Faculty Development Groups

The Kingsborough Center for Teaching & Learning (KCTL) is pleased to offer a series of Faculty Development Groups (formerly Faculty Interest Groups) for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Faculty Development Groups (FDGs) are faculty-led learning communities where faculty from various disciplines meet throughout the semester to explore a common interest or emerging practice. Operating as faculty learning communities (FLC), communities of practice (COP), or faculty reading groups (FRG), faculty development groups are low-commitment, high-impact communities that meet 5-6 times over a given semester. 

For the 2024-2025 academic year, KCTL has worked with faculty facilitators to create distinct FDG programming for each the fall and spring semesters:

• Fall 2024 Faculty Development Groups (meeting days/times will be determined based on faculty availability)
  • Building Empathy through Storytelling | Facilitator: Professor Miriam Grill | FLC
  • Contemplative Practices | Facilitator: Professor Rick Repetti | COP
  • CUNY Unlimited: Inclusion in the Classroom and Beyond | Facilitators: Professor Sue Carpenter & Jeremy Sawyer | COP
  • Game-Based Learning | Facilitator: Professor Grace Axler-DiPerte | FLC
  • Farm, Food, and Health | Facilitator: Professor Shannon Caravello | COP
  • FITR: Literacy at The College Level | Facilitator: Professor Delia Hernandez | FLC
  • Using Data to Support Teaching and Learning | Facilitator: Professor Dorina Tila | FLC

• Spring 2025 Faculty Development Groups (meeting days/times will be determined based on faculty availability)
  • Contemplative Practices | Facilitator: Professor Rick Repetti | COP
  • Creative Practice Forward | Facilitator: Professor Paul Ricciardi | COP
  • Civic Engagement in the Classroom | Facilitator: Professor Joanna Maulbeck | FLC
  • Embracing LGBTQIA+ Identities & Studies in the Classroom | Facilitator: Professor Amy Karp | FLC
  • The Productivity Power Hour | Facilitator: Professor Jennifer Corby | COP
  • The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning | Facilitator: Professor Loretta Taras | COP
  • Teaching to the Room | Facilitator: Professor Chico Knight | FLC
  • Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies Reading Group | Facilitator: Professor Dominic Wetzel | FRG 

More Information on Faculty Development Groups

What are the different types of faculty development groups?

• Faculty Learning Community: a cross-disciplinary faculty group that engages in an active, collaborative program, with a basic curriculum about the enhancing of teaching, and supports faculty learning, development, the scholarship of teaching, and community building (Cox, 2016).
• Communities of Practice: Initially envisioned by anthropologist Jean Lave and Etienne Wenger, a community of practice is simply a group of people who come together to explore a shared domain and pursue a common goal. To do this, they engage in joint activities, discussions, readings, and research, and collaborate to develop a shared repertoire of resources and practices (Wenger-Traynor, 2011; Hoyert and O’Dell, 2019). While they are facilitated by a single member, communities of practice prioritize community-building and collaborating to collectively develop agendas, learning goals, outcomes, and deliverables.
• Faculty Reading Groups: a group of faculty members that gathers to read and discuss (and perhaps put into practice) a selected text that explores teaching & learning in higher education, or a topic of interest within a shared academic discipline. Faculty Reading Groups are primarily centered in reading and discussion, and do not necessarily have an articulated goal or outcome beyond the study of the selected text. Faculty Reading Groups often lead to the development of faculty learning communities or communities of practice in future semesters.

An open call for new and returning faculty development groups is disseminated at the end of each academic year. Proposals are accepted at the end of one academic year, reviewed by the KCTL Advisory Board, and then programmed for the upcoming academic year. If you are interested in facilitating a faculty development group in the future, please contact Ryan McKinney (ryan.mckinney@kbcc.cuny.edu), Director of the Kingsborough Center for Teaching & Learning, with any questions or to discuss further. Thank you.