On 8-12 July, Prof. Mei-Hwa Sung, Dean of the Division of Humanities & Social Sciences, led another eight UIC teachers to attend the MPCC-UIC Faculty Development Institute in St. Catherine University, Minnesota.
The 2013 MPCC-UIC Faculty Development Summer Institute, jointly founded by partners from the Minnesota Private College Council (MPCC) in the U.S., was the second faculty development seminar since 2011. This summer, 17 faculty members from UIC and the eight MPCC colleges participated, including Augsburg College, Gustavus Adolphus College, Bethany College, Concordia University St. Paul, Hamline University, Concordia College Moorhead, St. Catherine University, and the College of St. Scholastica.
Professor Diane Pike and Peter Stark from Augsburg College and Lisa Larson from the College of St. Scholastica led the five-day seminar, which covered a wide range of pedagogic topics on education settings, how students learn, effective teaching strategies, etc.
All members in the seminar actively exchanged their personal teaching experiences in areas such as improving students’ motivation, critical thinking and problem solving skills, developing students for a liberal arts education within an institutional framework and experiential learning concepts. Each member reflected and showed willingness to apply these teaching and learning methods to their new course development and assessment in the future.
Particularly, UIC’s Katy Zhang, Assistant Facilitator I, introduced the College’s Whole Person Education Office, and Dr. Katharina Yu, Coordinator of the Centre of Foreign Languages and Culture and Acting Director of International Development Office, gave a brief presentation on UIC’s educational environment.
On the last day, Susanna Lu, who graduated from UIC in 2010 and is currently working at Concordia College Moorhead, reminisced about the 2007 UIC summer programme in Minnesota and shared her personal understanding of liberal arts education.
At the end of the seminar, suggestions were made regarding further discussion of General Education teaching and learning issues and cross-cultural and globalization studies in classroom settings for the next summer institute. MPCC participants are committed to visiting UIC in July 2014 to continue the fruitful dialogue in Zhuhai and share their experience of implementing what they have learned from this seminar.
Dr. Katharina Yu appreciated the personal interactions with MPCC colleagues who were experts in faculty development with decades of pedagogic experience. “The institute provided an excellent platform for reflection on teaching and learning strategies and for discussions with colleagues in the liberal arts context,” she said.
The institute was also attended by UIC’s Dr. Siu-Tai Tsim, Associate Professor with the Division of Science and Technology (DST); Dr. Lily Pei-Tzu Lee, Assistant Professor with DST; Dr. Dawn Tsang, Director of Applied Translation Studies Programme; Dr. Sylvana Kwan-Ling Ng, Assistant Professor with the Division of Business Management (DBM); Ms. Michele Po-Yung Kwok, Lecturer with DBM; and Dr. Hock-Ming Lee, Assistant Professor of Chinese Language and Culture Centre.
The participants of 2013 MPCC-UIC Faculty Development Summer Institute
Reporter: Michele Kwok and Katy Zhang
Editor: Deen He
(with special thanks to Prof. Mei-Hwa Sung and the ELC)
