Events & Programs
Although faculty members are experts in a given academic discipline, most receive little training and development as educators. Before teaching at UAA, faculty may have years of teaching experience or little experience in teaching, and that experience may carry well over to their classes at UAA or it may not. Wherever faculty are in their teaching journey, we are here to help!
Faculty development is when faculty develop teaching skills and come to understand the learning process. The Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE) hosts cross-disciplinary onboarding events, workshops, learning communities, conference-style academies, intensives, and peer-led programming help faculty continually improve on their teaching practices. Through CAFE programming, UAA faculty develop, practice, critically evaluate, and expand evidence-based pedagogies and practices that serve the needs of our diverse community of learners.
Faculty Recognition
Recognizing the impactful, supportive, and phenomenal work of UAA faculty is core to our mission to center faculty excellence. To recognize these faculty, the Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE) created the CAFE Oh Wow (COW) awards, which include awards for Excellence in Teaching and Promoting Success of Fellow Faculty. Learn more about these awards!
Upcoming Events
Visit our Upcoming Events page to learn more and register for an event:
Event Recordings
- Recordings and materials from past Teaching Academy sessions are available in a Teaching Academy self-enrolling Blackboard course (UA only)
- Pivot 3: Self-Paced Course Design & Development (self-enrolling Blackboard course, UA only) has links to several workshops to help
faculty with teaching remotely. Topics include UAA’s student population, interaction
in online classes, inclusive online teaching, and designing assessments
Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence Programs
The Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence (CAFE) facilitate programs for UAA and the community, including:
- UAA/APU Books of the Year: Established in 2006, the UAA/APU Books of the Year program offers university and community members a chance to use shared texts to engage in conversations around critical themes
- Difficult Dialogues: This program offers strategies for classrooms and public events, facilitates workshops around the state, and has created three handbooks to help faculty, faculty developers and university leaders more effectively engage campus communities in conversations about important issues. Learn more on the Difficult Dialogues National Resource Center website
- Dialogues for Public Life: Co-sponsored by the Center for Community Engagement & Learning, the UAA Ethics Center, and the UAA School of Social Work, Dialogues for Public Life was created when UAA was invited to participate as a member of a national learning exchange cohort with The Kettering Foundation
Our professional development programs bring faculty together for deeper dives into select areas of interest:
- The UAA Teaching Academy is held twice a year, in August (Fall Teaching Academy) and January (Winter Teaching Academy). In addition to training and sessions updating faculty on issues of interest, the Teaching Academy frequently includes sessions launching or presenting on the work of faculty cohorts, from the Textbook Affordability Fellows to year-long faculty learning communities
- Community Engaged Research Fellows is a year-long program that was created to support community-engaged (CE) research efforts through an exchange of ideas and knowledge about partnership development, CE research methodologies, and publishing your research
- Faculty Learning Communities are a series of conversations about changing topics, from teaching graduate students to teaching about climate change.
- Making Learning Visible is UAA’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) program which addresses how teachers can not only improve their expertise in the field, but also develop and document pedagogical expertise
- UAA Technology Fellows is a long-standing learning community that fosters student success through sound course design and the integration of technology to enhance both teaching and learning
- Quality Matters offers a process to improve and certify the design of online and blended courses. It is an international organization that provides peer-reviewed, quality assurance certification. UAA has been a member of Quality Matters for many years. Visit the Quality Matters website to learn more about the organization
Teaching Conferences
If you want to attend a teaching conference, there are a lot out there to choose from. The Conferences page is a list of teaching conferences curated by CAFE. This is by no means an extensive list, but it is a good place to start if you are just starting to think about professional development in the practice of teaching in higher education. There are conferences in the list for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, active learning, community engagement, teaching online, and more. If you need some assistance looking for the right faculty development opportunity, or if there is a conference that should be added, email uaa_cafe@alaska.edu.
Funding to attend conferences can be available, depending on the conference. Visit the Conferences page to see if there are any conferences that CAFE is providing scholarships for, and visit Faculty Services to look at when Faculty Development Grant cycles are happening. There is usually a grant cycle in Fall and Spring semesters. Also reach out to leadership in your college to see what opportunities are available.
For upcoming events for faculty not hosted by CAFE, visit UAA's Faculty Calendar.
Faculty Development & Instructional Support
Center for Advancing Faculty Excellence, Academic Innovations & eLearning, and Center
for Community Engagement and Learning
Library 213 • 907-786-4496 • uaa_cafe@alaska.edu • Monday – Friday, 8 a.m. – 5 p.m.