Professional Learning Communities

What is a Professional Learning Community?

A Professional Learning Community (PLC) is a cross-disciplinary group of Rowan Community Members who come together for a year-long adventure in active, collaborative, and dialogic learning. Professional staff, librarians, faculty (full-time and part-time), and administrators may participate. 

Participants in a PLC become a community of learners, not a decision-making body, task-force, or committee. A community of learners is distinct from other university groups in that it offers opportunities for:

• Professional Development — developing, honing, and practicing the skills of lifelong learning;
• Community Building — breaking down the barriers of specialization and engaging with interested individuals across the institutions; and
• Reflective Learning — gaining a deeper understanding of the many ways of thinking about a phenomenon and experiencing cross-disciplinary dialogue.

What are this year's PLC offerings?

Below you will find proposed Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) for the 2024-2025 academic year and the names and email addresses of their facilitators. Please read the descriptions carefully to see which PLC might interest you. If you have questions about a particular PLC, please contact the facilitator(s) directly.

PLCs will meet approximately once a month, or about eight times per academic year (September through early May). Please note the dates and time provided in the descriptions.

For all PLCs International Faculty PLC we ask that you sign up only if you anticipate being able to attend at least 6 of the meetings. It's the continuity of the community that makes the community work. We ask that you participate in at most 2 PLCs.

If you have general questions, please contact the Faculty Center (facultycenter@rowan.edu).

Register for a PLC via this link.

Academic Year 2024-2025 Professional Learning Communities

Academic Advising — facilitated by Beth Rey (rey@rowan.edu), Associate Director, University Advising Services

Academic advisors provide proactive, academic support to students from entrance through graduation. Advisors assist students with exploration of career and personal goals, academic interests, and much more. They also regularly make referrals to other offices and departments for additional services and support. Thus, the role of an academic advisor is robust. The Academic Advising PLC will meet monthly and provides a supportive opportunity to engage in current advising literature discussions, share best practices and seek support, discuss advising approaches and more! The advising PLC is open to anyone interested. From those just starting out to those experienced and seasoned, all are welcome.

Commuter Students: Effective Practices for Success – facilitated by Charlie Kuski (kuskic@rowan.edu) Coordinator, Off Campus Services & Resources

Commuter students make up a majority of our undergraduate student population, but are often understood as missing or underserved in our campus community. Commuters touch every part of our campus so many different contexts. This PLC acts as a way for staff and faculty at Rowan to come together and discuss the special needs and concerns for this population so that we can move forward all in the same direction to best serve our students. We'll read scholarly and popular articles on commuter students and work to see how we can make Rowan a more inclusive and accessible place.

Cross-Institutional Collaboration to Remove Barriers for Transfer Students in STEM Majors – facilitated by Jason Heindl (heindl@rowan.edu), Associate Professor, Biological and Biomedical Sciences

We welcome all faculty and staff in the Rowan community to join the HHMI IMPACT STEM Transfer PLC as we collaborate to implement solutions that remove barriers to transfer and create equitable and inclusive transfer experiences for students from diverse backgrounds throughout their educational experiences.

Our goals for this PLC are:

• Build a community of faculty, staff, and administrators committed to inclusive practices in STEM education.
• Focus on removing barriers to baccalaureate degree attainment for community college students.
• Collaborate with colleagues across Rowan and from our community college partners to colleagues to remove barriers to transfer for STEM students.

Delving into Individual Development Plans (IDPs): Developing Toolkits for Excellence in Graduate Student Training and Professional Development – facilitated by Tabbetha Dobbins (dobbins@rowan.edu), Dean, School of Graduate Studies and Stephanie Lezotte (lezotte@rowan.edu), Assistant Dean, School of Graduate Studies 

Do you mentor graduate research? Do you serve on graduate committees? Are you a member of the graduate education support structure (i.e., library, advising, administration)?

If you answered YES—then this PLC is for you! Join us as we build a community of practice focused on excellence in graduate student training and professional development. Together, we will explore the use of Individual Development Plans (IDPs), Performance Improvement Plans (PIPs), and strategies for guiding students to the resources they need to achieve their goals. By building upon last year’s PLC’s Excellence in Graduate Student Mentorship guide, this PLC will equip Rowan’s graduate education community with a practical and comprehensive toolkit for fostering meaningful student training and professional growth.

The number of international faculty members/employees across Rowan campuses continues to increase and this PLC helps to bring them together. Our PLC provides a place for international faculty to discuss issues individual faculty members/employees might face and organizes a spa to offer support. We work together to understand how Rowan's communications and policies do and do not apply to these faculty members so that we can reduce added stress and feelings of isolation, especially if faculty members/employees had to leave most of their social support system behind in their home country. If you identify as an international faculty member/employee please join us.

Peer Observations to Support Professional Growth – facilitated by Rob Wieman (wieman@rowan.edu), Associate Professor & Chair, Content Area Teacher Education

Peer observations have the potential to support us as we work to improve our teaching, but we have found that observations do not always up to their promise of professional growth. The process of observing or being observed is incredibly varied and often disconnected from the problems that we struggle with as teachers – engagement, motivation, effectively supporting the kind of deep learning that we want for our students.

These core beliefs undergird our PLC:

• Teaching is difficult and complex work.
• Engaging in analyzing teaching and learning can help us improve instruction
• Observations that access this kind of analysis do not happen naturally – they require structure and expertise.

In this PLC, we will examine existing models for peer observations, study how we can improve our own observation and feedback skills, and develop tools to help Rowan all faculty engage in observations that result in professional growth and instructional improvement. 

Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) — facilitated by Lisa Abrams (abramsl@rowan.edu), Assistant Professor, Psychology

The Scholarship of Teaching & Learning (SoTL) is a scholarly approach to teaching that uses research to answer questions about teaching and learning and to address problems educators observe in the classroom. This PLC invites you to explore how SoTL fits into your current teaching practice and/or research agenda. This group is for anyone who is interested in learning about how they can incorporate SoTL into their work and start to engage in systematic inquiry of student learning. PLC members will spend the Fall 2024 semester learning and brainstorming about SoTL. In the Spring 2025 semester, each participant will apply their new SoTL knowledge to make progress toward a small SoTL project of their own.