One program at Western Kentucky University is providing a variety of ways to help faculty keep up with the evolving world of education as it becomes a challenge on college campuses.

The university’s Faculty Center for Excellence in Teaching, a staple at the university for the past 14 years, provides activities that support excellence in classroom instruction, said Sally Kuhlenschmidt, director of FaCET and a professor in the psychology department.

The center focuses on helping WKU faculty, including those from its community college, extended campuses and its graduate teaching assistants, through one-on-one consultations, seminars and conferences - like its 2008 Summer Conference held this week.

The theme “Engaging Ideas to Improve Student Success” held special relevance, since about 40 percent of students come to college each year lacking at least one basic academic skill that they need to be successful in college, Kuhlenschmidt said. About 30 faculty members participated in the conference, held in the Downing University Center on Wednesday, attending sessions on topics such as “Engaging nontraditional students in the classroom” and “Serving up student success using the library.”

“It’s a particularly challenging group to work with when students don’t have basic skill and faculty automatically assume they do,” Kuhlenschmidt said. “And when students don’t have those skills and teachers find they don’t, you end up with problematic student-teacher relationships.

“We are trying to help engage students to help them be successful.”

The goal of the seminar was to encourage faculty to consider various ways to deal with students that aren’t prepared, Kuhlenschmidt said.

Linda Todd, a faculty member in the business division at the South Campus, said she had a whole page of notes and a few ideas to follow up on.

“Of course people learn in different ways, but it is important to engage in the classroom. That’s how we all learn best,” she said. “We have some students that are easy to teach, but there are a few that it takes all our effort to keep engaged. This conference has been very good ... I always gain insight and ideas I can go back and apply.”

Attending two sessions - “Strategies for student retention in an online environment” and “Providing effective feedback on student writing” - Barb Kacer, who teaches curriculum and instruction for secondary education at WKU, said both were helpful for her.

“(The techniques I’ve heard) are more personalized,” she said. “We go all over to conferences, but we don’t take enough time to learn in our own backyard sometimes. I’m finding things different colleges are doing to be successful.”

The center, which started as a grant program at WKU, is now fully funded by the university, Kuhlenschmidt said, and its primary focus is university faculty.

Although the center doesn’t do many activities during the summer, they are most active during the school year, with an average of one to two seminars each week. She said the center’s staff also works with groups at the university, such as new faculty and those beginning to teach online courses for the first time.

Most faculty function independently, Kuhlenschmidt said, so the center’s staff works with them individually. The center has resources, such as books and videos, for faculty to check out as well.

The development and successful outcomes of students are fundamental to the university’s philosophy, but the student population is complex, so it’s a challenge, Kuhlenschmidt said.

“With new technologies and different types of students, education has changed dramatically over the past 10 years, so we are trying to help faculty stay current,” she said. “And on a good day, get ahead of the game.”