Creating Welcoming Spaces Showcase

Creating Welcoming Spaces Showcase featured Rebecca Borowski, Jill Davishahl, and John McLaughlin

This year's 'Creating Welcoming Spaces Showcase' featured instructors are Rebecca Borowski, Jill Davishahl, and John McLaughlin, joined by Sislena Ledbetter with inspiring ideas for doing this work.

Showcase Theme

This year's Creating Welcoming Spaces-themed Showcase seeks to honor faculty who intentionally design their courses to welcome all students, setting the stage for deep engagement and investment in learning. These practices may also serve our students well by motivating participation, creating connections, and developing a sense of community and belonging.

In expanding the theme, we interviewed WWU Associate Vice President of Counseling, Health, and Wellbeing Sislena Ledbetter. There, she provided a unique insight on how meaningful and essential it is to do the work—to help our students connect and find a place at Western—because their success is our success. More specific examples of instructor practices can be found in our Ideas page, which highlights twelve concrete methods to foster a welcoming classroom. Additional insights on this theme can be found from various instructors in the profiles section, which can provide a more disciplinary perspective on creating a welcoming space. 

About the Showcase

For 20 years, the CII has published an online edition of its Innovative Teaching Showcase—a collection of innovative teaching practices by more than 70 WWU faculty members. The Showcase itself was originally inspired by the "open source" software movement in the late 90s as a way to make inspiring instructional practices publicly available while promoting excellence among WWU's faculty. The design of the Showcase evolved into a Creative Commons-licensed collection, catalogued via Western Libraries, and followed by a global audience.

Each year, the Innovative Teaching Showcase highlights several Western faculty who collaborate with the CII to develop and publish their innovation on the showcase website. The showcase comprises of three main parts:

  • a portfolio (written by the instructor) describing the innovative strategy in detail (what it is, how it is done, why it works, what students think, and future directions);
  • video clips of interview with instructor; and,
  • examples of the work in the form of syllabi, assignments, and supporting documents. 

In addition, the Showcase shines the light on many other instructors who are doing the work related to the Showcase theme and aggregates many of these practices in the Ideas section.

Featured Instructors

  • Rebecca Borowski (Mathematics) supports student empowerment and success by emphasizing strong relationships with her students through personalized name tents, prioritizing student wellbeing, and creating accessible lines of communication so that every student feels supported in the class. “I’ve found that empathy supports rigor. When I push students, when I challenge them, they are more likely to engage with the challenge and more likely to succeed, because they know my support is behind them.”
  • Jill Davishahl (Engineering & Design) focuses on practices that welcome all students–validating diverse experiences, encouraging authentic connection, and establishing psychological safety–while demonstrating that human impact and human connection are integral to engineering design and innovation. “My work in ENGR 101: Engineering, Design, & Society challenges this status quo by creating an intentional framework that welcomes all students while maintaining academic rigor and preparing them for the socio-technical realities of modern engineering practice.”
  • John McLaughlin (Environmental Sciences) emphasizes a culture of welcoming and belonging, encouraging students to bring their whole selves and to establish social and intellectual context for working and living together in environmental field expedition research. “A sense of belonging supports both individual efficacy and group achievement, when students with strong team identity achieve more as a group than they could as individuals. I recognize the importance of belonging, and impacts of its absence, from both experience in cohesive teams and conversely in a department with an entrenched culture of “othering” (Wise 2022).”

Explore the Showcase

Explore the latest issue of the Creating Welcoming Spaces-themed Innovative Teaching Showcase, honoring this year’s featured instructors and highlighting practices of many others.

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