The Barbara Meyers Pelson Faculty-Student Engagement Endowment Fund recognizes and supports faculty from The College of New Jersey who have a distinguished record of faculty-student collaborative scholarship and teaching, and are exemplars of the teacher-scholar model. Barbara Meyers Pelson benefitted from the college’s outstanding education, and through her gift, she has afforded the college the privilege and opportunity to promote faculty-student educational collaboration even further. This inaugural chairship celebrates the engagement of students in their own education and the creation of a collaborative intellectual community as hallmarks of the college experience.
The Chair is a three-year appointment and is open to full tenured faculty members from all Schools.
The activities of the Chair are expected to involve:
1.) Collaborative research, scholarship or creative activity with students.
The reassigned time made available is intended to provide the Chair with additional and more intensive time to collaborate with their student mentees. The monetary funding could be used to support a range of needs. Several examples include: (a) student stipends, (b) student and faculty travel to professional conferences, workshops, exhibits, conservatories or to visit other collaborators, (c) equipment, supplies and/or materials for student and faculty scholarly or creative activities.
2.) Campus-wide activities that enhance the college’s capacity for faculty-student engagement.
The Chair will organize college-wide activities or events that promote and expand our capacity for faculty-student engagement. Examples of activities could include: (a) the creation of a course that enhances faculty-student collaboration, (b) curriculum revision focused on developmentally scaffolding high-impact experience into a series of courses, (c) a professional development workshop on best practices in mentoring, (d) convening a scholarly conference, or (e) hosting scholars and experts in the areas of faculty-student engagement, student mentoring, innovative pedagogies, etc. It is expected that the Chair will collaborate with Mentored Research and Internships Council, Director of Faculty-Student Scholarly and Creative Collaborative Activity and the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning in building on college’s current firm foundation in faculty-student engagement and advancing our activities in this area further.
3.) Organization of the Annual Barbara Meyers Pelson Lecture.
The Chair will organize a campus-wide event in each of the three years. The annual lecture could entail, for example, presentations from the faculty and student collaboration, guest lectures, invited speakers, panel discussions, etc.
For more information about the Chair, contact academic@tcnj.edu or click here for the PDF.