The Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellows Program is a partnership that brings Brown University graduate students to Wheaton College to teach courses in their academic fields and to gain valuable experience in the responsibilities and challenges of professional membership in a college community. A graduate student, during an appointment at Wheaton, will carry the title of Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellow.

Brown is a major university whose graduate students are among the best in the world. Wheaton College is a classic undergraduate liberal arts college with a national reputation for effective teaching. The Faculty Fellows Program, an outgrowth of many years of formal and informal Brown-Wheaton partnerships, allows both institutions to profit from the strengths of the other. For Brown’s graduate students, Wheaton provides an ideal setting for them to develop their teaching skills and learn to function as a professional member of a collegial community. Wheaton, in turn, gets vital access to new learning through connections with Brown’s academic departments and programs and the opportunity to enrich its commitment to teaching and learning in ways that benefit its own programs. Both institutions share a belief that research and teaching mutually enhance intellectual community.

Purpose of the Program

The purpose of the Faculty Fellows Program is to develop advanced competency in undergraduate teaching in a liberal arts environment. Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellows in the liberal arts will find and enact their own most effective teaching style, will learn how to teach with concern for the whole student, and will experience the special multidisciplinary collegiality that characterizes the undergraduate liberal arts college. This will include learning how to articulate for a broader audience the most exciting elements of their own research, and how to advance from teaching what others have learned toward professing their own knowledge.

Administration

Administration of the Program will be shared at Wheaton by the Office of the Provost, and at Brown by the Graduate School. Administrative concerns include: selecting Brown students;; supervising and supporting Faculty Fellows  at both institutions; assessing and integrating assessment into their learning; and periodic assessment of the Faculty Fellows Program.

Selection Process

The Office of the Provost at Wheaton will identify courses that (1) should be replaced as a result of leaves, or (2) represent areas of learning that would enhance current offerings (particularly in multidisciplinary areas), and will submit those projected openings to Brown’s Graduate School. The Graduate School will invite advanced graduate students at Brown to apply for these opportunities. Brown will review and provide these applications to Wheaton. The Wheaton department or program will then interview the recommended candidates and submit selection preferences to Brown. Brown’s Graduate School will then notify students of their selection and non-selection. Hiring of accepted candidates will be completed through Wheaton’s Office of the Provost. Each Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellow will receive a mentor. Mentors will be expected to make an initial outreach to the Faculty Fellow at this time.

Qualifications and Expectations

Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellows will typically be advanced graduate students, well along on the dissertation, who have participated in the Sheridan Center’s certification programs. Students who do not meet this ideal, however, may be considered, but will be expected to participate in Sheridan Center programs during this opportunity.

At Wheaton, Faculty Fellows will teach one course and be expected to participate, as completely as possible, in the life of the liberal arts college community. They will be invited and expected to attend department meetings and faculty meetings (though they may not vote), to join faculty from various departments in the faculty lunchroom or other venues for multidisciplinary interaction, and to attend relevant monthly teaching and learning workshops that are part of the regular experience of Wheaton faculty. They will also be expected to share their ongoing research with the Wheaton community, in whatever way seems most appropriate—a Faculty Lunch Talk, as part of a panel on a pertinent topic, as a presentation for departmental majors, or similar collegial opportunity.

Upon hiring, each Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellow in the Liberal Arts will be assigned a Wheaton mentor. The Faculty Fellow should expect to meet with the mentor as soon as possible to review the syllabus and assignments before the semester commences and to develop with them a written statement of goals and objectives for the experience. After the term begins, they will continue to meet with the mentor each week, or according to another comparable schedule worked out among the mentors and the Faculty Fellow. The mentors will typically review the syllabus and assignments, serve as sounding boards about the progress of the course, observe the class and make recommendations, help acculturate the Faculty Fellows to the liberal arts environment, and answer questions as they arise.

Program Evaluation

Once they have completed their semester at Wheaton, Faculty Fellows will be expected to submit a reflective self-assessment of their experience to the Office of the Provost at Wheaton and the Graduate School. Mentors will be expected to provide additional commentary on the experience and on their Faculty Fellow’s assessment. Wheaton will use its standard Course Evaluation Form plus whatever additional instrument(s) the Provost’s Office may deem appropriate to assess each Faculty Fellow’s performance. A representative from the Brown Graduate School and Wheaton’s Office of the Provost will meet each year to review the results of the program and to recommend any changes.

Brown/Wheaton Program Contacts

Please direct inquiries and other communications to the contact at your home institution.

Brown Graduate School
Byrd McDaniel, Assistant Dean of Student Development
[email protected]

Wheaton College
Office of the Provost
[email protected]