Introduction

 

I joined the department of Animal and Avian Sciences at the University of Maryland in August of 2010 as a full-time lecturer.  The following fall, I started in the role as the director of its undergraduate program.  Since joining the department, I have offered many courses and taught and advised many students.  In my time in both roles, I have provided exemplary instruction, mentoring, leadership, and service to my department and have made significant contributions to the mission College of Agriculture and Natural Resources and the University of Maryland.  Furthermore, I have collaborated with faculty from the Virginia-Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine on an initiative to reduce veterinary student debt, a major challenge facing the veterinary profession.

 

Teaching

 

Each year, I teach six or seven courses and mentor several independent study projects.  Since starting at the University of Maryland in 2010, I have offered more than 2000 undergraduate course seats, taught an additional 14 graduate students, supervised two fourth-year veterinary student externships, and served on one Master’s of Public Health thesis committee.  I have designed five new courses and significantly revised four more.  I have taught undergraduate courses as part of four categories of UMD’s general education program, including Scholarship in Practice, Natural Sciences, History and Social Science, and the I-series.  In addition, I taught a seminar in the honors college for two years.

My students will tell you that I am a tough but fair instructor.  I require students to complete significant amounts of reading and other preparatory work prior to class, and I spend class time working on refining and challenging students’ learning using authentic, active learning activities.  I guide my students in completing significant, rigorous semester-long group projects to demonstrate their mastery of course topics.  Some students appreciate the planning, effort, and thought that go into my courses, and respond very favorably to them; however, as you will read in certain of my course evaluations (particularly those a lower level, required course such as ANSC 101), there are students who deem my approach as “unfair” or “too much work for a 3-credit course.”  What I have found, however, is that students in their later years of their education and those who have moved on to further education or careers come back to tell me that they appreciate the time and work I put into their education and the skills I have cultivated in them.

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I approach course design with a focus on active learning and authentic practice.  All of my

courses focus on giving students meaningful opportunities to learn not only the facts and

figures behind what they are learning, but a means of learning to learn on their own and

contribute to their discipline, preparing them as future consumers, practitioners, and scholars. 

As I have come to see the profound value in such an approach to undergraduate education,

I have led my department in rewriting its curricular learning outcomes to reflect higher order

thinking and preparation for future study and employment.

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Beyond holding students to rigorous standards in learning critical thinking, complex decision making and authentic practice, I want students to experience a classroom environment that fosters community, collaboration, and a place to try out their sometimes less-than-perfect ideas.  I try very hard to create a place where students feel invited to be “thoughtful, even if not always 100% correct” so that we can work through common misconceptions together and learn from them.  I make participation a key part of all of my courses rather than an optional activity for a the particularly motivated students who sit up front.  I try to be relatable, open about my own failings and successes, and available to my students in class and through office hours.  This is much easier in smaller classes than in my large fall section of ANSC 101, but these goals are common to every course I teach.

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I take professional development seriously and have been a part of faculty development communities for faculty teaching I-series courses, Honors courses, and a host-pathogens interactions faculty group.  I have attended and presented at conferences related to higher education.  I have given and attended professional development workshops and retreats on campus.  I just recently completed the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center’s Faculty Launch program.   I take my veterinary professional development seriously as well, having completed 110 hours of veterinary continuing education in the last five years, exceeding the requirements for my licensure by 30 hours.

I challenged myself to grow as an educator in the 2019-2020 school year through the fellowship project I proposed and was granted through the Woodrow Wilson foundation.  I proposed to plan, develop, and offer an on-line, I-series course on the future of farming that required me to learn best practices in on-line education, technical skills related to video editing and online content development, and content-area information related to the challenges of sustainably feeding our growing population.  With our sudden pivot to online education in March of 2020, I found these skills to be extremely valuable and timely.  While the course in on hold, I use and share the skills and approaches I learned constantly.

Everything that I do in the department of Animal and Avian Sciences, from advising and mentoring to administering the undergraduate program, is an extension of my teaching mission. 

 

Advising

 

I have two primary hats to wear in student advising in our department.  The first is as a general advisor to admitted and current students and alumni in my role as the undergraduate director for the department.  My second advising role is as the pre-veterinary advisor for both the department and for the campus. 

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As part of my work as the undergraduate director in the department, I have worked extensively with my assistant director and our Programs, Courses, and Curriculum committee to restructure our advising program for our majors.  We recognized that students in their first two years were not getting consistent information about scheduling, graduation planning, internship and job opportunities associated with the department, and professional school counseling.  We developed a model of small group advising run through the undergraduate office that ensures that all students receive timely, accurate, useful information for their stages in the curriculum, taking into account that some students come to us as transfer students from other universities, as UMD students who started their academic careers in other majors, and as Freshmen connection spring admission students.  In this model, all first

semester students in the program complete a "4-year planning" workshop in groups of 10-12 students.  In their second semester, students have the option of doing an "options and opportunities in ANSC" group workshop or coming to a pre-veterinary advising session with me.  At this point, about 80% of our second semester class, about 60-70 students, are still on the pre-veterinary path.  In the students' third semesters, they are matched with individual faculty advisors with whom they meet prior to course registration.  They continue to meet with their faculty mentors every fall for the remainder of their time in our department.  In the spring, students have the choice to attend one or more of a menu of group advising choices, including group pre-veterinary sessions with me on topics such as financial planning for veterinary school, non-clinical career options with a veterinary degree, diversity issues in veterinary medicine, and open Q&A sessions.  More informally, I find that I have several students coming to me each semester seeking advice on careers, graduate school, balancing personal and academic life, and a host of other issues.  I am happy to advise these students as needed.

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In addition to providing oversight to departmental advising, I am the campus pre-veterinary advisor.  Since coming to the University of Maryland, I have worked hard to increase the quality of our pre-veterinary advising and I think our higher than average veterinary school admission rate (12-13 of the 15-16 students who apply every year) and the fact that several veterinary schools specifically seek out our students is strongly related to my efforts.  In 2010, I prepared a comprehensive pre-veterinary advising guide which I freely share with any student interested in veterinary school at UMD.  I have also had requests from faculty at three other universities and one high school for copies of my guide.  I revised and expanded this guide it in 2013 and again 2016.  Every semester, I interact with over 40 pre-veterinary ANSC students through our group advising system as well as many others who come to see me for individual office visits. In the last five years, I have written 45 letters of recommendation for students seeking admission to graduate or veterinary school.  I have given 26 pre-veterinary advising sessions for first-year freshmen, and an additional eight sessions on specific topics ranging from financial planning and how to navigate student debt, to non-clinical career options in veterinary medicine.  In the 2019-2020 school year, I worked with an African American senior student to put together a very successful panel presentation for our pre-veterinary students addressing the challenges in diversity and inclusion veterinary school and the profession at large consisting of panelists representing racial, ethnic, gender, and ability diversity.  Finally, I maintain a 120 member “Terps Veterinarians” Facebook group of UMD alumni who are veterinarians or veterinary students, retaining a connection with our veterinary alumni past graduation.

 

Mentoring students

 

I have a strong interest in mentoring undergraduate and graduate students in their own teaching.  To that end, in the last five years I have mentored 26 of undergraduate and 13 graduate students as teaching assistants in my courses.  They are vital instructional helpers, facilitating course activities, providing grading support, and being additional resources for my students by holding office hours, review sessions, and one-on-one meetings.  In return, I try to help them learn about the teaching process, from having them use "backwards design" to create and lead a class (undergraduates) or two (graduate students) to grading the learning assessments related to those classes.  To support my TAs, we have weekly check in meetings as well as additional meetings to polish and practice the classes they lead.  During that time period, I have offered a two-credit undergraduate teaching assistant seminar to UTAs in our department to support them as new TAs and guide them in learning about university instruction and challenges in higher education.  Furthermore, I have spent significant time mentoring three of our ANSC graduate students in the Teaching and Learning Transformation Center’s University Teaching and Learning Program.  Additionally, in the 2017-2018 academic year, I hosted two fourth year veterinary students with a strong interest in teaching to spend a three-week clerkship with me working on how to design, implement, and evaluate students in science-based undergraduate courses.  Finally, I have gone out of my way to make myself available as an independent study mentor to undergraduates in our department, supervising projects ranging from wildlife conservation to shelter medicine to addressing leadership on diversity, inclusion, and equity issues in veterinary medicine.

 

Mentoring faculty

 

The faculty mentoring I provide unfolds in many ways.  First, I am the mentor for our new teaching faculty when they join the department.  This job is not specified in my job description, but is one that I have grown into over the years as we have added four additional lecturers and several new tenure track faculty with teaching appointments.  I meet with new faculty to talk about our curriculum and our curricular learning objectives, course design, student trends, and how to navigate our lecture, laboratory, and animal care spaces.  I check in with them during their first semester teaching and provide support (as needed) and encouragement.  This can range from a couple of meetings during a semester to the almost weekly emails I exchanged with one of our newest faculty members, an adjunct instructor in genetics who taught this course for the very first time while the faculty member who typically taught the course was on sabbatical.  Second, I try to support all faculty teaching in our department. I have given presentations tailored to the interests and needs of our faculty, from an hour-long presentation on designing and using clicker questions in our lecture courses to short teaching updates tied in with faculty meeting presentations from our PCC.  I maintain a lending library of teaching books and resources to share with my colleagues.  On average, I have three to four meetings a semester with established faculty members in our department who come to me for advice about teaching, student issues, or advising and many more drop-in conversations about the same.  Finally, to foster mentoring and professional development for all lecturers in our department, I have been leading a bi-weekly lecturer's meeting since the fall of 2018.  This has provided all of us with a wonderful forum to discuss issues, share what we have learned at other meetings, faculty learning groups, or workshops, and support each other.  It has also been the primary means for us to mentor our newest lecturers in the department.  At the request of one of our tenure track faculty members, we are going to open one of our meetings each month to any faculty member who is interested in teaching and leave the other monthly meeting for us to discuss professional track faculty issues.  During our shift to online instruction during COVID19, I put the lecturers meetings on hold to create an online teaching faculty workshop and peer group from April to August of 2020 to support faculty in the sudden shift to online teaching and learning and in a more deliberate course redesign process over the summer.  From September 2020 on, I have been hosting those meetings as a more informal peer support community in which we talk through challenges or victories we have had and mentor a couple of new faculty in their new courses.

 

Leadership and Service

 

I have contributed significant service to my department, college, and the University of Maryland.  Furthermore, I am working with the Virginia Maryland Regional College of Veterinary Medicine to address one of the most significant challenges facing the veterinary profession, student debt. 

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At the departmental level, I have been the chair of the ANSC Programs & Courses Committee since 2013. 

In addition to meeting our charge of reviewing new and revised courses for approval, this committee has

done much to simplify and improve the student advising and course policies.  I have also served as the

chair of the teaching evaluation committee in our department, and as the pre-veterinary club advisor.  I

have given guest lectures in several ANSC courses ranging from bioethics to anatomy.  I am a frequent

participant in departmental student events, from “Ag day” (Maryland Day) to our departmental faculty-

staff “cook-off” and student socials.

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I have been a very active participant in the life of the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources.   During

the Spring of 2017, I participated in a 30-person AGNR strategic initiatives team made up of representatives

from throughout the college.  We worked to gather data from faculty, staff, students, stakeholders, and the

public about the college of AGNR to create six key strategic initiatives for the college.  A year later, at a meeting         

to discuss the future of our campus farm, I proposed an idea to grow our college and grow on our campus, “The University of Maryland Campus Farms.”  Working closely with Dennis Nola and others, we developed this concept into the ANGR Agroecology corridor, an exciting prospect for our college and campus that will transform a sizeable amount of the greenspaces on campus into living-learning classrooms related to the work of our college.  Additionally, I have served on the AGNR review committee for PTK promotions, the AGNR awards committee, and the dean’s committee to review the ANSC department chair.

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At the University Level, I have been an active member of the Scholarship in Practice Faculty board since the fall of 2012 after having participated in the Lilly Faculty Fellows project creating resources for developing and teaching courses in this category during AY 2011-2012. I have played a significant role in developing the instructor evaluation rubric for SP courses and have helped to review over 300 course submissions for this category.  Additionally, I served on the search committee for the TLTC directorship, the Phi Beta Kappa student selection committee, and a few faculty development groups.  I have given talks for UMD’s iSchool, business school, Teaching and Learning Transformation Center, and our own faculty development group. 

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Within my profession, veterinary medicine, I have been a member of a veterinary Student Debt initiative – a collaboration between the University of Maryland and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University in support of our regional veterinary college, the Virginia Maryland College of Veterinary Medicine (VMCVM) and its students.  I have mentored veterinary students from VMCVM and recent veterinary graduates.  I have been an ad hoc reviewer for the anthrozoology journal, Society and Animals, since 2012 and a member of its editorial board since 2017.

As a professional educator, I have been a speaker at national conferences about education in the sciences.  Additionally, I have been an author on three peer-reviewed articles and one conference poster related to undergraduate education.

 

Conclusion

 

I can point to a long list of teaching awards that I have won in my time at the University of Maryland, including the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship for Excellence in Teaching (2019) and the Provost's Excellence Award for Professional Track  Faculty - Teaching Excellence (2016); however, I think the proof of my effectiveness as an instructor and an undergraduate program is better gleaned from the students I serve.  My former student, Dr. Kayla Miner, wrote “I would happily enroll in any class Dr. Balcom teaches, confident that it would be engaging, relevant, and worthwhile in developing my potential as an animal scientist.”  I consider Kayla, and all my students, my greatest accomplishment.

 

I am very devoted to the promise and practice of high-quality public education, and my teaching portfolio is a testament to that passion. 

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