TEK announces 2023-24 Faculty Fellows Cohort

LEXINGTON, Ky. (May 30, 2023) — Transdisciplinary Educational approaches to advance Kentucky, or TEK, challenges faculty and students to engage with complex, multidimensional and context-specific issues. Some have described these issues as “wicked problems” that exceed the capacity of any one framework, approach or perspective to provide an adequate or lasting solution. Moreover, TEK leverages these issues for students to develop essential employability skills, including the highly valued abilities to engage multiple points of view, reflect on growth, communicate ideas effectively and collaborate in teams.

A critical part of TEK is the development of new transdisciplinary courses as well as the revision of current courses to integrate transdisciplinary skills and learning outcomes. To accomplish this, TEK is engaging the expertise of faculty in the inaugural cohort of the TEK Faculty Fellows program this fall semester.

“It’s important that the structure and spirit of the TEK Fellows program matches the nature of transdisciplinary work that TEK emphasizes,” said Trey Conatser, Ph.D., director of the Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT). “To that end, we’ll be facilitating robust faculty learning communities focused not only on the development and revision of these courses, but also on inquiry around how we can best prepare students to work on issues — from the current and known to the future and unknown — that are critical to the Commonwealth and beyond.”

New courses created as part of the TEK Faculty Fellows program will engage faculty in team-teaching across disciplinary boundaries with a focus on a critical issue or problem alongside workforce experts and community partners. Revised courses will emphasize the skills that transdisciplinary work requires, including collaboration and communication among stakeholders with different perspectives and lived experiences. Workforce experts and community partners will further support students’ understanding of how multiple disciplines and approaches can solve both local and global problems. Students will use this knowledge while exploring career-oriented pathways.

By focusing on the urgent issues of our time, as Paul Handstedt writes, we focus student learning outward onto the “fluidity of the world,” we “move beyond a mentality of simple answers,” and we affirm the “possibility of agency” that all students bring to our learning environments. TEK aims for these goals, and the TEK Faculty Fellows program will immerse a vanguard of teacher-scholars in collaborative pursuit of them.

After soliciting applications during the spring semester, TEK is pleased to announce the first cohort of TEK Faculty Fellows for the 2023-24 academic year:

• Kari Benguria, Communication and Information;

• Christy Brady, Health and Clinical Sciences;

• Lauren Cagle, Writing, Rhetoric, and Digital Studies;

• Thomas Cochell, Chemical and Materials Engineering;

• Liz Combs, Dietetics and Human Nutrition;

• Troy Cooper, Communication and Information;

• Lisa Enright, Communication and Information;

• Lindsey Fay, Interiors;

• Joel Hamm, Emergency Medicine;

• Jason Hans, Family Sciences;

• Ryan Hargrove, Landscape Architecture;

• Jordan Hines, Architecture;

• Lou Hirsch, Plant Pathology;

• Chris Huggins, Sociology;

• Amanda Lawrence, Communication and Information;

• Tracy Lu, Retailing and Tourism Management;

• Patrick Lee Lucas, Interiors;

• John Nash, Educational Leadership Studies;          

• Erin Richard, Biology;

• Melody Ryan, Pharmacy;

• Rachel Shane, Arts Administration;

• Liz Swanson, Architecture;

• Alice Turkington, Geography;

• Meg Wallace, Philosophy; and             

• Rose Winter Phong, Arts Administration.