How well do teachers understand and identify plagiarism in their students’ (and their own) work? What different assumptions and approaches emerge when using drafts to improve student writing and thinking? Lehman faculty have been exploring these questions in a series of fall workshops presented by the School of Arts & Humanities and the Lehman Teaching & Learning Commons.

The series originated in the English Department with chairperson Terrence Cheng’s professional development activities for full-time and adjunct staff. With the encouragement of Arts & Humanities Dean Timothy Alborn and the collaboration of Lehman Teaching & Learning Commons Director Gina Rae Foster, the workshops have moved into interdisciplinary demonstrations and discussions of best practices in key pedagogical areas.

In September, 25 faculty members looked at plagiarism from a different perspective, led by Associate Professor of Psychology Vincent Prohaska’s research with faculty and students. Prohaska’s studies show that faculty often cannot identify plagiarized material unless primed to do so (such as knowing that a text has been plagiarized before reading the work), which leads to questions of effective communication between faculty and students on this issue.

Associate Professor Terrence Cheng followed Prohaska’s presentation with a hands-on discussion of student violations of the academic integrity policy. Faculty met in small groups to look at case studies and then to engage in role plays of the disciplinary conversations between teachers and students who had plagiarized. Discussions were energetic, raising questions of appropriate communications, assignment design, and faculty/student awareness of expectations.

This past week, the second workshop in the series focused on effective use of drafts to build students’ conceptual and practical academic skills. Associate Professor of English Paula Loscocco and Associate Professor of Music Janette Tilley, both Renaissance experts in their disciplines, led 27 faculty members in examining assumptions about the nature and use of drafts.

Loscocco and Tilley presented different approaches to designing and grading drafts they had developed in Writing Across the Curriculum projects. Each shared their rubrics and materials, asking colleagues for feedback on the cross-disciplinary applications of their work. Loscocco and Tilley then divided the attendees into two groups so that the different processes of reading and commenting on drafts could be modeled through hands-on practice.

Faculty who attended represented disciplines as far-ranging as History and Health Sciences, English and Geographical Sciences. With such a wide representation of college interests, discussions of method and need among faculty members are encouraging many to reframe their practices and to share successful strategies with multiple applications.

The final workshop of the fall will be offered on December 1 with Professor of History Evelyn Ackerman and Distinguished Lecturer in Puerto Rican and Latin American Studies Andres Torres discussing how to bridge the social sciences and the humanities. This promises to be one of the most engaging faculty development events of the fall.

What does it mean to be part of a profession that prides itself on independence and individuality? How can someone succeed in a career that depends on being a leader, a follower, a team player, and a solitary thinker when these roles are rarely clearly defined (and when it is often not clear which role belongs to whom at any given time)?

New and returning faculty members face these questions as they try to engage in an often bewildering array of student and administrative expectations. The intricacies of planning and presenting courses, serving on academic committees, finding and managing research funds: these can seem overwhelming to first-time faculty members and ongoing stressors for those trying to satisfy requirements for tenure and promotion.

Given that two faculty members in any given situation will produce at least three opinions on the subject under discussion, with two of these opinions seen as irreconcilable and the third as evidence of someone’s eccentricities, trying to bring faculty together to discuss what it means to be academics might seem a bit risky. Yet one of the most critical purposes of academia is the lively and far-ranging exploration of knowledge between professionals (full-time and adjunct faculty), apprentices (graduate students and interns), and amateurs (undergraduate students).

This year’s new faculty seminars emerge from this understanding: academia is a profession that challenges definitions and yet seeks to be the definer and re-definer of research, teaching, and service in connection to shared knowledge. Through alternating discussions of a common text, New Faculty: A Practical Guide for Academic Beginners, with discussions of a common place, Lehman College/CUNY, the Teaching & Learning Commons hopes to provide time and space for faculty to share experiences and concerns while also offering opportunities to learn which questions to ask and of whom during the first years of teaching and research at Lehman.

We begin the year with introductions, a campus tour, and dinner, followed by weekly meetings focused on teaching, research, service, and student resources. Guest participants are invited from campus programs to attend the seminars most relevant to their services: at these seminars, faculty will initiate conversations based on the questions from their readings and discussions from the previous week’s reading discussion.

The new faculty will take time to describe their own teaching and research projects with each other and to offer their experiences and knowledge as resources. Service activities will be connected with research and teaching projects through faculty examination of personal and professional objectives and timelines.

During the term, new faculty will also work with a group resource ePortfolio, community discussion threads, and individual ePortfolios and blogs as the seminar raises questions and new directions for academic projects, both individual and collaborative. The integration of technology into the seminars extends the possibilities for new faculty to develop connections with campus and cross-CUNY programs relevant to their individual concerns yet shared across the university.

We wind up the fall term with a review of discussions and once again, a chance to share good food and conversation. The spring term will introduce a text on thinking and learning from a cognitive scientist’s perspective, Dan Willingham’s Why Don’t Students Like School? and an opportunity to work with different guests in expanding the College’s discourse on teaching, research, and service.