Faculty orientation sharpens pencils, skills

  • Published
  • By Butch Wehry
  • Public Affairs
U.S. Air Force Academy --  The Academy's 127 new instructors were welcomed and got senior leadership perspectives and a sense of teamwork by the faculty, athletics, commandant of cadets, preparatory school and air base wing. 

The New Faculty Orientation opened in the McDermott Library. Subsequent sessions took place in Fairchild Hall. It ran July 11 through July 17. This year's NFO had much more flexibility than in past years. 

Leadership emphasis was never in doubt. 

"New faculty orientation brings together a very talented and diverse group of personnel from varied academic and professional backgrounds," said Brig. Gen. Dana Born, Dean of the Faculty. "Our goal is to help them to 'become their best' so they can foster our cadets to become their best." 

Members from across the Academy, including education experts, provided the new and returning faculty with a shared vision and how the school can accomplish the mission of building officers of character across the Academy and across the curriculum, she said. 

"This year's orientation provided 127 new faculty members the tools necessary to be the very best instructors they can possibly be to commission leaders of character who embody our core values with the knowledge, skills and responsibilities for the 21st century," General Born said. 

About one third of them were returning faculty. 

"The intent was that personnel will follow on with their specific mission elements for more detailed orientation," said Lt. Col. Douglas Morris, director of Faculty Development.
This year, new faculty were assigned a character development day run by the Center for Character Development. 

"The intent of this was to give the new faculty a taste of some of the training that the cadets receive regarding character and officer development," Colonel Morris said. "The point of the new faculty character development day was to get the faculty in the mindset that everything we do here at the Academy is for the development of future officers and future leaders." 

Retired Lt. Col. Ralph Hartman from the Center for Character Development organized and facilitated this program. Two thirds of the faculty participated in the Character Development Days, July 9 and 10. 

The orientation provided mission element briefs from Academy agencies, including emergency, fire, environmental, housing, legal and chapel, as well as required training in religious respect and sexual assault reporting. 

General Born has developed a learning-focused initiative that all faculty can use in their approach to teaching. This approach takes the form of a loop (see graph) where learning objectives are specific and transparent to the students, and instructors facilitate learning experiences for the objectives. 

"It' nothing new, except now we want faculty to assess how well students understand concepts instead of how much information they can memorize, and we want instructors to continuously do this cycle to improve their teaching," Colonel Morris said. "Instead of instructors being depositors of information, we want them to be facilitators of learning - we are partnering with the students to help them have deep conceptual learning. This partnership means both student and faculty are responsible for fostering deep learning."
New Faculty Orientation has traditionally emphasized cadets in the classroom and classroom standards, obstacles to learning, good teaching practices and cadet and current faculty perspectives. The bulk of these were presented in a not necessarily learning-focused manner. 

"This year we included all these same topics, but in a more learning-focused format," the colonel said. "We fashioned it as a course where there was homework, time for discussion and reflection like learning experiences in the classroom and a final capstone project." 

The goal was for the new faculty to feel like they were going to class -- just like their students. 

"And just like their students, some of them would be interested in attending, some not, some would participate a lot, others not at all, some may miss a day or be late just like their students," Colonel Morris said. "We fully expected all of this and we wanted new faculty to see in themselves a little bit of what cadets feel and face and to discuss how to react to each of these." 

Each new faculty member was given a copy of Ken Bain's, What the Best College Teachers Do. The book seems to be written for the Academy's educational and learning-focused experience. 

The new faculty were grouped into 15 learning communities consisting of 8-10 people from various departments. In the past, new faculty went from briefing session to briefing session with other new faculty from their own department. The learning communities were intended to mix and allow new faculty to mingle with members from other departments and to get different perspectives across disciplines. 

"Each learning community had a mentor or two - an experienced faculty member, that attended the entire NFO with his or her learning community," said the colonel. "Mentors served as sounding boards of experience for the new faculty and helped facilitate community discussions. Each day of NFO started with an hour-long session where each group met together separately to discuss the homework, participate in group activities or just discuss what they had seen and heard the previous day." 

He said it was a very collegial, a great learning environment but more importantly, the members of the learning communities felt beholden to their "neighbors" to be prepared, participate and discuss - exactly what Academy officials want cadet students to experience. 

"It was a bonus we wanted to achieve, but weren't sure it would really happen, but it did and then some," Colonel Morris said. "Many of the groups planned barbeques, committed to visiting each others classrooms or meet several times during the semester to keep the group discussions going." 

Overwhelming feedback received about NFO was that the learning communities and mentors were great and NFO was a pleasant surprise. Some expressed surprise it wasn't just a bunch of Powerpoint presentations. 

"We really took a gamble this year by changing things up from what we're used to: we required them to read; would they? We put them with others outside of their area of expertise -- would they participate," the colonel said. "Would they want to just get the information and check the box like many students would prefer to real deep learning? Wow, did they read, participate, discuss and learn!" 

Probably the biggest gamble came in the capstone project we required as their "final exam." The project was to come up with a way to express what it means to be the Academy's best instructor in hopes that new faculty would bring out their creativity.
It did. 

NFO had everything from collages and videos, to poetry so expressive of what they had learned all week and what to accomplish as instructors. 

Another highlight of the week was a series of demonstration lessons. New faculty saw some of the best practices, some not necessarily effective practices, and had the opportunity to see what facilitates their own learning, like their cadets, and be able to discuss it all with their learning communities. 

There was a July 12 tour of the library along with a tour of Mitchell Hall, Sijan Hall, dorm rooms, air gardens, cadet store and post office. An escorted Jacks Valley tour was July 25. New Faculty got to see every facet of cadet life. 

"New members need help with what to expect in the classroom," said Colonel Morris. "After NFO, new faculty participate in their individual departmental training where classroom standards, expectations and best practices for teaching in that discipline are discussed in great detail in preparation for lesson one."