University of Wisconsin System’s 2019 Spring Conference on Teaching & Learning . Circle talk with keynote speaker Dr. Rosalyn LaPier (Blackfeet and Metis), an indigenous writer and environmental scholar at the University of Montana. Photo credit : Jim Robinson.
By Carleen Vande Zande
Associate Vice President for Academic Programs & Faculty Advancement, University of Wisconsin System
As many of you in higher education systems across the country journeyed through the last year faced with finding new ways to do your work, we at the University of Wisconsin System found ourselves leveraging system strengths to support both new and longstanding faculty development work. The pandemic necessitated that our system identify and leverage collective strategies and systemwide approaches that respected campus level needs, ensured efficiencies in boundary spanning initiatives and simultaneously fostered innovation in system universities. The UW System launched two initiatives during the pandemic that honor three qualities of systemness that I believe are the foundation of our systemwide work: balance, benefit, and backbone.
First, we shifted our planning from one size fits all to a “common and customizable” response to faculty needs in the rapid pivot to online teaching in a time of heighted activity focusing on systemic racism. Joined through a common goal of ensuring student success and addressing emerging race and equity issues in the classroom, we provided funding through the System Online Learning Initiative sponsored through the generous gift of a donor. System invited our 13 universities to submit proposals for faculty development to engage in virtual modules focusing on how to effectively teach in the online environment and to meet the needs of all students who were engaged in race related discussions and sometimes protests. As a system, we adopted an approach that balanced our system goals with university level strategic priorities. By keeping that delicate balance in mind, we leveraged the strength of systemness for mutual goal achievement.
Systemness guided our planning to promote the benefit of systemwide faculty development programming for each university throughout the system. This was accomplished through the engagement of the Teaching and Learning Centers on each system university, which are well established faculty and staff centered entities that benefit from good reputations and strong relationships across each campus. An advisory council of center directors contributed to the design and implementation of the programming coordinated by a system office and the Office of Professional and Instructional Development.
As a backbone organization system provided resources, facilitation, and coordination of systemwide professional development activities that were customized at the university level. The pandemic solutions were a centralized solution adopted to achieve the desired development and support for faculty. Simultaneously, statewide programming focusing on equity-minded pedagogies also reflected the role of systemness as a backbone organization. UW System partnered with other higher education system in the state to ensure that all higher education faculty in the state had access to resources and discussion about equity-minded pedagogy. This activity most aptly fits the description of systemness as espoused by Dr. Nancy Zimpher “The coordination of multiple components that, when working together, create a network of activity that is more powerful than any action of individual parts on their own.“
How have your systems leveraged the attributes of systemness to achieve greater balance, benefit, and backbone support for your campuses?