More About Executive Director Peter Felten

Peter Felten is executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning, professor of history, and assistant provost for teaching and learning at Elon University. He has published seven books about undergraduate education, including Connections are Everything: A College Student’s Guide to Relationship-Rich Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2023) co-authored by Isis Artze-Vega, Leo Lambert, and Oscar Miranda Tapia – with an open access online version free to all readers. His next book, The SoTL Guide (CEL Open Access Book Series), is co-authored by Katarina Mårtensson and Nancy Chick, and will be published in 2025. He is on the advisory board of the National Survey of Student Engagement (NSSE) and is a fellow of the Gardner Institute. Contact Peter at pfelten@elon.edu.

Peter’s Recent CEL Blog Posts and Podcast Episodes

Global Neighborhood

Recommendations for new research on residential colleges, learning communities, and other academic-residential partnerships

by Peter Felten, Jon Dooley, and Jessie L. Moore In July 2015, Elon’s Center for Engaged Learning hosted a three-day think tank on residential learning communities that brought together a dozen scholars and practitioners (participants are listed below). Learning communities…

Elon Classroom

Is there a place for lecture in engaged learning?

A recent scholarly analysis comparing student outcomes in lecture and “active learning” courses has re-energized debates about whether lecture is an effective, or even an ethical, teaching method in higher education. In May 2014 Scott Freeman and colleagues published the…

Eric Hall, professor of exercise science, works with Elon University students Mark Sundman, Drew Gardner and Chris Fry (test subject) to measure cognitive functions in research used to study the effects of concussions.

Student-Faculty Interaction: What the Research Tells Us

This post is adapted from chapter 5 of A. Cook-Sather, C. Bovill, and P. Felten, Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2014). Decades of research indicates that close interaction between faculty and students is one of the…

Understanding How Students Change in Higher Education

This post is adapted from C. Johansson and P. Felten, Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014), pages 5 and 13-15. Transformative learning has been the subject of considerable scholarship over the past forty…

International Perspectives on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

The October 2013 issue of Arts and Humanities in Higher Education offers three national perspectives on the book The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Reconsidered: Institutional Integration and Impact by Pat Hutchings, Mary Taylor Huber, and Anthony Ciccone (Jossey-Bass, 2011). Coming on the heels of the recent conference of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, these three articles raise the question of just how international SoTL practice really is.

Student-Faculty Partnerships to Study Teaching and Learning

Many of the good practices faculty use to gather insights from students, such as asking for mid-semester feedback, are helpful, but they typically do not lead to authentic partnership between students and faculty. In most of these cases, faculty frame the questions, students provide answers, and then faculty alone decide whether, and how, to use to that information. This process often resembles a customer-service relationship. How satisfied are you with the teaching in this course? What do you like best, and least, about the class?

Partnership, on the other hand, is a collaborative, reciprocal process. In a partnership, all participants have the opportunity to contribute meaningfully, although not necessarily in the same ways.

Select Recent Publications

Books:

Select Articles/Chapters:

  • Cook-Sather, Alison, Peter Felten, ^Kayo Stewart, and ^Heidi Weston (2023). “Reviving the Construct of ‘Mattering’ in Pursuit of Equity and Justice in Higher Education: Illustrations from Mentoring and Partnership Programs.” In Academic Belonging in Higher Education: Fostering Student Connection, Competence, and Confidence, edited by Eréndira Rueda and Candice Lowe-Swift. Routledge. 198-214.
  • Lim, Lisa-Angelique, Simon Buckingham Shum, Peter Felten, and Jennifer Uno (2023). “Belonging Analytics: A Proposal.” Learning Letters 1, art. 4, 1-12.  https://learningletters.org/index.php/learn/libraryFiles/downloadPublic/14
  • Johnson, Amy M., Jonathan Iuzzini, Peter Felten, and Tazin Daniels (2023). “Institutional and Instructional Humility for Equity-Forward Teaching and Learning.” In Recentering Learning, edited by Maggie Debelius, Joshua Kim, and Eddie Maloney. Johns Hopkins University Press (forthcoming).
  • Felten, Peter, Rachel Forsyth, and Kathrine Sutherland (2023). “Building Trust in the Classroom: A Conceptual Model for Teachers, Scholars, and Academic Developers in Higher Education.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11, 1-9. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.11.20
  • Bovill, Catherine, Ashton Croft, Caroline Dean Glover, and Peter Felten (2023). “Is Discussing Identity More Important than Shared Identity to Student-Staff Relationship Building?” Teaching & Learning Inquiry 11, 1-19. https://doi.org/10.20343/teachlearninqu.11.17
  • Felten, Peter (2022). “From Pandemic to Endemic Teaching: Being CLEAR in Our Teaching.” In International Perspectives on University Teaching and Learning, edited by Andrew Gillespie, James E. Groccia, Jennifer Mason, and Kalani Long. New Directions for Teaching and Learning. Wiley Periodicals.
  • Bheda, Divya, Peter Felten, and Natasha Jankowski (2022). “Equitable Assessment: An Invitation.” In Reframing Assessment to Center Equity: Theories, Models, and Practices, edited by Gavin Henning, Gianina Baker, Natasha Jankowski, Anne Lundquist, and Erick Montenegro. Stylus.
  • Ketcham, Caroline J., Anthony G. Weaver, Jessie L. Moore, and Peter Felten (2022). “Living up to the Capstone Promise: Improving Quality, Equity, and Outcomes in Culminating Experiences” In Delivering on the Promise of High Impact Practices, edited by Jerry Daday, Jillian Kinzie, Ken O’Donnell, Carleen Vande Zande, and John Zilvinskis. Stylus.
  • Hampshire, Claire, Jessie L. Moore, and Peter Felten (2022). “Social Media and Public SoTL.” In SoTL as Public Scholarship, edited by Nancy Chick and Jennifer Friberg. Stylus. 
  • McGowan, Susannah, and Peter Felten (2021). “On the Necessity of Hope in Academic Development.” International Journal for Academic Development 26:4, 473-476. DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2021.1903902
  • Anderson, Paul and Peter Felten (2021). “Improving Writing, Teaching, and Learning in Higher Education.” In Schreiblehrkonzepte an Hochschulen. Fallstudien und Reflexionen zum Schreibenlehren und –lernen, edited by Swantje Lahm, Frank Meyhöfer und Friederike Neumann. Bielefeld, 21-34. DOI: 10.3278/6004807w
  • Felten, Peter (2020). “Critically Reflecting on Identities, Particularities and Relationships in Student Engagement.” In A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice, edited by Tom Lowe and Yassein El Hakim. Routledge, 148-155.
  • Chick, Nancy, and Peter Felten (2020). “Slow: Liberal Learning for and in a Fast-Paced World.” In Redesigning the Liberal Arts, ed. by Rebecca Pope-Ruark, Phillip Motley, and William Moner. Johns Hopkins University Press, 254-265.
  • Felten, Peter (2020). “Critically Reflecting on Identities, Particularities and Relationships inStudent Engagement.” In A Handbook for Student Engagement in Higher Education: Theory into Practice, ed. by Tom Lowe and Yassein El Hakim. Routledge.
  • Cook-Sather, Alison, Sophia Abbot, and Peter Felten (2019). “Legitimating Reflecting Writing in SoTL: ‘Disfunctional Illusions of Rigor’ Revisited.” Teaching & Learning Inquiry, 7:2 (14-27).
  • Felten, Peter, Sophia Abbot, Jordan K. Kirkwood, Aaron Long, Tanya Lubicz-Nawrocka, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, and Roselynn Verwoord (2019). “Reimagining the Place of Students in Academic Development.” International Journal for Academic Development, 24:2 (192-203). https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2019.1594235.
  • Felten, Peter, Jessie L. Moore, and Tim Peeples (2019). “Multi-Institutional SoTL: A Case Study of Practices and Outcomes.” In Conducting and Applying the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning beyond the Individual Classroom Level, ed. by Jennifer Friberg and Kathleen McKinney. Indiana University Press, 149-161.
  • Matthews, Kelly, Lucy Mercer-Mapstone, Sam Lucie Dvorakova, Anita Acai, Alison Cook-Sather, Peter Felten, Mick Healey, Ruth L. Healey, and Elizabeth Marquis (2019). “Enhancing Outcomes and Reducing Inhibitors to the Engagement of Students and Staff in Learning and Teaching Partnerships: Implications for Academic Development. International Journal for Academic Development, 24:3 (246-259). DOI: 10.1080/1360144X.2018.1545233.
  • Moore, Jessie L., and Peter Felten (2019). “Understanding Writing Transfer as a Threshold Concept across the Disciplines.” In Threshold Concepts on the Edge, ed., by Julie A. Timmermans and Ray Land. Brill, 341-352.
  • Felten, Peter, Kristina Meinking, Shannon Tennant, and Katherine Westover (2019). “Developing Learning Partnerships: Navigating Troublesome and Transformational Relationships.” In Building Teaching and Learning Communities: Creating Shared Meaning and Purpose, ed. by Craig Gibson and Sharon Mader. Association of College and Research Libraries/American Library Association.
  • Little, Deandra, David A. Green, and Peter Felten (2019). “Identity, Intersectionality, and Educational Development.” In Educational Development and Identity: New Directions for Teaching and Learning, ed. By Lindsay Bernhagen and Emily Gravett. Jossey-Bass, 11-23. DOI: 10.1002/tl.20335.
  • Felten, Peter, Margy MacMillan, and Joan Ruelle (2019). “SoTL Difference: The Value of Incorporating SoTL into Librarian Professional Development.” In The Grounded Instructional Librarian: Participating in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, ed. by Melissa Mallon, Lauren Hays, Cara Bradley, Rhonda Huisman, and Jackie Belanger. Association of College and Research Libraries/American Library Association.
  • Felten, Peter (2019). “Student Engagement in the United States: From Customers to Partners?” In Student Engagement and Quality Assurance in Higher Education: International Collaborations for the Enhancement of Learning, ed. by Masahiro Tanaka. Routledge, 46-56.
  • Matthews, Kelly, Alison Cook-Sather, Anita Acia, Sam Dvorakova, Peter Felten, Elizabeth Marquis, and Lucy Mercer-Mapstone (2018). “Theories, Constructs, and Metaphors: Conceptual Frameworks for Students as Partners in Higher Education.” Higher Education Research and Development, 38:2 (280-293). DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2018.1530199.
  • Knight-McKenna, Peter Felten, and Alexa Darby (2018). “Student Engagement with Community.” In Student Engagement: New Directions for Teaching and Learning 154, ed. by James E. Groccia and William Buskitt. Jossey-Bass, 65-74.
  • Felten, Peter, and Nancy Chick. “Is SoTL a Signature Pedagogy of Educational Development?” To Improve the Academy 37:1 (2018), 4-16.

Special Issues Edited:

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