Author: Carolyn Shaw

In honor of Earth Day April 22, Wichita State is highlighting several sustainability programs available at the university.

In the past several years, Wichita State has enhanced its curricular offerings around sustainability, including the following:

• A sustainability minor
• An environment and sustainability certificate
• Certificates in sustainable energy technology, sustainable materials and design, and sustainable water technology.

Classes with sustainability content are also offered across multiple colleges at WSU. For example, the College of Innovation and Design is now offering several classes that focus exclusively on sustainability in various aspects of the industry — including the innovation life cycle, change management and business development.

To successfully advance our new SEM 2025 Plan, we need engagement campus-wide. We want to grow our student body and see greater student success through improved retention and more equity for our underserved students.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area:

Strategy 2.5 Provide and support high impact opportunities for middle/high school students in the community and beyond

Idea for the classroom: Partner with Wichita State’s Admissions Office to schedule lab tours or classroom experiences for visiting high school students (i.e. Black and Yellow Days). For more information, contact Sarah.Brill@wichita.edu.

Ideas beyond the classroom: Host a high school conference or summer camp experience; Partner with pre-college TRIO, Gear Up, or Upward Bound or USD 259 AVID programs to develop college success skills. For more information, contact Deltha.Colvin@wichita.edu

Shout outs to:

• Dr. Catherine Searle, Dr. Yueh-Ju Lin, Dr. Yuan Liu, Dr. Mai Dao, WSU Mathematics, for their work on Sonia Kovalevsky Day
• Erin Shields, College of Engineering, for Project Lead the Way
• Dr. Alexandra Middlewood, WSU Political Science, for their model United Nations conference
• Jill Fisher, Fairmount College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, for their Science Olympiad
• Dr. Moriah Beck, Chemistry, for Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) Rocks
• Dr. Tamtam Perlekar, Engineering Technology, for the MindStorm competition
• Dr. Steven Skinner, College of Engineering, for Kansas BEST Robotics
• Ana Lazarin, College of Engineering, for engineering summer camps
• Dr. Tim Shade, Dr. Ryan Beeken, Dr. Mark Laycock, College of Fine Arts, for their local, regional and national clinician workshops for the performing arts
• Sabrina Vasquez,  WSU Dance, for the Children’s Dance Festival
• Dr. Mark Vermillion, Sports Management, for the Student Leadership Program with USD 259
• Dr. Peer Moore-Jansen, Department of Anthropology, tours of the anthropology bone lab
• Dr. Jessica Provines, Counseling and Preventions Services, for the WeSupportU campaign at Bishop Carroll High School
• Travis Yang, WSU e-sports, for hosting e-sporting events for local teams

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316- 978-7130 carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu

Academic Affairs supports several Faculty Fellows programs. The programs provide faculty with the opportunity to learn new skills. If you are interested, check out the details linked below.  All applications are due Friday April 1.

• Tilford Incentive Grant – Develop new diversity infused curricula or advance pedagogy to teach diverse populations.
• Recruitment Faculty Fellows – Provide direct outreach to prospective students in high school and community colleges.
• Retention Faculty Fellows – Identify and implement strategies to promote student success and retention.
• Service-Learning Scholars – Incorporate service-learning pedagogy in your curricula.
• Honors College Fellows – Develop independent or collaborative projects to advance Honors education and high-impact practices across campus.

For more information about submission details, visit WSU’s Academic Affairs webpage.

Each year, Wichita State’s Academic Affairs is accepting faculty fellow applications through April 1. Academic Affairs supports faculty fellows in a variety of areas. Faculty fellows have the opportunity to learn new skills and serve students in different ways through these fellowships:

• Tilford Incentive Grant–Develop new diversity infused curricula or advance pedagogy to teach diverse populations.
• Recruitment Faculty Fellows–Provide direct outreach to prospective students in high school and community colleges.
• Retention Faculty Fellows–Identify and implement strategies to promote student success and retention.
• Service-Learning Scholars–Incorporate service-learning pedagogy in your curricula.
• Honors College Fellows-Develop independent or collaborative projects to advance Honors education and high-impact practices across campus.

For more information about submission details, visit WSU’s Academic Affairs webpage.

To successfully advance our new SEM 2025 Plan, we need engagement campus-wide. We want to grow our student body and see greater student success through improved retention and more equity for our underserved students.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area:

Objective 2.4.7: Advance initiatives to smooth the process for students to transfer to WSU.

More than half of Wichita State’s new students each year bring in transfer credits with them.

Ideas for the classroom:  Share department connection opportunities in upper-division classes (clubs, honors societies, research or internship experiences) – transfer students may not have heard about these opportunities. Share with your non-traditional students that we have an Office of Adult Learning that provides a number of services to support them.

Ideas beyond the classroom: Complete articulation agreements with community college partners so classes readily transfer, promote dual advising for transfer students before they enter a WSU program and work with community college partners to align courses for equivalency.

Shout-out to: John Perry and the Barton School of Business for updating and establishing new agreements with more than 22 community colleges and building bridges with two-year institutions, including partnerships with WSU Tech.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-7130 carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

To successfully advance our new SEM 2025 Plan, we need engagement campus-wide. We want to grow our student body and see greater student success through improved retention and more equity for our underserved students.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area:

Strategy 2.3: Grow the diversity of our student body through recruitment and retention efforts.

Ideas for the classroom: Include multicultural course content and get a diversity attribute in the course catalog so students are aware of this content. Invite students from the cultural ambassador program to visit your class or invite students from pre-college TRIO, Upward Bound, Gear Up and other programs to visit your class/department. For more information on how to do this, contact Deltha.Colvin@wichita.edu

Ideas beyond the classroom: Provide bi-lingual materials and support services or hire diverse student assistants and ambassadors to connect with prospective and current students with a broad range of experiences.

Shout-outs to:

• The staff in the Office of Financial Aid provides extensive outreach to high schools for FAFSA completion to help local and low-income students secure funding. They also promoted the launch of the Shocker Promise and Neighborhood programs to reach more students from underrepresented backgrounds.
• Ana Lazarin, College of Engineering director of Broadening and Student Recruitment, provides extensive outreach through admissions events for low-income and first-generation student populations in western Kansas.
• The Office of Admissions creates multiple publications in Spanish, including a Parent Guide, Housing brochure (with assistance from Housing and Residence Life), a scholarship flyer and hosts Shocker Information Programs and Shocker Saturdays entirely in Spanish.
• Anna Dixon, admissions representative, has worked with the WSU-USD 259 Better Academics and Social Existence initiative and produced a dedicated newsletter for more than 230 parents and students in the program.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-7130 carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.

To successfully advance our new SEM 2025 Plan, we need engagement all across campus. We want to grow our student body and see greater student success through improved retention and more equity for our underserved students.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area:

Strategy 2.1: Regularly assess recruitment practices to leverage our most impactful efforts and promote continuous improvement for each initiative.

Assessment Ideas: Identify the desired outcomes for specific recruitment activities and communications. These can include a number of participants or media engagements (likes or shares), positive feedback on a post-event survey or contacts collected for future outreach.  Ask for suggestions for improvements. By collecting and evaluating feedback, we can focus our energy and resources on our most productive activities. We can help each other by sharing our successful ideas with others.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-7130 carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see if it aligns with work in your area:

Strategy 1.5 Offer opportunities to develop graduate teaching assistants, (GTAs), faculty and staff competencies around issues relating to first-generation students and other underrepresented populations.

Ideas for the classroom:  Ensure that all GTAs engage in professional development to improve support for underserved students and encourage first-gen faculty to connect with and share their stories with our first-gen students.

Ideas beyond the classroom:  Engage in regular professional development opportunities; identify and celebrate first-generation staff members and develop ways for students who visit the office to note this identity.

Shout-outs to: Dr. Bobby Berry, assistant dean for Diversity and Outreach and convener of the First-Gen Affinity group. Berry led a book discussion of “Eat First, Cry Later: Life Lessons of a First-Generation College Graduate, Penn State Alumna and Female CEO.”

Dr. Jason Bosch, assistant dean for Student Success and the College of Engineering, facilitates the Spirit Strong program for first-gen freshmen by offering tutoring, peer mentoring, professional development workshops and scholarships.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw at 316-978-7130 carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu

As we begin a new semester, Wichita State’s COVID frequently asked questions (FAQs) for instructors have been updated for the spring 2022 semester. The page includes information about hybrid classes, current classroom capacities and safe behaviors that comply with campus policies.

During fall 2021, Wichita State launched its new 2025 Strategic Enrollment Management (SEM) Plan with the overarching goals of expanding enrollments to 17,000 students, increasing first to second-year retention rate to 75%, and closing the equity gap for underserved students. The success of the new plan is dependent on the contributions of everyone on campus.

Check out the featured strategy this week to see more steps departments can take to promote student success.

Strategy 3.3 Promote faculty dialogue and engagement around best practices for student success

• Promote early feedback and timely grading for students’ awareness of their academic performance (Student Early Alert System reports and early formative assignments).
  • Students may not be familiar with how to view their grades in Blackboard or how to see electronic comments on their graded work. Take a moment to provide instructions for students to track their progress and be responsive to your feedback.
  • Students need graded work before the class withdrawal deadline of April 1 to help them make informed decisions about their progress and likelihood of success in class.
• Encourage departments to establish metrics beyond the Student Perception of Teaching Effectiveness (SPTE) for quality instruction to use in annual evaluations.
  • The SPTE is an imperfect metric to assess instructional quality. Policy 4.31.IV.4.d allows departments to use multiple criteria to evaluate teaching.
• Support ongoing professional development for graduate teaching assistants (GTA) related to student retention.
  • Many of our graduate students will move on to become instructors of record for classes following graduation. We strengthen our graduate student’s ability to compete in the job market when we give them strong teaching skills, while also helping our current undergraduates be successful.
• Create a teaching partnership program that pairs junior and senior faculty to share teaching practices.

Shout-outs: WSU’s College of Applied Studies (CAS) has provided a robust faculty mentoring program for 10 years, with 25 mentor-mentee pairs this year. This program, coordinated by Dr. Jody Fiorini, CAS interim senior director of Faculty Development and department head brings the partners together monthly to engage in dialogue around teaching and research. The Office of Instructional Resources (OIR) collaborates with the Graduate School every semester to provide specialized GTA training sessions at the Academic Resources Conference (ARC) to help our GTA’s learn classroom management skills.

For more information, contact Dr. Carolyn Shaw 316-978-7130 or  carolyn.shaw@wichita.edu.