Faculty Seminar

History

The University of Richmond Faculty Seminar has taken place 15 times since its inception in 1989. Since that time, interdisciplinary and inter-school members of Richmond faculty have participated in two and three-week seminars to 26 countries on six continents (for a list of past locations click here, for a list of past participants click here). 

Goals

• To gain new international, inter-disciplinary knowledge about a region or a country selected on the basis of its current importance for the US, in the world and to institutional curricular needs.

• To involve faculty members from various schools and departments in interdisciplinary dialogue on teaching and research, by providing a shared focus: the studied and experienced country or region.

• To encourage the use of newly acquired knowledge for the creation of new courses, modules in existing courses, and occasional assignments and references in the widest possible spectrum of courses.

• To support existing and to develop new exchange relationships with institutions abroad.  As a result of these visits, faculty members are better able to encourage and advise students on study abroad and to develop for themselves linkages in research and teaching.

• To strengthen the freshmen core course by offering faculty members first-hand experience of cultures which produced texts studied in the course. After core, the faculty seminar can serve to support the development of freshmen seminars focused on cross-cultural issues and experiential learning.

• To promote faculty exchanges with partner institutions abroad.

• To give faculty members an opportunity to experience ‘new learning’, outside of the methodologies and contents of their academic field.  While their students are expected to do this in nearly all courses, most of their teachers have spent years perfecting their skills within one, at most two fields, since the beginnings of their graduate training.