The CTLA sponsors Community Friday luncheon learning opportunities during the fall and spring semesters. These events are designed to give faculty and staff the chance to enjoy lunch with colleagues, learn from presenters, and engage in conversation and reflection. Topics for discussion will focus on pedagogy, teaching and learning, faculty development, and student success. Announcements are sent out on a weekly basis with a request for RSVPs and lunch options. Unless otherwise noted, Community Fridays take place from noon to 1 p.m. in Humanities and Social Studies Center, Room A1231, with lunch service beginning at 11:45 a.m.
Fall 2024 Community Friday Schedule
Welcome to the start of a new academic year! For the first Community Friday of the fall semester, please join us for an opportunity to meet and engage in conversation with interim vice president for academic affairs and dean of the College, Jerry Seaman. Jerry will highlight details from his personal and professional background as an academic and higher education consultant, sketch some first impressions of Grinnell, and outline his hopes and vision for the year.
The Center for Teaching, Learning, and Assessment (CLTA) thanks the Dean’s Office for their generous support of this event.
Since Summer 2021, Dr. Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant, Louise R. Noun ’29 Chair in Gender, Women's and Sexuality Studies has led Team Renfrow, a campus-community initiative to bring visibility and recognition to Edith Renfrow Smith ’37, DHL ’19. In this session, students Evie Caperton, Libby Eggert, Hemlock Stanier, and Valeriya Woodard (all class of 2025) will present highlights from their research into the history of Black presence in Grinnell and the legacy of Mrs. Renfrow Smith at the College.
Join Autumn Wilke, associate chief diversity officer for disability resources, for a conversation about how self-advocacy skills, disability identity development, and access to support networks can impact a student’s engagement with accommodation processes. This session will direct our attention to why faculty and staff may encounter a wide range of presentations from students in navigating academic and employment accommodations. It will provide tools for how to work with students at various stages of development related to advocacy, identity, and support networks, and clarify how Disability Resources works with students across all four years to enhance these resources and skills. There will be an opportunity for large and small group discussion focused on improving the experiences of students with disabilities and on the range of resources and information available to faculty and staff who support them in their endeavors at Grinnell College.
Join a conversation with faculty and staff colleagues to explore how digital approaches can deepen student engagement in and connection with your course content, with other learners, and with you as the instructor. We are welcoming Mo Pelzel and Tierney Steelberg from the Digital Liberal Arts Collaborative, along with faculty panelists Sarah Purcell, Nick Phillips, and Julia Bauder.
We will examine how digital methods offer opportunities to enrich textual, visual, aural, spatial, and network literacies in your subject matter areas. We will discuss how to expand student agency for constructing, representing, and communicating knowledge in diverse media and forms. We’ll consider how assignments such as public writing, text analysis and annotation, digital storytelling, podcasts, digital mapping, websites, etc. offer possibilities to encourage student collaboration, share projects with audiences beyond the classroom, and engage in public scholarship as a disciplinary conversation.
Our thanks to the Digital Liberal Arts Collaborative for their generous support of this event. We hope you will join us on September 20th.
Stuart Yeager ’82, DHL ’24, revisits his foundational research on the history of Black students at Grinnell College. Starting his senior year at Grinnell and continuing through the first two years of law school, Yeager conducted 40 oral histories with Black alumni and contextualized their narratives within archival research in the College’s first century. Through this work, Yeager became one of the first Grinnellians to interview Mrs. Edith Renfrow Smith ’37, DHL ’19, and appreciate her standing as the first Black alumna of the College. As part of the dedication of Renfrow Hall, complimentary copies of Yeager’s published thesis will be available. Thanks to Renfrow Hall Dedication Committee for their generous support of this special event. We recognize Tamara Beauboeuf-Lafontant and Team Renfrow for their wonderful leadership co-organizing this program.
Join via Webex
Please join us on Oct. 4 when we welcome President Anne Harris and Chief of Staff Myrna Hernández. This interactive Community Friday, dedicated to the 2024 Election, will affirm the themes of planning, participation, and persistence articulated during the Grinnell College Colloquium in three ways:
- by presenting the latest resources for addressing the election on college campuses and by providing tools for engaging in constructive dialogue following the election;
- by discussing how we can best support our students leading up to and on the other side of the election; and
- by providing an opportunity for attendees to share their strategies for living within and beyond this election.
Our sincere thanks to the President’s Office for their generous support of this event.
How do you show others — whether they are colleagues, potential collaborators, or funders — how your work is meaningful, important, and exciting? Join us for Community Friday on Oct. 11 with Caleb Elfenbein, associate dean for faculty development and diversity, equity, and inclusion; and Susan Ferrari, associate dean for faculty development and diversity, equity, and inclusion; to learn more about how to convey the value and appeal of your work to your desired audience. In this interactive session, you will learn some strategies for communicating the importance of your work — and you will get to hear about the exciting things your colleagues are working on!
For the Community Friday on Oct. 18, we are delighted to welcome Tim Hammond, associate dean for health and wellness and director of student health promotion. During this event, the state of health, wellness, and wellbeing for our students will be addressed. Data from the National College Health Assessment III (NCHA) Spring 2024 will be shared. Participants will leave this presentation having ideas about how wellness and the NCHA data relate to and can be incorporated into their work to enhance student experiences. Read more about the ACHA-National College Health Assessment research survey.
The CTLA thanks Tim Hammond and Student Health and Wellness for their generous support of this event.
While the work of the Registrar's Office touches almost every aspect of campus in some way, most people see and/or experience only a fraction of what they do. For many faculty, their interaction with the Registrar's Office is most obviously though course registration. Registration is one of the more highly visible parts of their work, but it does not capture the full scope of what the Registrar's Office does. This Community Friday will be a wonderful opportunity to hear from Belinda Backous, interim registrar, on her reflections after five months on the job and her future goals related to registration and beyond. Faculty colleagues are especially encouraged to attend; a Webex option will be available.
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