The Robert & Joyce Johnson Center for Faculty Development and Excellence in Teaching
Thursday Lunch Topics | Reading Groups | Sabbatical Series | Events & Activities | Resources
Welcome to the Johnson Center! We offer programs throughout the year to our faculty to help us develop as teachers, as academics, and as people. The Johnson Center is dedicated to encouraging conversations and the sharing of ideas that help us be our best as individuals and as a whole faculty. Johnson Center programs not only promote career development for the faculty, but also uphold the spirit of the liberal arts tradition at Austin College.
About the Johnson Center
A.J. Carlson Lecture on the Liberal Arts
“Hope Among the Heartless: The Fierce Urgency of the Liberal Arts in a Time of Crisis”
Dr. Kevin Gannon, Professor of History, Grand View University
Bernice S. Melvin Sabbatical Series Lecture
“Threats to the Canadian Boreal Forest: My Sabbatical with the Natural Resources Defense Council”
Dr. Keith Kisselle, Associate Professor of Biology & Environmental Science, Austin College
Mission & Purpose
The Robert & Joyce Johnson Center for Faculty Development and Excellence in Teaching advances the mission of Austin College by fostering lively intellectual dialogue within and across academic disciplines. Nourishing a collegiate environment of passionate inquiry and free expression, the Johnson Center supports faculty initiatives, both intramural and extramural, that explore questions fundamental to the continued vitality of the liberal arts tradition at Austin College. As means to these ends, alongside broader campus-wide programming, the Johnson Center facilitates:
- Colloquia exploring questions vital to the liberal arts
- Interdisciplinary reading groups
- Faculty participation in regional, national, and international liberal arts conferences
- Activities in support of the scholarship of teaching and learning
- Informal gatherings devoted to intellectual inquiry and exchange
- Career development workshops related to the liberal arts for faculty at early, mid, and late career stages
- Faculty development programs to complement activities supported by the Cullen and Richardson endowments
Committee Members:
Please contact the Director or Committee members for additional information about center programs and activities.