10-01-2026
At Purdue University, the Framework for Teaching Excellence calls for creating environments and pedagogies that empower students to meet learning outcomes and achieve their full potential. This aspirational goal drives faculty to strive for excellence, and here at the Daniels School of Business, we’re actively exploring how to cultivate that climate and culture across departments.
With over 200 faculty across various departments and demanding workloads — many teaching 18 or more credit hours a year and managing significant service or research loads — faculty identified time and awareness as key barriers to accessing existing teaching development tools across campus. In addition, faculty often felt isolated, especially post-pandemic, and perceived a divide among different faculty ranks.
To address these challenges, we turned to the concept of Communities of Practice (CoP), defined as groups engaged in “collective learning in a shared domain” to “learn how to do it better as they interact regularly.”1 We have found these groups foster an egalitarian support structure and help meet the unique needs of faculty across ranks, as the literature supports.2
Starting in fall 2022, we launched a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) Community of Practice, hosting monthly lunches that provided a low-stakes way to bring faculty together. These meetings, often structured as reading groups, used books like Small Teaching by James M. Lang and How Humans Learn by Joshua R. Eyler, serving as a springboard for discussions on learning-centered education. This simple structure fostered collaboration, allowing faculty to share ideas, troubleshoot challenges and explore active-learning strategies.
The benefits have been profound. Faculty have found immense value in connecting with colleagues, sharing practices and leveraging ideas for experiential learning. As one faculty member noted, these meetings provide a cathartic effect beyond tangible innovation, helping to remove the sense of isolation. These interactions have nurtured educators who engage learners and explorers who proactively incorporate innovative instructional techniques, even generating fresh interest in attending and presenting at SoTL conferences.
Looking ahead, we’re continuing to build on this foundation with practical strategies for ongoing community and pedagogical support:
Individually, these are not revolutionary ideas, but collectively, they are powerfully moving the Daniels School toward a culture of sustained teaching excellence. Our Community of Practice is proving to be a strong way to build faculty community and achieve teaching excellence, ensuring our students benefit from exemplars who are also enthusiasts about their subjects
[1] Wenger-Trayner, E. and Wenger-Trayner, B. (2015). An introduction to communities of practice: a brief overview of the concept and its uses. https://www.wenger-trayner.com/introduction-to-communities-of-practice. [2] Annon, P., Mather, R., Rutherford, T., Saunders, L., & Sutter, J. (2018). Establishing a community of practice to aid the development of teaching fellows at GSM London. Higher Education Review,50(2), 34-52.
Cara Putman serves as the Assistant Dean for Student Experience at the Daniels School, the Marsha B. Allen Director of the Brock-Wilson Center, and Clinical Associate Professor in the Strategy Department. An award-winning faculty member, she teaches undergraduate and graduate core courses in business law, employment law and business ethics.
