The Global Teaching and Learning Fellows (GTLF) seminar builds on Lehigh’s distinctive ability to put theory into practice through the design of pedagogically sound and innovative international educational experiences.
Each year, we invite a small, interdisciplinary group of faculty from across Lehigh’s colleges to participate in an intensely intimate and immersive weeklong seminar abroad focused on critical experiential pedagogy. The seminar occurs in late May of the year fellows are appointed. Read more about the 2023 seminar in Rishikesh, India >
As we practice the processes of noticing, making inferences, synthesizing information, and forming interpretations, we also will build our skills in active listening and understanding diverse perspectives.
The GTLF seminar focuses on critical experiential pedagogy accompanied by deep personal reflection as a way to simultaneously attend to self, other and world well-being.
It rests on the premise that to create a better world, we need to be well ourselves; we need to increase our capacity to accept and interact well with others unlike ourselves; and we need to be able to co-imagine and take steps towards better futures. Our pedagogy of self, other and world well-being draws from a wide range of work in critical pedagogy and experiential learning, fields examining self and other dynamics, and the rapidly expanding field of coaching as a mode to support student transformation at the personal and applied levels.
Fellows will shift back and forth across considerations of self, other and world as we progress through the week. Fellows will also move back and forth in their roles as learners and teachers. In student-mode, they will learn by immersion in this micro global education experience. As faculty, they will design and perhaps try out experiential activities around their area of intellectual/disciplinary interest using the other Fellows as sample students and/or as a sounding board for ideas and feedback. All participants engage in a facilitated program of onsite writing, reflection, experiences and discussion.
Our intention is that fellows will 1) apply the insights and tools they gain in Bethlehem or elsewhere around the globe, and 2) use the larger global perspective to inform their teaching on campus in support of students’ ability to connect themselves to others and the world.
Applications are open to faculty from all disciplines and colleges; each cohort will be selected for maximum diversity in terms of interests and specialties. The application is available online, and the deadline to apply is December 15. If you have any questions, please contact Dr. Lina Rodríguez, angelina.rodriguez@lehigh.edu.
KEY COMPONENTS OF A GTLF SEMINAR
We gather in fascinating, culturally complex sites. Seminars include comfortable lodging and good food, as well as a spacious schedule that provides time for reflection and deep conversations.
Retreat aspect: We do a deep personal dive into the self and what it means to participate in, create and facilitate these experiences for students within contexts of difference.
Teaching/learning aspect: We include short sessions around global citizenship framing, pedagogical theory and technique.
Learning through art aspect: Art as a pedagogical tool.
Immersive aspect: We do what we talk about; there will be opportunities to engage in activities such as observations, interviews, and explorations at a market, place of worship, or other public places and/or in natural settings.
Practice aspect: You will design your own activities and facilitate some minis in collaboration with the participant group.
ART AS A PEDAGOGICAL TOOL
We are extremely pleased to partner with the Lehigh University Arts Galleries (LUAG) and draw upon their expertise related to art, pedagogy and community engagement. The GTLF seminars will use visual art – from sacred art to still life and portraits, to local objects and tourist souvenirs – to stimulate reflection and critical thinking.
ART IN THE SERVICE OF PEDAGOGY ACROSS ALL DISCIPLINES
The seminars are not about art; rather, we use art to spark thinking and learning. Immersive experiences with works of art allow us to build our meaning-making skills – not only about visual art, objects, and place, but also about ourselves and one another. As we practice the processes of noticing, making inferences, synthesizing information, and forming interpretations, we also will build our skills in active listening and understanding diverse perspectives.
While we love and work with art, we will constantly be drawing parallels with other objects, expressive material, visual culture, and site-specific experiences so that participants can engage with place using parallel modes in their disciplinary/thematic areas. (For example, you might translate an arts-based activity designed to provoke observation into a landscape-based observational activity within an environmental science course, or you might sub out an artistic object for a food-based object designed to stimulate questions around sustainable agriculture or GMOs.)
2023 SEMINAR IN RISHIKESH, INDIA
This year’s seminar will take place May 22-29, 2023 in Rishikesh, India, in the foothills of the northern Himalayas. The group will include eight to 10 fellows, led by Dr. Lina Rodríguez and Dr. William Crow.
Rishikesh is an important spiritual site on the Ganges River. The river figures massively into India’s cultural, touristic, economic and environmental life across the 1,500+ miles it covers, and it also picks up increasingly higher pollution levels as it flows southward through India. The city attracts spiritual pilgrims from across the country and is also known as the yoga capital of the world, drawing in international tourists as well.
An intimate and welcoming site, Rishikesh will provide an ideal setting for our pedagogical work and map directly to LUAG’s spring 2023 exhibition, Gateway to Himalayan Art, presented in partnership with the Rubin Museum of Art in New York City and sponsored by Lehigh’s Office of International Affairs.
The seminar includes round-trip transportation from Bethlehem to Rishikesh (via Delhi), lodging, and some group meals. Accommodations include a hotel near the airport in Delhi, a hotel in Rishikesh, and an ashram. Participants will need to arrange and pay for their own visas and some onsite meals. (Note: Participants must arrive and depart on time and participate in the full seminar with no exceptions. Any extension of travel will be made at participants’ own expense.)
In this seminar, you will:
- Learn about our global citizenship framework and signature pedagogical approach
- Immerse into a local site, have a mini study away experience, engage others/difference
- Reflect on who you are as a learner, professor/facilitator and member of a diverse world
- Design and try out your own new assignments/pedagogical experiments with colleagues sitting in as trial students or sounding board
- Connect with colleagues by forming new relationships with your cohort (an excellent opportunity for new faculty)
We will engage in a range of activities that include personal reflection and writing, group discussions and external explorations. You may find yourself mapping, drawing and diagramming, engaging others, taking photos, studying objects, listening to sounds, among many other things. At the end of each day, you will write up brief notes on how the activities could be immediately adjusted/translated for your discipline/course/area of concern.
We will attend an evening aarti ceremony on the Ganges, visit a spiritual site or two as well as the uniquely beautiful and quirky Beatles ashram (the Beatles traveled there to practice transcendental meditation). Also of note: for two nights, we will stay at a local ashram that offers (optional) early am meditation and dharma talks, as well as silent and simple community meals. This will provide another immersive experience in Rishikesh.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION
Gateway to Himalayan Art will introduce the fellows to the main forms, concepts, meanings, and traditions of Himalayan art represented in the collection of the Rubin Museum of Art, New York. The exhibition opens with a large multimedia map that highlights regions of the diverse Himalayan cultural sphere, including parts of present-day India, China, Nepal, Bhutan, and Mongolia. Exemplary objects from the Rubin's collection will be organized and presented in thematic sections: Symbols and Meanings, Materials and Technologies, and Living Practices and Wellbeing. In addition to sculptures and paintings, objects such as a stupa, prayer wheel, and ritual implements demonstrate how patrons sought the accumulation of merit and hoped for wealth, long life, and spiritual gains, all to be fulfilled through the ritual use of these objects and commissioning works of art. Elsewhere, medical instruments and related paintings address the prevention, diagnosis and treatment of sickness. Among the featured installations are a display that details the technical process of Nepalese lost-wax metal casting and a presentation of the stages of Tibetan hanging scroll painting (thangka).
While the objects in this exhibition will be on loan to LUAG during the spring semester, our aim is that the pedagogies and skills that participants build will transfer to other works of art, objects, places and experiences. Fellows will be asked to participate in several workshops and programs during the spring semester to not only become familiar with the themes and materials from the Himalayan region, but to consider how experiential, object-based pedagogies and learner-centered meaning-making can be further infused in their own teaching practices.
AFTER THE SEMINAR
Participants are required to 1) submit a final essay about an aspect of their experience for a Center publication around this experience by an established deadline (TBD); and 2) participate in a brief post-experience interview.
HOW TO APPLY
The GTLF seminar is open to tenured, tenure-track, and teaching faculty from all disciplines and colleges. The cohort will be selected for maximum diversity in terms of interests and specialties. To apply, please visit the online application to submit a brief description of your work, your interest in the seminar and your previous relevant experience. The application deadline is December 15.