The Lilly Teaching Fellows Program began in 1991 and has served as “an opportunity to engage in a year-long exploration of the robust scholarship on effective practices in University teaching.” The Lilly Fellows Program has supported Fellows to become future faculty leaders and to inspire a broad range of faculty to pursue excellence in teaching.
The program will focus explicitly on leadership development for those educators who see teaching and learning as core to their path toward leadership.
The program is intended to advance the University’s continuing efforts to support excellence in teaching and learning. The program supports a cohort of six faculty or academic specialists at all ranks with at least five years of service to the institution. The Program also provides an opportunity for Fellows to expand relationships and collaborative engagement with peers and colleagues within their own college and across the University. The program is supported by matching grants from Academic Advancement Network (AAN) and the Fellows’ departments and/or colleges.
The goal is to develop academic leaders who will guide the University into the near future with regard to learning, teaching, and educational programming. Participants are expected to focus their work on a project of their choosing that will make a substantial contribution to a unit’s educational efforts. The unit can be a program or a department, but it can also be a college or a University unit or initiative. Using the proposed project as a foundation, participants will also learn leadership concepts and models, build specific skills, learn more about how the University works, and practice what they learn through the activities of their project and small group mentoring and coaching.
Let's TalkThe actual fellowship (i.e., our monthly discussions and readings) has been one of the more valuable experiences in my time at MSU.
The main takeaway for me was that there are many people on campus who want to make the world a better place, who struggle with the system we are in, and who want to change it to be more equitable and just.
The most encouraging takeaway has been to see that people, who on the outside look like they have little in common, can discover many commonalities when they are given the space to interact, share, reflect, and listen.
There were many learning moments, but one that stands out was about leadership and risk-taking. There appear to be a genuine encouragement from the group, the leaders of the group, and the readings, to lead with integrity and push for what you believe in. At the same time, there was an acknowledgment that going against the status quo might lead to negative consequences and one might be prevented from holding positions in the future that allow one to continue to push for that change. But the true learning was seeing, how even when stopped or hindered, true leaders can still find ways to impact change.
Senta Goertler, 2020-2021 Lilly Fellow.
All tenure-system and fixed-term faculty, academic specialists, and librarians are invited to apply. As of the application date, all applicants must be in at least the fifth year of their appointment or have worked for MSU for at least five years as a faculty member, academic specialist, or librarian.
The call for Lilly fellows typically goes out in the late spring of each year. The application deadline is in April of each year, and notifications will be issued in May. For more information on how to apply, please visit Call for Lilly Fellowship.
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