Title: Promoting Instructional Change through Professional Development of Undergraduate Instructors

Abstract: Research suggests that successful Professional Development (PD) models for college-level instructors be coordinated and focused, lasting over an extended period of time. They should provide instructors with evidence of a problem, while respecting the expertise of the instructors by empowering them to enact change through reinvention and invention of instructional changes and offer a collective community to share approaches and reflect on practices. Finally, professional development should provide feedback not only on the instructional change, but also on student learning outcomes related to the change. In this talk, I will describe three research projects comprising a research program centered around Professional Development for faculty and graduate student instructors. I will discuss how the design of the Professional Development models reflects the best practices from the literature and show some results from the projects, both at the instructor level and at the student level. The talk will conclude with a discussion of the future directions for my research program.