen Your SoTL Grant Application (October 13, 2026 - 1:00 - 3:00 PM)

Work alongside successful MRU SoTL grant holders to strengthen a project idea or grant application in progress and receive targeted feedback in preparation for submission.

Ethics Clinic: Move Your SoTL Ethics Application Forward (October 14, 2026 - 1:00 - 3:00 PM)

Work with HREB colleagues to navigate project-specific ethical questions, strengthen an ethics application in progress, and identify next steps toward submission.

Knowledge Mobilization Clinic: Creating SoTL Scholarship with Impact (October 15, 2026 - 1:00 - 3:00 PM)

Work with MRU Library faculty to consider how your SoTL scholarship can reach relevant audiences, contribute to broader scholarly and institutional conversations, and be articulated as part of an evolving scholarly trajectory.

Together, these two streams create opportunities for members of the MRU community to enter SoTL, strengthen their scholarly practice, and continue advancing projects and programs of scholarship with the support of colleagues across the university.

We invite participants and alumni of the Mokakiiks SoTL Development Program to join our SoTL Community of Practice—a collegial network designed to sustain learning, collaboration, and mentorship beyond the program itself. A community of practice model is powerful because it brings together individuals who share a commitment to advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning, creating a space for ongoing dialogue, peer support, and the exchange of ideas. By connecting with colleagues who are actively engaged in SoTL research and practice, members can deepen their expertise, share resources, and collectively cultivate innovative approaches to enhancing student learning. For more information, please contact Cherie Woolmer at cwoolmer@mtroyal.ca.

Brave Conversations in SoTL is a collaborative speakers’ series that brings together an international slate of scholars to discuss ideas around critical approaches to themes of epistemic justice, students as knowers, and threshold experiences in higher education. The series is in collaboration with the University of Calgary's Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning.

Season Three of Brave Conversations In SoTL explores the many ways that risk can be understood, taken up, and experienced by those engaging in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL).

Risk-taking is often framed in celebratory terms — entrepreneurial, innovative, bold. While this can be a positive rendering, we want to trouble that familiar narrative. What might open up if we invited our community to think about risk in more pluralistic, more nuanced ways? How might our understanding of risk-taking, innovation, and failure in SoTL change when we look through an intersectional lens? What if we centred the lived experiences of those for whom “taking a risk” is not an abstract intellectual exercise, but something that carries real professional, personal, or emotional stakes?

Season 3, Session 1: The Ethics of Care in SoTL: Exploring Care, Support, and Compassion in SoTL

Panelists: Dr. Brittany Lindsay, J Overholser, Dr. Lisa Taylor
Date & Time: March 23, 2026 (9:00 AM MST)

This panel will examine how we can support ourselves and each other and build communities that sustain rather than deplete those doing brave SoTL work. This conversation foregrounds the ethical, relational, and emotional dimensions of SoTL and considers how an ethic of care might act as both a buffer and a catalyst for risk-taking.

Watch on YouTube

Season 3, Session 2: What happens when we fail?

Panelists: Dr. Natasha Kenny, Dr. Jennifer Boman, Dr. Alyssa Counsell
Date and Time: April 20, 2026 (10:00 AM MST)

If taking risks assumes the possibility of failure, how do we respond when things don’t work? How might we create institutional climates that embrace failure as a necessary part of advancing teaching and learning? In what ways does failure connect back to care — care for ourselves, care for our colleagues, care for our students? This session explores failure not as an endpoint but as an essential part of the creative and intellectual process, asking what it would take to normalize and even value failure within our SoTL ecosystems.

Watch on YouTube

Season 3, Session 3: Revisiting and Rethinking "Risk" in SoTL

Panelists: Dr. Peter Felten (Centre for Engaged Learning, Elon University), Dr. Naureen Mumtaz (Mount Royal University) and J Overholser (University of Calgary) (Facilitated by Dr. Cherie Woolmer)
Date and Time: May 7, 2026 (9:30 AM MST)

In what ways can we think about risk beyond the usual language of innovation and courage?

How might risk intersect with ideas of failure, vulnerability, or uncertainty? Can some colleagues or students take greater risks than others? Who is afforded safety, protection, or grace — and who is not? What emerges when we take an intersectional lens to the people who engage in SoTL? Reflecting on issues raised in previous sessions, our speakers will invite participants to interrogate the uneven terrain of risk and examine how positionality shapes what is possible — and what is not — within SoTL inquiry.

Watch on YouTube

 

To watch previous seasons of Brave Conversations, visit our YouTube playlist using the link below.

What is Students as Partners?

At Mount Royal University, we believe that the best teaching and learning happens with students. Rather than a traditional mentoring or assistant role, student partners bring their lived experience of learning into dialogue with faculty expertise in teaching. Together, they explore how to make learning more engaging, inclusive, and effective.

Research across higher education shows that partnership programs lead to measurable improvements in both teaching and learning and provide a transformative experiential learning opportunity for students. Faculty who work with student partners report more reflective, responsive teaching and a renewed sense of purpose in their classrooms. Students involved in partnerships describe greater confidence, deeper engagement with their studies, and a stronger sense of belonging within the academic community. At an undergraduate-focused university, these benefits are even more profound. Every student has the potential to become a contributor to teaching and learning innovation. Through partnerships, students move from being recipients of knowledge to active participants in shaping how learning happens and how it can be improved.

Read more about the Students as Partners project, led by CRC SoTL Scholar Dr. Cherie Woolmer.

On May 29, 2026, Bridging the Bow: Connecting Calgary’s SoTL Communities brought together educators, researchers, and SoTL practitioners from Mount Royal University, SAIT, and the University of Calgary for a day of connection, collaboration, and shared learning. Co-hosted by MRU’s Mokakiiks Centre for SoTL, SAIT’s Teaching and Learning Commons, and UCalgary’s Taylor Institute for Teaching and Learning, the event featured interactive workshops, panel discussions, writing sessions, networking, and opportunities to exchange ideas across institutional boundaries. From those beginning to explore SoTL to experienced scholars advancing projects and partnerships, participants came together to share their work, build relationships, and strengthen the connections that sustain Calgary’s growing SoTL community.