[URBANTH-L]SUNTA Teacher Blog Site Now Available

[Robert Rotenberg]

At the suggestion of the membership at the SUNTA business meeting in Tampa,
last March, I have initiated and will moderate a blog on university-level
teaching. This blog is especially intended for our members, but
contributions will be welcome from any university-level teaching
professional. To stay abreast of what I hope will be a lively discussion,
please add this blog ( http://suntateacher.blogspot.com) to your RSS or Blog
reader (Goggle Reader is a convenient for those new to the medium).

I hope that this blog will prove especially useful to graduate students,
adjunct faculty, visiting faculty and newly hired faculty. While "old dogs",
like me, still have much to learn, the discussion of teaching is
particularly crucial in the first few years of full teaching loads. And no,
you will not become a good teacher just because you were a good student or
are a good researcher. It's a different skill set.

Every two weeks or so, I will start a thread on a different teaching topic.
I'll tie most of these threads to what I happen to be doing at that point in
time in my own practice. If anyone else wants to start a thread, that's
fine. Do it. I'm merely trying to keep the conversation going, not dominate
it.

Since most of the courses I teach are connected in some way to the research
tradition embodied by the Society for Urban, National and
Transnational/Global Anthropology, my threads will try to make the
connection between research and teaching (and service) as often as possible.

Some of the newer members of SUNTA may not know who I am or why I would do
something like this. I have been both secretary and president of SUNTA. I
have also conducted several workshops on teaching, including one last
November in San Jose that was sponsored by SUNTA. I am a member of the
Professional and Organizational Development Network, the professional group
for directors of faculty development centers around North America. At my own
school, I'm a sort of ninja-faculty developer. That is, I do it, but I don't
get the title. I also wrote a book on teaching for new professors and
graduate students.

So, please visit the site: http://suntateacher.blogspot.com and subscribe.
Then, contribute! This is the place to ask, answer, comment, vent, complain,
celebrate, and share your experiences in the classroom; the site of the most
complex, the most compelling intellectual problem you will ever face:
teaching!

Bob Rotenberg