When Morris Brown College wanted faculty members to participate in
a highly regarded faculty development program during the summer of
1997, school administrators turned to Dr. Kathie Stromile Golden, a
newly hired political science professor in the school’s social science
department, to make a pitch to her peers.
It fell to Golden, a veteran participant in faculty development
programs throughout much of her teaching career, to recruit fellow
faculty members to apply to New York University’s (NYU) renowned
Faculty Resource Network summer seminar and workshop program because
she had participated in it in 1996.
Golden, who had joined the Morris Brown faculty in the fall of
1996, used a Valentine’s Day breakfast which she hosted as the forum
for her pitch. Fifteen faculty members attended.
“I think it’s a good program for people who are developing new
courses,” she says. “We [faculty] have tremendous teaching loads. This
gives us an opportunity to think and reflect. It is a way for us to
come down from the stress of our jobs.”
Golden convinced all of the breakfast attendees to apply, and
twelve of the fifteen won admission to the NYU seminars. That summer,
Golden, her Morris Brown colleagues, and more than 100 other faculty
members from colleges and universities in the eastern United States
spent either one or two weeks soaking up knowledge and new teaching
techniques at the NYU campus.
“For many of my [Morris Brown] colleagues, it was the first time
they had ever attended a faculty development program. It was very
exciting for them,” Golden says.
Last summer, the summer seminar program included offerings, such as
“Comparative Women’s Studies,” “The Black American Experience:
Perspective in the Social Sciences,” and “Undergraduate Faculty
Enhancement in the Molecular and Cellular Biology.” The courses are
designed to enhance and reinvigorate liberal arts teaching among
faculty at participating institutions.
