FACULTY LEARNING COMMUNITIES
About Faculty Learning Communities
The P3 Collaboratory’s Faculty Learning Communities are peer-led groups of up to 10 faculty, staff, and graduate students who meet regularly throughout the academic year to explore a topic or project connected to pedagogical innovation, faculty development, or publicly-engaged scholarship. Faculty Learning Communities stimulate collaboration; encourage a peer-support model for learning and action; bridge disciplinary boundaries; and support community-building among participants across the university.
Faculty interested in proposing and facilitating a Faculty Learning Community in AY 2026-2027 are encouraged to apply by Friday, 3rd July 2026.
The P3 Collaboratory provides administrative and technical support to organizers while each group sets its own agenda, goals, and deliverables for the year. Facilitators receive a stipend of $1,000. The call for participants will be issued once the FLC topic is selected.
Interested in facilitating one of the Faculty Learning Communities? Apply below.
2025-2026 NASEM "Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education"
Our FLC will unpack the NASEM report "Transforming Undergraduate STEM Education" and the NASEM report's findings and recommendations to investigate how the principles outlined in the article:
-
already show up in STEM programs at RU-N and;
-
could be furthered, developed or adopted on our campus.
This FLC will be ongoing in Fall 2026 with final outcomes presented after the end of the semester.
2024-2025 Student-Engaged Bias-Free Grading
In reading bell hooks’ engaged pedagogy, we aimed to bridge practices of bias-free grading with the values and holistic teaching approach outlined in the book. This collective is designed to enable members to explore the idea of “student-engaged bias-free grading” – imbuing bias-free grading with the principles of engaged pedagogy – and provide space for members of the collective to implement these practices into their pedagogical approach and course materials.
The literature on bias-free grading offers a wealth of information on when, where, and how bias can arise in grading practices. It also emphasizes and is connected to the literature on how grading and assessment itself can reproduce inequalities and hurt students’ holistic growth through a class. Engaged pedagogy, as envisioned by bell hooks, provides a reframing of the purpose and intention of education from simply about rote memorization and respect for hierarchy and authority, and towards a process-oriented, holistic, transformative educational experience for both students and teachers. The values at the heart of engaged pedagogy offer a rich framework through which we can explore and integrate practices of bias-free grading towards the development of “student-engaged bias-free grading”.
During our 7-week FLC, we learned about engaged pedagogy and bias-free grading, have opportunities to workshop teaching materials, and receive constructive peer feedback on these materials all while developing relationships with other members of the Rutgers community who are interested in cultivating their skills as teachers.
This collective, itself, will practice the values of engaged pedagogy and hopes to offer a rich, supportive environment for thinking through and applying these principles to members’ pedagogical practice. The FLC will also create a digital resource archive with theoretical as well as practical, applied content to support current and future Rutgers educators interested in developing their pedagogical approach.
2023-2024 Student Belonging Institute
The “Student Belonging Institute” (SBI) presented and discussed research on social belonging and learning mindsets, and employed an online curriculum developed to support practical teaching approaches that bolster student engagement, increase equity in academic outcomes, and support student success. Faculty participants in the SBI cohort met in both Fall and Spring semesters of this academic year and worked together to revise their course materials to foreground student-centered messages and policies. The SBI also involved a survey component that gave (or at least endeavored to give) faculty a real-time glimpse of their students’ belonging certainty or belonging uncertainty at various points in the Spring term. This was an ambitious training program that relied deeply on participants' willingness to be open and share classroom observations and pedagogical reflections.
Participants
Keisha April, School of Criminal Justice
Colleen Berryessa, School of Criminal Justice
Jason Bird, Social Work
Theresa Brightman, Social Work
Javier Castro, Spanish and Portuguese Studies
Regina Diamond-Rodriguez, NJ-STEP
Mitchell Fillet, Finance and Economics
Kavitha Govindasamy, Biological Sciences
Mayte Green-Mercado, History
Alexandra Kunish, Marketing
Lynn Kuzma, Sociology and Anthropology
Susan Logan, Department of Arts, Culture and Media
Marisol Marroquin, Social Work
Wendell Marsh, Africana
Natalie Munoz, Social Work
Mariya Naumova, Finance and Economics
Rebecca Pena-Morais, School of Public Affairs and Administration
Laura Porterfield, Urban Education
Kaleena Rogers, Department of Social Work
Erica Salinas Thomas, Political Science
Lauren Shallish, Urban Education
Angelo Soto-Centeno, Earth and Environmental Sciences
Lance Thurner, History
Anthony Urena, Sociology and Anthropology
Lois Warner, School of Public Affairs and Administration
Christina Zambrano, Psychology
Gabe Zenarosa, Management Science and Information Systems
2022-2023 Leveraging Microcredentials to Improve Student Outcomes
Digital credentials, interchangeably known as microcredentials, take a variety of forms and they are quickly growing as workforce and career development tools. Our FLC is about learning how to create cost-free microcredentials for RU-N undergraduates (academic credit or co-curricular). We are particularly interested in microcredentials that represent a verifiable module of skill and knowledge that has value to an employer or industry (i.e. industry-aligned, competency-based microcredentials).
Value & Quality in Digital Credentials
Jesse Liss
Sociology, SAS-N
2021-2022 Critical Digital Pedagogy
Lance Thurner
History, SAS-N
This FLC worked to understand and implement digital teaching tools and strategies in classroom and research projects. Themes covered were:
-
Putting Students First! – Explore and push the boundaries of student-centered education.
-
Learning Lab – Learn best practices for implementing digital pedagogy tools in your classrooms (irrespective of discipline). Participants will be invited to present and workshop their own digital pedagogical projects to receive feedback and support.
-
Critical Pedagogy – Consider how critical pedagogies have identified unique affordances of digital tools that support democratic educational practices in alignment with feminist, anti-racist, and decolonial pedagogical approaches, and much more!
2020-2021 Accessibility and Faculty-Student Success
Cristhian Altamirano
Disability Specialist, Office of Disability Services-Newark
Allen Sheffield
Director, Office of Disability Services-Newark
This FLC researched and learned about how to make learning more accessible for students with disabilities. Themes there were covered include:
-
Impacted Students: Engage in courageous conversations on stereotypes, micro-aggressions, implicit or explicit bias, and misconceptions of disability services and what it means to be a student and have a disability. Participants gained familiarity with blogs, poetry and other forms of art by individuals with disabilities that capture the experiences, frustrations, and wins of this community of students.
-
Accommodation Implementation: Learn best practices for implementing accommodations effectively in your courses, and how the Office of Disability Services can be a resource for faculty in this regard.
-
Accessible Teaching Practices: Learn about universal design and how to make your courses more accessible for all students, and with an emphasis on students with disabilities.
-
Assessment Strategies and Managing Concerns: Learn how to handle requests from students with disabilities outside of their accommodations, how to manage grade appeals due to accommodations, how to address behavioral and wellbeing concerns in learning environments.