Faculty Staff Learning Community (FSLC)
Annual Report for 2006-2007
Prepared by Kristi L. Hoffman, Associate Professor of Sociology
Executive Summary
The Faculty Staff Learning Community (FSLC) Fellows Program offers faculty and staff the opportunity to design and implement an integrative learning project for their students supported by a student associate and learning community members. In this fourth year of the program, FSLC launched a new theme, Connecting Curriculum and
Co-Curricular Learning, with nine faculty and staff participating and a new coordinator,
Kristi Hoffman. Projects connect the academic curriculum with co-curricular experiences, especially in the areas of leadership, service, cross-cultural learning, research, scholarship, creativity and innovation. An emphasis is placed on active and integrative learning, deeper engagement, the development of new skills and involvement in community service. The group had an opening workshop in May, a one-day retreat in
August, and met monthly throughout the year to discuss literature on co-curricular learning, assessment and to provide updates and feedback on individual projects. Two books related to student engagement as well as integrative and co-curricular learning,
Putting Students First: How Colleges Develop Students Purposefully and Student Success in College: Creating Conditions that Matter, were discussed at the summer retreat.
This year’s projects incorporated a myriad of interesting and meaningful cocurricular experiences, focusing on building leadership and oral communication skills, providing valuable community service to several local agencies, and engaging students through innovative, interactive and collaborative learning. Service learning projects developed by Sharon Gibbs, Michelle Hagadorn and Erica Cooper included budget and money management as well as career-related workshops on resume writing. Accounting and communication students created and presented workshops for low income clients from several community agencies and schools, including Bethany Hall, RAM House,
YWCA, TRUST, Blue Ridge Independent Living Center, Rescue Mission, Interfaith
Hospitality Network as well as Salem and Patrick Henry High Schools. Sharon Gibbs and Michelle Hagadorn’s cutting edge use of service learning in accounting has been recognized and they are presenting their findings at the national meetings of the
American Association of Accounting in August in Chicago, IL. With assistance from
Jesse Griffin, Michael Mania and Katie Elmore created opportunities that enabled students from Health and Human Performance and introductory education courses to provide tutoring and mentoring to children in three after-school programs. Senior sociology seminar students, under the direction of Ed Hamilton and Daniel Sarabia, researched and wrote fundable grants for four local agencies, Court Appointed Special
Advocates (CASA), Friends of the Blue Ridge Parkway, Refugee and Immigration
Services and Easter Seals.

The fall “Leadership Roanoke” set of workshops designed for first year students was expanded into the spring semester by Kristina Rose through a series of monthly talks on leadership open to the student body. Mike Heller nurtured a new student group,
Social Awareness Group for Everyone (SAGE), which was active in sponsoring new cocurricular activities including a provocative film series, a Run for Africa fundraiser to provide a clean water filtration system and cold storage unit for an orphanage, and a student scholarly presentation on social activism at the Friends Association for Higher
Education Conference. Laura O’Toole’s project focused on creating a collaborative, integrative problem-solving approach to her social problems course. Students participated in a conflict mediation workshop, took a field trip to an intentional, nonviolence community, Twin Oaks, and worked in groups researching and doing community service for local agencies devoted to social change. Her student associate,
Katie Owens, not only assisted in the class activities but developed and taught an interactive class session on racism and the death penalty. The class was so involved in the discussion that it was continued the next evening over coffee and dessert at local café.
Along with developing and successfully implementing these interesting and educationally meaningful projects, this year’s accomplishments included an emphasis on assessment. All participating members completed individual reports on their projects
(see Appendix B for a copy of the reports) and a full program assessment was undertaken
(see Appendix A for a list of program goals and objectives). Greg Weiss with help from his student associate, Arielle Grim-McNally, designed and distributed on-line questionnaires to former FSLC participants including student associates and students directly involved in the various projects over the last four years. While a final report will be completed in the fall, the preliminary findings indicate that the vast majority of students rated their experiences with FSLC projects positively, agreeing that it help build a sense of community with fellow students, faculty and staff and provided them an interesting way to get more involved in their education. Being a student associate was also rated as positive and the faculty and staff participants or Fellows reported that the
FSLC experience lead to greater student engagement, new teaching strategies and learning activities. While the findings reveal that the FSLC is a successful innovative program, a few areas were highlighted for possible improvement. In particular, there appears to be a need for greater publicity and more integration of the student associates into the program. Steps to address these issues are underway with features about Fellows and their projects to be profiled regularly in the faculty development newsletter to begin this fall, continued encouragement by the coordinator to profile participants in the public relations RC on-line newsletter, and inviting student associates to more monthly meetings as well as encouraging faculty and staff to incorporate them more fully into the cocurricular and classroom activities. A summary of this in-depth program assessment has been accepted for presentation at the American Association of Colleges and Universities conference, Sharing Responsibility for Essential Learning Outcomes: New Partnerships across Departments, Academic Affairs, and Student Affairs to be held in November 2007.
Co-presenting the assessment procedures and findings at the conference, coordinating the program for the upcoming year, and preparing the application to submit the FSLC program to the Hesburgh award in October 2007 are the objectives for the 2007-2008.