In April 2008, Pearson Prentice Hall published Aspiring Academics and Teaching College Geography, two AAG books for enhancing the preparation of faculty in geography and related social and environmental sciences.    Both books are supported by a companion website, which is now online at www.pearsonhighered.com/aag.

The website is designed to promote the practice of community-based faculty development in an effort to improve the climate of support for graduate students and early career faculty.   In practice, this means making available information and resources about effective practices for developing academic professionals, sharing that knowledge openly in academic departments and via professional networks, and providing a means for individuals to contribute their own advice and materials in a spirit of collegiality and sharing of support.

A variety of resources are available on the web site to support this vision.   Visitors can access a collection of activities for use in professional development workshops, graduate seminars, and faculty mentoring programs.   The activities support the chapters in Aspiring Academics and Teaching College Geography and were written by geographers with input from faculty development professionals.  Many of the activities are based on materials developed for the Geography Faculty Development Alliance workshops.   Examples include creating time management logs, analyzing ethics cases, using a coherence matrix to design research proposals, responding to manuscript reviews, creating a teaching portfolio, preparing a tenure dossier, and using active learning strategies in large classes.  

In addition, registered users can access discussion forums on topics that many new scholars report are among the most stressful at the beginning of their careers.  These issues span course design, student assessment, responding effectively to reviews of research manuscripts, structuring grant proposals, and balancing work with home life.   Because many of these issues are not systematically discussed in graduate programs, the hope is that the web site will provide ready access to advice and resources that may otherwise be unavailable locally to graduate students and faculty.  

The value of the discussion forums will be further enhanced by the ability of registered users to contribute their own resources to share with others.  Many types of contributions are sought, such as:

• lab activities for physical and human geography courses
• GIS exercises
• active learning exercises
• problem-based learning activities
• field studies
• course syllabi
• copies of funded grant proposals
• activities for professional development workshops

All readers are encouraged to visit the Aspiring Academics and Teaching College Geography web site and participate in the development of this new resource.

http://www.pearsonhighered.com/aag