Written by: Theresa Murphy
Edited by: Kaitrin Freeland
This piece was written in collaboration with the 2025 ComSciCon-MI Write-A-Thon.
When most people think of “college”, they think of their own personal experience. “College” conjures memories of big games, late nights, dodging 8 a.m. classes, making friends, and maybe even a class or two. The majority of people only ever scrape the surface of what universities have to offer, whether as undergraduate/graduate students, parents of students, or members of the public whose tax dollars fund public higher education. Beyond the parts of the university designed specifically to engage with the public (such as sporting, alumni, and public engagement events), most laypeople are only ever associated with college through academics. Their exposure is college courses, professors standing in front of a chalkboard lecturing, and students with piles of reading. Colleges have a PR problem. The university is a large ecosystem, and for many well-known universities, undergraduate teaching is only a small portion of that ecosystem. However, the dissonance between public expectations and the actual, multifaceted priorities of the university exposes an important flaw in the system: most college teachers are not adequately taught how to teach.
Continue reading “Educating the Educators: The Importance of Educational Training for Future Faculty Members”
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