For Your Health
For Your Health

News from the University of North Dakota School of Medicine & Health Sciences

Incoming class for inaugural TLAS Teaching Academy announced

The Teaching, Learning, and Scholarship (TLAS) unit in Education Resources is pleased to announce the inaugural class of the TLAS Teaching Academy. The Teaching Academy is a joint program of the SMHS Office of Education & Faculty Affairs (OEFA) and TLAS. It is being launched as a pilot program in 2020.

The ten members of this year’s Teaching Academy program, representing seven different SMHS programs and departments, will participate in 25-30 hours of curated faculty development offerings that provide focused training on curriculum design, innovative teaching, and education scholarship.

“This program has been in the planning stages for the past couple of years, so we are excited to roll it out,” said Richard Van Eck, Ph.D., associate dean for Teaching and Learning. “Our goal is to pilot the program, learn what works best, and refine it for next year and the years that follow.”

This year’s cohort will participate in all of the regularly planned TLAS faculty development activities, including the Evidence-Based Teaching workshops, TLAS Book Studies, Teaching Tune-Ups, and the Educator Scholars Series. The participants will also access Academic Impressions (an OEFA-funded online repository of webinars and resources on a wide variety of topics) and the TLAS Resource Repository (a curated collection of prior TLAS workshops, short teaching tips, handouts, articles, and videos), will meet one-on-one with TLAS instructional design experts for consultations, and will generate a written reflection of their experiences as they apply knowledge they learn to their own teaching and education scholarship.

“Building on our current offerings and asking the academy members to apply what they learn to their own work allows us to ‘close the gap’ between theory and practice,” said Adrienne Salentiny, Ph.D., an instructional designer for TLAS.

At the end of the year, participants will submit a portfolio of work documenting their skills, which will be evaluated by TLAS instructional designers. Those who complete the academy program will be awarded $500 from OEFA to be used for scholarship and professional development the following year and will receive the Educator Scholar Level 1 badge.

“We want to congratulate this year’s incoming class of Teaching Academy members for their dedication to improving their own practice,” said Ken Ruit, Ph.D., associate dean for Education and Faculty Affairs. “The completion of this program signifies a high level of commitment and skill level in teaching, learning, and scholarship, and OEFA is pleased to support this program.”

Congratulations to the the incoming class (in alphabetical order):

  • Kelly Dornbier, instructor, Department of Occupational Therapy (Casper, Wyo.)
  • Mohamed Elhamadany, assistant professor, Department of Physical Therapy
  • Amanda Haage, assistant professor, Department of Biomedical Sciences
  • Nicole Harris, assistant professor and site coordinator, Department of Occupational Therapy (Casper, Wyo.)
  • Emily Henneman, assistant professor, Department of Physical Therapy
  • Jimmy J. Morin, instructor and assistant athletic trainer, Department of Sports Medicine
  • Melanie Nadeau, assistant professor and assistant director, Public Health Program in the Department of Population Health
  • Becca Perry, instructor and clinical education coordinator, Medical Laboratory Science program
  • Mindy Staveteig, assistant professor and director of clinical education, Department of Physician Assistant Studies
  • Makoto Tsuchiya, assistant professor, Department of Sports Medicine