Student Chair

This is a proposal for a high leverage, "brand-building," student-centered point of excellence.

What if each year a department were able to reserve one adjunct slot for what we would call "the student chair." Each fall senior majors would work with the department head or senior seminar instructor to fashion a proposal for a course to be taught in their final spring semester at Mills. The faculty in the department would then recruit a "Mills Prize Teaching Fellow" to develop and teach the course. The whole operation would be stamped with the Mills "brand" – student involvement in the process, freedom for the instructor to explore areas that cross boundaries, a chance to teach motivated students in a special academic environment. For our majors it would be an advanced topical seminar in an area beyond what our faculty could offer.

In conjunction with the course the department might offer a public lecture or film series that would showcase the topic and the fact of the student chair seminar for non-seniors. In addition to this being a great academic experience for our students, we anticipate it becoming a sought after position that focuses attention on Mills as a place that people really want to teach. We would expect that we'd pay a small premium over the usual adjunct salary to recognize that this "slot" is a special one.

If each department in a division instituted this, we could have an awesome series of events highlighting these seminars and trumpeting the prize teaching fellows. Some of them would already have tenure track jobs lined up, but for others this could be a nice bit of career building -- both teaching at a liberal arts college and being involved in the life of the department and perhaps even being mentored a bit as a teacher.

For our own students it could be a tradition to which early alumnae donations are tied. Alumnae majors could be informed each year about what this year's student chair course was. As we move into more uses of technology, course materials might be available via open-course-ware or perhaps lectures or some such might be put on line.