Letter from the Senior Director of the Searle Center

Learning Together: Events, Programs, & Services

• Winter Quarter Programming
• Supporting Student Success Practicum

• Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching: Recently Updated and Enhanced
• New Assessment & Curricular Change Website

• Educator Spotlight: Cynthia Nazarian
• What We're Reading: Radical Reimagining for Student Success

Teaching Tips: Pinch Points & Plus Ones

• Cultivating Resilience: Insights from Health Psychologist Elizabeth Addington

Dear Colleagues,

As we welcome the new year, it's an opportune time to reflect on where and how we might begin again. As educators, we can encourage students to embrace "restarts" in their academic journeys.

The importance of developing an agile mindset is highlighted in Practice for Life: Making Decisions in College, based on interviews with over 200 students at selective liberal arts institutions with a range of experiences from struggling to thriving. To balance the prescriptive narrative that “these are the best years of your life,” we can acknowledge that not all academic endeavors will be equally enthralling and emphasize that there is no single path to success. Most importantly, we can encourage students to see themselves as playing a crucial role in making their education meaningful.

What emerges from the study is a view of engagement as episodic and particularistic, varying with different subject matter, instructors, teaching methods, and assignments. That means that every new year, term, course, and class meeting presents new opportunities for engagement. Embracing restarts, particularly after a setback, bolsters the resilience students need to navigate their educational paths with confidence and purpose, leading to positive outcomes such as persistence, personal development, satisfaction, and learning.

This issue of our newsletter maps a variety of engagement opportunities and learning pathways for instructors seeking fresh approaches and collegial support that is critical for vitality. The Supporting Student Success Practicum—our largest and most comprehensive program—will advance the University Priority of building resilient students and fostering a sense of belonging. In conversation with educational developers and faculty experts, participants will grapple with the wicked problem of defining, facilitating, and assessing student success. To recognize their commitment, participants will have the opportunity to earn a digital badge upon completion.

We also feature the updated Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching, which have recently been enhanced with the latest scholarship on supporting student success and safeguarding instructor vitality. Additionally, we are excited to announce the launch of our New Assessment & Curricular Change Website, with easy-to-navigate resources for each stage of the assessment process cycle. Learn how the SEARLE Framework values of being student-centered, equitable, authentic, responsive, lifelong, and empathetic can guide effective and context-specific assessment practices at Northwestern.

In our What We're Reading section, we explore Radical Reimagining for Student Success in Higher Education, which calls for an integrated, holistic approach to student success. The book calls for purpose-driven, active, and collaborative learning, and provides practical pedagogical strategies that can inspire and engage students.

Finally, don't miss two featured interviews. In our Educator Spotlight, Distinguished Fellow of the Searle Center Cynthia Nazarian shares lessons from her research and teaching, including the "resilience of the voice that refuses to be silenced" and the value of listening to student feedback to make mid-course adjustments that will deepen learning. In Cultivating Resilience, Northwestern health psychologist Elizabeth Addington offers evidence-backed ways to increase positive emotions, including small acts of appreciation that can build meaningful relationships and foster a more resilient learning environment.

May this new year bring us closer to our collective aspiration to ensure that the learning of every Northwestern student is rigorous, transformative, and supported by inclusive, evidence-based teaching.

Warm Regards,

Jennifer Keys, Ph.D.
Senior Director, Searle Center (she/her/hers)

Supporting Student Success Practicum

Supported by the Office of the Provost, the University Practicum is the largest, most comprehensive program offered at Northwestern for instructors to deepen their teaching practice. This year's topic was informed by a survey of Northwestern instructors and advances the University priorities of delivering an outstanding educational experience and building resilient students and a sense of belonging.

The practical, flexible, and supportive online practicum includes synchronous online sessions, learning labs, a faculty panel, and individual consultations. Participants will have an opportunity to explore multiple factors shaping students’ holistic success, including

• strategies for co-creating and communicating course expectations with transparency,
• course design that supports equitable access to learning, and
• student-centered assessment practices.

Participants who complete a flexible set of required components will receive a digital badge.

Registration is now open for the winter and spring iterations: Feb. 4-28 or April 1-25.

Keynote Address | January 30, 2025, noon–1:30pm CST
The entire campus community is invited to attend the Pre-Practicum Keynote by Jillian Kinzie, Associate Director of the National Survey of Student Engagement at the Center for Postsecondary Research at Indiana University and co-editor of Radical Reimagining for Student Success in Higher Education. Register for the Keynote.

Questions? Email practicum@northwestern.edu 

Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching: Recently Updated and Enhanced

By Veronica Womack, Associate Director of Inclusive Teaching and Eun Sandoval-Lee, Project Administrator of Strategic Initiatives

The Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching were developed to enable the full participation, engagement, and learning of all students through the fostering and maintaining of inclusive learning environments, which are at the core of Northwestern's mission. Created in collaboration with the Office of Provost, the Searle Center, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Inclusion, the Office of Civil Rights and Title IX Compliance, and faculty, the Principles were recently updated through a university-wide review led by the Searle Center.

The updated Principles feature new resources for each of the eight principles, including learning and teaching guides created by the Searle Center, new strategies for cultivating a welcoming and inclusive course climate through relationship-building, and a renewed call to honor and be compassionate toward one’s own lived experiences in the classroom.

These incorporations align with the Searle Center’s efforts to support student and instructor resilience. Many of the inclusive teaching and learning frameworks which are featured throughout the Principles—such as trauma-informed teaching, Universal Design for Learning, and transformative pedagogies—support student resilience by emphasizing the need for instructors to be transparent, learner-centered, and community-driven. 

Below, we highlight frameworks and strategies to nurture instructor vitality by cultivating resilience and resistance to burnout. Inspired by the themes in Unraveling Faculty Burnout: Pathways to Reckoning and Renewal (Pope-Ruark, 2022), each strategy connects to an updated Principle.

Knowing and Following Your Purpose

• Principle 2: Establish and Communicate Clear Standards and Expectations

• One strategy towards inclusive teaching is to reflect critically on what you want your students to be able to do, know, and value by the end of the course. You can expand upon these reflections by explaining the rationale and purpose behind your teaching activities and assignments within your syllabi and during your class sessions. Instructors who relay assignments in this transparent manner have reported that the quality of students' work increases while the time it takes to grade assignments decreases. Learn more about Transparency in Learning & Teaching.

Practicing Compassion for Yourself and Others

• Principle 1: Consider Your and Your Students’ Social Identities and Implications for Learning

• Like students, instructors can also encounter biases and assumptions from colleagues and students. It is important to note that faculty of color, particularly women, experience microaggressions and stereotyped expectations. Therefore, honoring and being compassionate toward your own lived experience in the classroom context is pivotal and further cultivates instructor vitality.

Deepening Connections with Peers 

• Principle 5: Cultivating a Welcoming and Inclusive Course Climate

• One way to foster instructor immediacy, or connection, on the first day of class, is by letting students share their names with you and the rest of their peers. You can also encourage your students to use each other's names when doing small group work (3-4 students) or active learning, such as think-pair.  By facilitating a deeper connection among your students, instructors may support their own vitality by challenging narratives around learning being instructor-centered and embodying [what bell hooks described as] a more liberatory, collective, and learner-centered approach to understanding curricular content.

Want to learn more about how the Northwestern Principles of Inclusive Teaching can enhance inclusive teaching and cultivate resilience?

Join in community with other instructors during winter quarter's facilitated Inclusive Teaching Reading Group —attend any or all sessions. Sign up to join the reading group.

New Assessment & Curricular Change Website

By Lauri Dietz, Director of Pedagogy and Assessment, and Lina Eskew, Senior Assistant Director of Equitable Assessment

We are excited to announce the launch of our refreshed Assessment and Curricular Change website! If you have consulted with us or attended one of our assessment workshops, you may recognize the assessment process cycle, which now inspires the organizational structure of the site. For each cycle stage, we define the process, highlight course- and program-level applications, and provide practical, ready-to-implement strategies.

The assessment cycle is grounded in our newly articulated SEARLE Framework, which reflects our shared values—student-centered, equitable, authentic, responsive, lifelong, and empathetic—for building a meaningful and sustainable assessment culture at Northwestern. Developed through our collaborations with the Northwestern community, this framework guides our approach to working across schools and programs to promote effective and context-specific assessment practices. This value framework will be published in Transformative Dialogues early 2025—stay tuned for its release!

We invite you to explore our updated website and share your feedback. We will continue to add new resources for each cycle stage, so let us know what would be most helpful to you. As always, reach out to us if you'd like schedule a consultation or customized workshop.

Wishing you a new year filled with purposeful and joyful assessment! 

Educator Spotlight: Cynthia Nazarian

By Laura Ferdinand, Assistant Director of Content and Communication

Each quarter, we feature Northwestern educators doing innovative work in the classroom. These short interviews showcase their educational journeys, signature styles, and how their teaching has been shaped by their work with the Searle Center.

In spring of 2024, Northwestern's Office of the Provost honored Cynthia Nazarian with a University Teaching Award, recognizing her innovative curricular leadership and considerable contributions to student learning. Recently, the Charles Deering McCormick Professor of Teaching Excellence and Distinguished Fellow of the Searle Center shared the ways she encourages students to engage unfamiliar perspectives and work through challenging course materials, building in moments to take pride in their accomplishments.

What does your research on Early Modern Europe suggest about the ways contemporary people can cultivate resilience within our current global contexts?

Through my research, my advising and my teaching, I’ve come to believe that VOICE = ACCESS. And moreover, it seems that very little can overtake the resilience of the voice that refuses to be silenced, but continues reaching out in spite of struggle.

What advice would you give to new educators about building and maintaining resilience in their teaching practice?

I think it’s important to check in often with students both individually and as a group to track the progress of a class along the way. Comments on CTECs help our future students, not our current ones. I believe that asking for student feedback over the course of the quarter allows me to keep that close eye on how well the course is meeting their needs while challenging them to continue moving forward. I also value light feet—that is, standing ready to adjust and make substantive changes mid-course in response to how students are advancing the material. 

Read the full interview.

What We're Reading

By Denise Drane, Senior Associate Director of Research and Innovation

Radical Reimagining for Student Success in Higher Education

Edited by Jo Arney, Timothy Dale, Glenn Davis, and Jillian Kinzie

At the core of the book is a call for a radical reimagining of higher education, emphasizing the need for an integrated, holistic approach to student success. The authors argue that piecemeal efforts are no longer sufficient in today’s complex higher education landscape, shaped by shifting student demographics and diminishing resources. Instead, they propose centering student success in every aspect of the university, from institutional structures to pedagogical practices.

Pedagogical Transformation and Support for Instructors

A particularly compelling chapter, authored by Mark Canada and Jeffrey Gayton, examines the central role of learning in student success. Canada and Gayton argue that learning—purpose-driven, active, experiential, authentic, and collaborative—should be the heart of the university.

This chapter offers an excellent discussion of pedagogical strategies, including active and authentic learning approaches that inspire and engage students. It also provides concrete examples and an evidence base that faculty can apply directly to their own teaching practices.

Timothy Dale and Joseph Foy follow with a chapter on how institutions can support faculty who are committed to student success. Strategies include creating mentoring networks for instructors, providing them with  professional development around student success and incorporating student success frameworks in faculty/instructor review criteria.

Read the full review with key takeaways.

Cultivating Resilience: Insights from Health Psychologist Elizabeth Addington

By Veronica Womack, Associate Director of Inclusive Teaching

Health psychologist Elizabeth Addington, Assistant Professor in the Feinberg School of Medicine's Department of Medical Social Sciences, works to enhance people's ability to manage stress, increase their positive psychosocial experiences, and improve their physical health and quality of life as Associate Director of the Positive Psychology & Health Investigation Group Lab.

Recently, she sat down with the Searle Center's Associate Director of Inclusive Teaching, Veronica Womack, to discuss the power of cultivating positive emotions and self-compassion as well as how individual resilience can enable continued work toward making systemic change.

At the Searle Center, we recognize the importance of building positive relationships and learning environments. This includes faculty-to-student and peer-to-peer relationships. Based on your research, what might instructors do to cultivate or enhance meaningful relationships that will further support one’s resilience?
 
Drawing from our lab's resilience toolkit of skills for increasing positive emotions and experiences, I'd consider looking out for strengths that you see in students and peers—and be specific. Did someone have a really creative idea or were they resourceful or helpful in a certain situation? Did they crack a good joke or speak up on an important topic in a meeting? Take just a moment first to notice it for yourself. Name it as specifically as you can, and then you can acknowledge it to the person.

It can be really small. Again, I'll emphasize that the point of these things can be really small, but still powerful. It might be just a quick comment or quick message of “Hey, thanks for that moment of humor in the meeting today. I really needed a good laugh.” Or a note in your grading like, "great job connecting these two ideas together. This is really insightful.” Something to really see and acknowledge the other person for the strengths that you're seeing in them.
 
Our team also builds these skills into short games. Sometimes at the start of our meetings, we might play a game like “Gratitude Popcorn,” where each player names something that they're grateful for and then pops it to the next person to share. When something doesn't go well, we might have a lemons-to-lemonade competition where we try to come up with as many reasons why it's not as bad as it could be or as many silver linings to the situation that we can name. Sharing these kinds of experiences helps to deepen our connections and build resilience in ourselves and for the team as well.

Read the full interview.