Fitting with this year's conference theme of "Cultivating Community" we describe a recently initiated Impact Fellowship program at McMaster University, designed to generate evidence of high-impact teaching practices and to enhance teaching and learning at McMaster Universit. The Impact Fellowship model has been conceptualized using a socio-cultural perspective and aligns with a distributed leadership model. The primary goal of the Impact Fellowship program is to build community capacity within the Faculties whereby Impact Fellows serve as mentors and advocates in sharing impact assessment strategies. Drawing from the work of Martensson & Roxa (2015) the program aims is to increase the potential for development of local teaching and learning cultures. While such models have shown to enhance leadership at the local level, there is some research that specifically investigates how these construct enhance educational development (Martenesson & Roxa, 2015). The purpose of this research is to explore in what ways the Fellowship program supports or challenges learning, capacity development, and scholarship.
In this interactive short paper presentation, we will discuss the evolving process of developing the Impact Fellowship program model, as well as strategies for exchanging ideas, broadening conversations about teaching and learning, building community networks. We will facilitate a broad discussion on the direct and indirect benefits of such a process on cultivating leadership.
References:
Martensson, K., & Roxa, T. (2015). Leadership at the local level – Enhancing educational development, Educational Management Administration & Leadership, 1-16.
