S3 E28: Dynamic Faculty Transforming Education

Drs. Esther Park, Iulia Fratila, Allison Miner, and Yanika Kowitlawakul join your host, Dr. Rachel Yoho, to discuss how they got started as new faculty members, their efforts to transform their teaching and students’ learning, and engagement with professional development. 

Resource: Stearns Center events calendar:  https://stearnscenter.gmu.edu/events/ (events open to Mason affiliates only) 

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Rachel 0:08

Hello, and welcome to the Keystone Concepts in Teaching podcast. I'm your host, Rachel Yoho. And I'm joined by a group of absolute powerhouse faculty today from the College of Public Health at George Mason University. So we have four special guests today. Our first guest in no particular order is Dr. Allison Miner, who's a dietician and educator from the Department of Nutrition and Food Studies. We have Dr. Esther Park, an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing. We have Dr. Iulia Fratila from the Department of Global and Community Health, an Assistant Professor there, and we have Dr. Yanika Kowitlawakul, an Associate Professor in the School of Nursing. So thank you so much, all four of you, for joining us today. I'm very excited for our conversation.

Esther 0:55

Thank you for having me here. This is Esther Park from School of Nursing and I'm so excited about today's conversation 'cause we all are from the same cohort of faculty meeting.

Yanika 1:07

Thanks for having me too. Very happy to be here.

Allison 1:10

Yes. Thank you for welcoming us, and letting our cohort get a chance to be together again. We do a lot of things together, so this is just adds to our resume now.

Rachel 1:22

All right, so thank you so much for your time. So with this cohort, this conversation to get us started, you know, in this episode we wanna focus on how do we support student success by supporting faculty success. And so this group in particular, you know, I've worked with you all a little bit in some different ways. I've seen some of the massively impactful projects that you all have put on both separately and, and things you've done together. And so this group's really an interesting cohort, a group of really engaged faculty who started here at Mason at about the same time. So, to get us started, can you tell us a little bit about your cohort, your interactions, your professional relationships with each other?

Iulia 2:06

So our cohort w e all started, and please someone, correct me if I'm wrong, in August of 2023, the fall, of course together as colleagues in the College of Public Health, but each in our respective departments and in the Dean's office, we have Cathy Tompkins, who really led this initiative of a first year CPH cohort. So at that time we were the freshmen. We were in our freshman year of this cohort. Um, and, you know, the kinds of topics we talk about are really varied and, and someone else can step in and maybe elaborate on that. But really what we discuss is everything from the internal workings of our college to how our classes are going, to what kinds of research grants we might be pursuing. So the conversations. Really are varied, but this initiative start as a one year program, kind of one year opportunity to connect with one another as new faculty. And now we've just completed our sophomore year in the spring 2025, and we're getting ready for our junior year. So we've actually kind of turned this into a multiple year engagement with one another and kind of across faculty. But it was something, I think that's a new initiative even for our college to get all of the new faculty members together.

Esther 3:23

Just a little bit of piggyback what Iulia said. Yeah, I mean this cohort include not only from 2023 August cohort, but then it also include 2024 January cohort. 'cause I'm from there. So I would say that this cohort include 20 23 to 2024. And I think Iulia, you know, addressed pretty much everything that we've done there so far under Cathy Tomkins's leadership. But one thing more, we also do, social bonding. Not only, not only we do, you know, collaborative support throughout the monthly in-person meeting, but then we also organize some shorter social event. Sometimes we go out for eating, sometimes we go out for music, concerts, stuff like this. So I think this social event also really, you know, make us bond tight.

Yanika 4:16

Yeah, I do agree with Esther and Iulia. I feels like we didn't just learn about, you know, all the Mason policies, teaching strategies, or share our concerns and support each other. But sometime we went out for dinner or even went dancing together. That was fun. It was energizing and it made me feel like I belong here. I'm deeply grateful for that experience.

Allison 4:45

And this is Alison Miner. I wanna add that, you know, there's a learning curve when you get on a new job and it's so invaluable to be with colleagues that are experiencing the same thing. I will say that when I first joined, I didn't really realized the benefit for me, it was just like, oh goodness, another meeting I have to go to. And I was super busy that first semester, but as everyone said, being in this cohort has really, really been valuable. I just wanna tell you just a really quick story that was super valuable for me. Casually out to dinner, I mentioned to my colleagues that I had an Asian student who was just very quiet and I did everything I could to bring this Asian student out. And I know that, you know, in some cultures, being quiet is a sign of respect. And so I didn't wanna be disrespectful to this student, you know, calling them out. You have to participate, and Yanika chimed in. And she said, no, you tell that student she must participate. And it was, and she said it in a professional way, but also just letting me know sternly that, she has to participate. And it really gave me the confidence to go back in my classroom and talk to the student and be realistic. Look, you're part of this culture now, you're going to have to speak up. So those the kinda little things that tidbits that you're not gonna get anywhere else. Not even if you Google.

Rachel 6:10

Yeah, I think this is great, especially, you know, the work I've done with you all, and certainly a special shout out to Dr. Cathy Tompkins from the College of Public Health for the impact of this type of cohort model and working together. And so I think that really leads us into my next question because we really talk about the impact of the work. We wanna focus on how do we impact positively impact students by having better environments and better workplaces for faculty. And so let's talk a little bit more about your work together, and let's talk about what does, or what can peer leadership and encouragement look like, especially from your experiences.

Esther 6:54

I can start. I think the peer leadership and encouraging, fostering a supportive community where, you know, our colleagues actively collaborate and uplift each other, and that's exactly what happened in our monthly meeting. And we also do support practically and motivate each other in our group. You know, this means regularly meeting to discuss our progress and teaching, research and service and offering constructive feedback and celebrating each other for our success, stuff like that. So we encourage each other by sharing grant proposal and research ideas and creating a culture of, openness social event, like dining out, as I told you before. Further strengthen our bond, fostering a sense of belongings as Yanika addressed it. So we are definitely a culture of empowerment through our leadership.

Allison 7:54

I'd like to add that when you read about what faculty are doing in the general newsletters and things like that, and you're just blown away by faculty, but you know, you just, you don't know how to do it yourself. Right. And it looks like something that you couldn't do. And you know, you can't necessarily call that faculty on the phone and say, Hey, how did you do this? But in our meetings, in our cohort meetings, when faculty talk about, look, I got this grant, or I'm doing this project, or I'm working with this particular faculty member, we get a chance to say, wow, how did you do that? And it encouraged us, I think, to go out and do these things on our own. So it really had a snowball effect. Being in a cohort with people in an informal way, they can kind of give you tips that you wouldn't normally get just by reading about it in, let's say The George.

Yanika 8:47

Yeah, I would like to add more that, to me, peer leadership is look like being a good facilitator, you know, to encourage our peers to be a good teamwork and empower each other. So like example that we, Alison and Esther already addressed that, you know, when we have new information or we got a grant, we share how we get successful, we empower each other and then, you know, at the end we celebrate with each other, so this is great type of the peer leadership, that be a good facilitator.

Iulia 9:26

Yeah. This is Iulia. One thing I just wanna say is that we actually, I think this happened quite organically. Maybe we just I don't know, you know, happenstance got lucky with such a great group of people starting at one time. But the thing that we all do well that I think also is encouraging is that we show up. So, you know, when we have these meetings once a month, we didn't quite explain the structure, but they're once a month typically in person. Uh oh. It's hybrid actually because Cathy Tompkins has set it up where it's also an online option, but we actually show up once a month. So that in itself is quite encouraging. And when one of us is not there, I know like Yanika or Allison have texted me like, Hey, you weren't at the meeting this month. You know, what's up, or, you know, see you next month, or is everything good? You know? And so it's a very kind of easy, just check in with one another. But part of the fact and reason why it's so encouraging is that we actually do just show up.

Esther 10:20

Yeah, I mean, I'm so glad to hear Iulia addressed Cathy Tompkins's role here again, I think, Cathy Tomkins's leadership was really great. And then that leadership really make our peer leadership as an, action oriented collaboration. 'cause every month, Cathy brought her like guest speaker, not every month, but you know, pretty much every month. She ask us who do you want to see in the meeting? Right. So she invited guest speakers and I think Rachel was one of them. And as soon as Rachel was invited and then talk about Stearns Center and then Yanika share her personal experience about mini grant she got, and we all jump in and then work on writing the the mini grant proposal. So I, I think Cathy's leadership in inviting guest speakers to our meeting provided really practical resources for new faculty. And we start to build up action oriented collaboration there.

Rachel 11:15

Yeah, I think that's a great point. It was very nice to visit all of you, as a guest speaker in one of those also. But I also wanna acknowledge, especially with this group, you know, certainly, we've probably all been part of groups where we start places and it feels much more competitive. I wanna acknowledge here, especially this group of individuals having that collaborative spirit, having that we're gonna support each other, we're gonna uplift each other, is also contributions from all of you individually and working together and continuing that. So I think that's really special. But let's shift over a little bit and talk about some institutional resources. So let's talk about, what are some of the institutional resources that you've found that are helpful in your first year, couple years here at Mason? What are some of the things maybe that you found helpful that others may not know about, especially if they aren't lucky enough to have that sort of cohort model or have have guest speakers coming in all the time?

Yanika 12:13

I feel very lucky when I first came in, that is the mentorship program that conducted at school of nursing. So I was assigned a mentor, Dr. Margie Rodan was my mentor for the first year then she had a list of things to do to walk me through everything and let me observe all teaching classes in the first semester. This was very helpful and it make me feel very welcome. And then they give a list workload for the first semester that I think that's really, really great because of, I have more time to observe. I learn about the new culture that I start learning as a person that come from another country that came in for the first semesters. I think mentorship program's very helpful, especially one-on-one, with the senior faculty.

Esther 13:08

And then also I think, you know, as I told you before, a Stearns Center was very helpful resources. I'm not really, you know, exaggerating, but, you know, Stearns Center just provide me, you know, what is the definition of structured assessment for student outcomes, and what resources I can actually dig into for fostering student success. So I mean, Stearns Center. You can leave with that, you know, link for a while once you join here. So then you can definitely guarantee the best start in their new institution.

Rachel 13:44

For the record, this was not a pushed endorsement. But

Esther 13:47

No.

Rachel 13:47

Thank you so much, Esther. We really appreciate it.

Allison 13:52

I want to reiterate what Esther said. You know, I'm one of the older faculty here. I've been teaching for a long time, and so, you know, I have a pretty good deal of knowledge, but there's always something you can learn. As an example, I'm part of the inclusive course redesign program that the Stearns Center is facilitating and I'm blown away by the information I'm learning that I just didn't know. And there are other faculty in this course, so they're providing information as well. So there's always something for everyone. And as Esther said, sometimes we just don't have time to do some of the courses or even the workshops, but there's a plethora of information online, how to compose your syllabus, what are some online best practices. All of that is there, besides all of the workshops that you could possibly attend.

Iulia 14:45

Yes. Stearns, one more shout out for Stearns from our group. You brought us all together. I think you've supported us well, but it's just true. I mean, and this will be, my last plugin I guess for the Stearns. But what I really appreciate about this center that we have for teaching is that there's different formats. So in the spring I participated in the first year five program. And so it's essentially, reading and engaging with or attending five different events, materials that are related to teaching, right? And kind of writing a reflection on those. Those were really good kind of low hanging fruit for me that I could plan throughout my spring semester. So I went to a conference, I attended a teaching talk. I wrote a reflection on it. It counted towards my first year five program. I watched a webinar on AI that counted towards but it essentially gave me homework, right? That was good with deadlines. And I got to choose whatever material and events I wanted to attend that made sense for my teaching needs with, of course, the intention and focus of building my inclusive teaching capabilities. So I thought that was great. And another one that's kind of a different format that's really easy to engage with is just the conference. We have an entire teaching conference here once a year in the fall, the Innovations in Teaching and Learning conference. And you go one day, two days, and you hear from other colleagues from across the entire, campus. So I think those are really great. I would also say that within our college, you know, most of us, I think all of us we're instructional term faculty. So definitely when you hear our podcast, we talk a lot about what kind of teaching supports we have because they, those are really meaningful to us. But we have great research supports, you know, from the student research OSCAR office at the university level. We have our own office of research with Alison Cuellar within the College of Public Health. So we also have great research supports. And one other thing that the Dean has done within our college is this Dean speaker series. And so what she does, maybe two or three times a semester, we'll invite guest speakers. We had topics related to like nutrition and human fertility, developing kind of like a community health workers intervention. And so what she does is she invites speakers to our college and they give a presentation on their research on the kind of work that they're doing in the community. And it's a great opportunity for faculty and staff across the whole college. It's a bit of a networking, social connection kind of event, but it's still an institutional resource. Right? So even if it's not a training, it's an event that's hosted by our college, by the dean. And because we have so many different departments, it can relate to each person in a way that that makes sense to them.

Rachel 17:21

Yeah. Thank you all so much. Thank you all for the shout outs, ah guess what? You're all going to be our new Stearns Center hype faculty gonna be having you go and, you know, visit other places. No, I'm just kidding. But yeah, I really appreciate it. And so as we kind of move into some of the work that you've done with the Stearns Center, I'm wondering if you could each maybe give us like the sixty second overview of the grant work, that you've had with your mini grant projects, just to kind of show some of the impact of the innovation and the work that you all are doing.

Allison 17:51

One initiative I'm proud of is our faculty led book club focused on a book titled Inflamed, which explores the intersection of health, race, and environmental justice. It sparked amazing conversations and help us bring those things into our classroom. The grant has just been amazing. It was just to test whether this would work, and I think Iulia and I together want to extend the grant, so we'll see how things go. But it was very successful for this semester.

Iulia 18:31

Yeah, this was a pilot program where we kind of tested out this book club and we invited faculty from across the College of Public Health and we had discussions and written reflections pertaining to the chapters, and it really allowed us to learn from one another about how, really how we talk about health equity in our respective classes and tied to our fields. So it was really fruitful conversation. Yeah, it was great working with Allison too.

Yanika 18:58

This is Yanika. I received a mini grant in 2024 from the Stearns Center. Of course, my project focused on peer led team learning and it aimed to enhance student engagement, academic performance, and leadership skill. Actually, this type of teaching strategy is not new idea, but it has not been a structure. So I restructure the small group discussion in class by, you know, we have to involve the faculty to develop the case scenario and problem solving questions and reflection document, and propose briefing for the group leaders. For the student, we provide equal opportunities to be a leader in the small group. So the group leader was rotated for each week. So based on the student reflection, it was surprised me that most students like to be a leader, especially the quiet students. That's very surprised me. There were few students who say that they were not comfortable to be a leader, but they did a good job in leading and facilitating the group discussion. So this is quite a meaningful outcome that I receive.

Esther 20:18

This is Esther. So in December, 2024, sometime I was preparing a spring 2025 sophomore lab course that I'm going to teach this year. And I identified a critical gap in remediation opportunities for struggling students. So I pause the prep work and go into, of course, Stearns Center again. And then, oh, is there anything that I can utilize for. Providing remediation sessions for those struggling students. And I found the mini grant of course. Because, last year, spring 2024, we had 23% of the attrition rate, only from the nursing skills and fundamental didactic and lab course. So I applied for a teaching innovation and Initiatives mini grant to address this issue. So my proposal focus focused on developing strategy to enhance instructor consistency across groups, across sections, and to all for after lab remediation sessions for struggling students. And to implement clear rubrics and grading criteria and to provide all the guideline for lab instructors, which is, you know, most likely they are adjunct faculty, to ensure consistent and equitable student outcomes. So recognizing, you know, students of freshman year and sophomore year, they often lack commitment when they face unclear directions or inconsistent instructions. So I developed tools and strategies to promote clarity and support. So those, you know, tools that I develop under the mini grant support, I develop clearly defined weekly objectives and a concise introductory video outlining the course expectation and consequences, and all the distribution of rubrics, grading criteria and relevant resources. I was able to really invest my hours and time because Stearns Center support me and I also develop these structured remediation sessions to foster student success and engagement. So, I'm so happy. I'm going to also present, you know, this finding in their conference talk, but then I found that attrition rate from this fundamental and then lab course is a lot smaller than last year. Last year I said that, 23%, but this year we do have 12%. So it was a huge improvement and I really appreciate this mini grant that were able to support those struggling students for especially sophomore year students.

Rachel 23:03

Yeah. That's great. Thank you. Thank you all so much. Not only for your work to support students, but also your work to support each other in these grants and everything as well. I think here, you know, we definitely see the ways that supporting faculty and even supporting each other also supports students and their outcomes and their learning. So unfortunately, not everyone has a great cohort. Not everyone is hired in with other faculty. And not everyone has the structures coming from the College of Public Health like you all have had. So could you give maybe some of your recommendations, maybe some encouragement for other instructional faculty, particularly if they don't already have a cohort that starts to work together in that sort of very mutually beneficial and supportive way.

Allison 23:51

What I would like to say to those faculty, you're not alone. Even if you feel isolated within your own department which I think everybody probably experienced that in some point. It's not just one faculty member. The biggest advice I have is to look beyond your immediate area and connect with university wide initiatives, workshops, or other cross disciplinary programs. Building your own informal network is very sustaining. One of the things that we didn't mention that, I do wanna bring that up is that our cohort of, our juniors, our freshman cohort, we're so diverse. You can't see it because this is a podcast, but we are from just such varied cultures. And it's wonderful. I know our university is known for its diversity, but our cohort is extremely diverse. It's not represented here, but we do have males in our cohort as well. So it's wonderful to connect with people around the university, not just in your discipline.

Iulia 24:58

One other thing I would say is we did start together, and this cohort started together. However, there were again, one-off events that also helped kind of solidify our bond. So for people that are coming in, there's a President's dinner or something, right? That's kind of like, an event hosted for new faculty. And that's where new faculty from across the entire campus are invited to this really nice, it's a nice event. There's food, there's music. So I think, you know, even one off events like that can just give you an opportunity to, you never know what kind of conversation you're gonna have, what kind of networking you're gonna do, or just feel like those moments they're talking to you, they're welcoming you to this new university, this new institution. So I would really encourage new faculty or others who are, have been here maybe for a couple years and haven't felt this kind of belonging, to look for those one-off events because you really never know what can come out of them.

Esther 25:54

And then I also reiterate, you know, what Allison might have said. You know, that's definitely important to build informal network. You know, even without a formal cohort, right? Seek a, like, colleague across department or institutions for collaborations. I really want to, you know, reemphasize those, building informal networks. To do so I think, you know, I want you to stay resilient and proactive. Teaching without a cohort can feel isolating, but your initiative can make a difference, I think. So take small steps like, you know, inviting a colleague for a small coffee time to discuss teaching, you know, challenges or successes to build relationships. I think your initiative matters, so stay resilient and proactive for that.

Yanika 26:40

Yes, for me, I would recommend to attend university workshops or any workshops that have the hands on or you have time to participate and be proactive to reach out and make new friends. This will help both professional development and a sense of belonging. So I find that finding new friends from other departments or faculty is really joyful. So that is would be my recommendation.

Rachel 27:10

Yeah, absolutely. So with this, you know, I think here obviously we're seeing not only the ways that supporting students really can very much be reliant on supporting faculty. You know, we have faculty are the student supports as well as many other academic offices or student support areas. But primarily faculty are really working with students and supporting faculty is essential. And so also, you know, we've seen not only the benefits of sort of that cohort model, but also just a great group of people who wants to work with and support each other, not compete with each other. But with this, I think here we're really looking at our keystone concept of community. We've seen the ways that you all have actively worked to build community with each other, but also even within the grants, how you built community, how you looked at supporting student teamwork and leadership, how you built community with faculty across different disciplines, you know, through the book club, how you've looked at helping students who are struggling. This is all about building community and to do that we have to support faculty in building their community, whether that's formally or informally. So I really wanna thank you all so much for your time and really just celebrate all of the impactful work that you all have been doing and the ways that you work together and support each other with formal things and with just that informal, like, Hey, how are you? Check-ins. So thank you so much for your time. I'm very appreciative of not only the work that you do, the work and especially the shout outs to the Stearns Center, but also just all the ways that you support your students. So thank you so much.

Esther 28:53

Thank you. Thank you for having us.

Yanika 28:54

Thank you.

Allison 28:55

Thank you. My pleasure. My pleasure.

Iulia 28:59

Thank you, Rachel.

Rachel 28:59

So thank you so much for listening in to this episode. Please be sure to catch our next episode. We post every two weeks during the fall and spring semester, so I hope you will join us again for our next guest.