Western Washington University

Click here for the October 2008 SoTL Research Update from Western Washington University as presented at the CASTL Student Voices Convening preceeding the 2008 ISSOTL Conference in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada (Oct. 16-19).

History of Student Voices at WWU

Ever since WWU first began its alliance with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) in 1998, the distinguishing feature of Western's initiative has been its attention to incorporating student voices. The focus began when a faculty member from our Woodring College of Education (William Lay) asked in the first year of the project, "Where are the students?" From that time onward, Western has made a concerted effort to collaborate with students in this research.

In partnership with Elon College in North Carolina, Western was recognized with the first American of Association of Higher Education (AAHE) "Going Public" award in 1999 recognizing the two schools for engaging students in the scholarship of teaching and learning. For more information on this alliance, see "Student Voices in the Campus Conversation," in Inventio: "Creative Thinking About Learning and Teaching", Spring 2002, vol 4, issue 1 - c.

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CASTL Campus Program - Cluster Leader

In spring 2002 at its annual Colloquium, CASTL named Western Washington University as one of its national cluster leaders. Through spring of 2006, Western provided leadership for a group of five institutions (University of Maryland - College Park, University of Washington - Bothell, North Seattle Community College, and California State University - Long Beach) in the cluster dedicated to "Sustaining Student Voices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning." In that leadership role, Western facilitated national and international conversations on ways to partner with students as agents of institutional change.

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CASTL Institutional Leadership Program - Coordinating Institution

In Fall 2006, WWU was selected as the coordinating institution for a group of schools once again dedicated to working with students as co-inquirers as part of the CASTL Institutional Leadership Program. Click here for more information about the Student Voices Leadership Theme.

2006-07 WWU CASTL Leadership Team

Western's institutional leadership team for 2006-2007 includes six students across levels and five faculty:

Kelly Barefield, Elementary Education sophomore
Rachel Christman, Elementary Education junior
Deborah Currier, Theater Arts faculty
Leslie Driediger, Human Services senior
Craig Dunn, Management faculty
Luke Ware, Communication senior
Joyce Hammond, Anthropology faculty
William Lay, Educational Foundations/Special Education faculty
Michael Murphy, junior/Teaching-Learning Academy staff
Megan Otis, Anthropology graduate student
Jane Verner, Human Services faculty
Carmen Werder, team coordinator and TLA Director/Communication faculty.

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WWU SoTL Goals for 2006-2009

Based on the Student Voices mission statement collectively composed in D.C. Student Voices at WWU has two major action objectives slated for this year:

1. Conference Planning with Students:
We will advance the planning we have already begun for "Festival of Scholarship: Celebrating Collaborative Inquiry" of a conference that will be co-sponsored by Western's CASTL Student Voices team and CIEL (Consortium for Innovative Environments of Learning), a group to which WWU's Fairhaven College belongs.

The event is scheduled for April 10-12, 2008. We have already established a planning team of approximately sixteen people that includes faculty, staff, and students and have developed sub-groups addressing various conferences tasks. We have met as a whole group three times and have established a Blackboard site. Our goal is to partner with students at every step of the process. We see the process of designing the conference in partnership with students just as important as the actual conference itself and have been documenting the process since we began work on it this past November. By the end of this calendar year, we will have the major tasks completed. In Fall Quarter 2007, we have arranged to partner with students in a new event planning course in the Communication Department to work with us on the details as the event approaches the following spring. This conference planning is the primary objective for our Student Voices initiative for this year and will figure significantly in our plan for the following year as well.

2. Expanding and Assessing the Teaching-Learning Academy (TLA):
Since the TLA is the hub of the Student Voices initiative at WWU, we are continually working to expand, broaden, and deepen the member participation as well as to refine the dialogue model itself. Currently, the TLA includes about 110 active members (about half students and the other half faculty and staff) who participate in every-other-week dialogue groups. The total membership has been gradually increasing, and students now participate from several courses.

Part of the goal for this year is to bring more of the experienced TLA students into analyzing TLA data that we have gathered over several years. Several students have volunteered to do this joint inquiry.

Assessing the impact of the student voices initiative through the Teaching-Learning Academy represents one of the primary goals for the three-year cycle of WWU's participation in the CASTL Institutional Leadership Program.

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Student Voices in Action at WWU

• A number of TLA students (Dayo Anderson, Rachel Christman, Leslie Driediger, Whitney Dunbar, Lauree Fletcher, Mike Murphy and Megan Otis) are working with several faculty, staff and administrators, to plan - from the ground up - a conference called Festival of Scholarship: Celebrating Collaborative Inquiry taking place at WWU on April 10-12, 2008.
• Thanks to the leadership of five TLA students (Lauree Fletcher, Mike Murphy, Jesse Nelson, Whitney Dunbar and Allison Kahl), WWU now has an Associated Students club called Student Voices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. Click here for more information about the Student Voices Club.
• Megan Otis, graduate student in Anthropology and long-time TLA member, is doing her thesis research on how students are affected by their participation in the TLA.
• In Spring 2007, four TLA students (Rachel Christman, Cora Thomas, Luke Ware and Megan Otis) conducted research on TLA survey data from past quarters and presented their research goals and initial findings at WWU's Scholars Week in May 2007. In Fall 2007, students Luke Ware and Cora Thomas continued their research on TLA survey data started in the spring, and will present their findings at the Festival of Scholarship in April 2008.
• May 2-4, 2007 four TLA students (Dayo Anderson, Leslie Driediger, Josh Bergman and Luke Ware) presented at the PNW Higher Education Teaching, Learning and Assessment Conference in Vancouver, WA.
• March 29-30 2007, two TLA students (Kelly Barefield and Megan Otis) presented on Student Voices in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the University of Alaska - Anchorage as part of a faculty development series on the scholarship of teaching and learning at UAA.

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