For Faculty & Staff
The Degree Boost program is a multidisciplinary effort to support and expand High Impact Practices (HIPs) at TU.
The High Impact Practice Community of Practice was developed by faculty and staff to de-silo HIP practices, expand the quality and quantity of HIP experiences and provide a venue for practitioners to exchange best practices. The Community of Practice also aims to raise student awareness of and participation in TU’s HIPs–thus the clustering of HIPs under the Degree Boost umbrella.
About High Impact Practices (HIPs)
High Impact Practices are teaching and learning approaches linked to many educational benefits, including:
- deep learning and personal development
- increased odds of retention
- greater academic achievement
The benefits of HIPs participation accumulate such that when students participate in multiple HIPs, they are likely to experience more positive outcomes.
While there is a list of eleven identified HIPs, TU has taken the inclusive approach of considering additional practices as HIPs (i.e., student leadership and peer coaching), as long as they adhere to identified quality dimensions.
TU’s identified HIPs are:
- Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry
- Study Abroad and Away: Diversity and Global Learning
- Learning Communities
- Community-Engaged Learning
- Internships
- Student Employment
- Student Leadership
- Peer Coaching
- TSEM: First-Year Seminars and Experiences
- Common Intellectual Experiences
- Writing-Intensive Courses
- Collaborative Assignments and Projects
- ePortfolios
- Capstone Courses and Projects
Student Impact
All students benefit from their involvement in HIPs. However, researchers have found that participation may be especially beneficial for students from underserved backgrounds.
Faculty and Staff Impact
The High Impact Practices Community of Practice is a collaborative learning community that allows faculty and staff to:
- learn more about high impact practices (HIPs) and why they work
- gain support for implementing HIPs in courses, programs or student experiences
- explore new ways to incorporate HIPs into teaching, advising or programming
- explore HIPs that contribute to their own professional development
- innovate teaching practices
Designing a High Impact Practice
The value of an experience for students isn’t in its name, but in its design and implementation. For high impact practices, this means alignment with nine research-based quality dimensions.
These quality dimensions are:
- performance expectations set at appropriately high levels
- significant investment of time and effort over an extended period of time
- interactions with faculty and peers about substantive matters
- experiences with diversity, wherein students are expected to and must contend with people and circumstances that differ from those with which students are familiar
- frequent, timely and constructive feedback
- periodic, structured opportunities to reflect and integrate learning
- opportunities to discover relevance of learning through real-world applications
- public demonstration of competence
- countering systemic injustices (while not an AAC&U quality dimension, at TU, this additional element has been added to the quality dimension assessment process)
You can use the Co-Curricular HIP Fidelity Assessment Form (PDF) to assess an experience’s fidelity to these quality dimensions.
HIPs practitioners are encouraged to make student learning transparent and transferable. This includes messaging to ensure that students are aware of the broad applicability of the learned skills obtained by participating in these engagement strategies to their time beyond the classroom.
As HIPs include elements of reflection, feedback, real-world application and public demonstrations of competence, they are particularly well-suited to develop students’ career ready skills (e.g., communication, teamwork, critical thinking, leadership). By implementing HIPs into coursework and programming, faculty and staff contribute to positive student outcomes, which ultimately fuels career advancement.
Getting Involved with Degree Boost
When discussing our HIPs with students, we call them Degree Boosts. There are hundreds of individual HIPs/Degree Boost experiences available to TU students.
Faculty and staff can support Degree Boost in two ways:
- Gain awareness of and promote Degree Boost to students.
- Identify ways you can incorporate HIP practices into your work.
Explore resources offered across TU to support the development, implementation and/or improvement of HIP opportunities in your own experiences (e.g. class projects, student programming, scholarship of teaching and learning). To learn more about each HIP, dive deeper into the Degree Boost main page.
Undergraduate Research and Creative Inquiry
Many colleges and universities are now providing research experiences for students in all disciplines. Undergraduate research, however, has been most prominently used in science disciplines. With strong support from the National Science Foundation and the research community, scientists are reshaping their courses to connect key concepts and questions with students’ early and active involvement in systematic investigation and research. The goal is to involve students with actively contested questions, empirical observation, cutting-edge technologies and the sense of excitement that comes from working to answer important questions.
CUREs Community of PracticeResources for Faculty Mentors
Study Abroad and Away: Diversity and Global Learning
Faculty and staff play an integral role in the study abroad/away experience. The Study Abroad and Away Office provides resources, information and training to help faculty and staff connect students to global learning opportunities.
Study Abroad and Away is an academic experience available to every TU student, can be affordable and cost-effective, improves a student's professional and financial potential, helps students build skills employers are looking for and changes the way students see themselves and the world.
Faculty can engage with Study Abroad and Away by:
- requesting a study abroad and away classroom presentation
- talking to students about study abroad and away
- leading a study abroad or away program
Connect with the Study Abroad and Away Office
Community-Engaged Learning
Community- Engaged Learning includes programs such as Faculty Engagement Fellows and Public Scholarship Engagement Huddle. The engagement huddle is a one-year cohort-style program that provides faculty and staff with an opportunity to expand community and civic engagement work, informed by national best practices, ultimately growing TU's base of engaged faculty and staff and enhancing their research and community-based teaching. The program is organized by the Office of Partnerships and Outreach and the Office of Civic Engagement and Social Responsibility.
The Office of Civic Engagment and Social Responsibility also partners with organizations such as Imaging America and offers a variety of civic engagement and social responsibility programs.
Resources from FACETBTU faculty and staff resources
Internships
Internships are an increasingly common form of experiential learning. The idea is to provide students with direct experience in a work setting—usually related to their career interests—and to give them the benefit of supervision and coaching from professionals in the field. If the internship is taken for course credit, students complete a project or paper that is approved by a faculty member. TU has a Cross-Campus Internship Coordinating Committee and a handbook for internship coordinators (PDF).
Learn more about internships from the Career Center
Student Employment
Student employment is a high‑impact practice because it connects academic learning with real‑world responsibilities, allowing students to build career-ready skills through meaningful, supervised work. By fostering mentorship, accountability and a strong sense of belonging on campus, student jobs enhance engagement, retention and overall student success.
Learn more about hiring student workersStudent Employment Manual (PDF)
Student Leadership
At Towson University, student leadership integrates self-development, strengths, personal values and diverse perspectives to cultivate critical thinking and effective decision-making. Leaders foster relationships, embrace challenges, innovate and advocate while promoting integrity, wellbeing and sustainable community-based change.
Read more about student leadership opportunities
TSEM: First-Year Seminars and Experiences
Many institutions now build into the curriculum first-year seminars or other programs that bring small groups of students together with faculty or staff on a regular basis. The highest-quality first-year experiences place a strong emphasis on critical inquiry, frequent writing, information literacy, collaborative learning and other skills that develop students’ intellectual and practical competencies. First-year seminars can also involve students with cutting-edge questions in scholarship and with faculty members’ own research.
Writing-Intensive Courses
These courses emphasize writing at all levels of instruction and across the curriculum, including final-year projects. Students are encouraged to produce and revise various forms of writing for different audiences in different disciplines. The effectiveness of this repeated practice “across the curriculum” has led to parallel efforts in such areas as quantitative reasoning, oral communication, information literacy and, on some campuses, ethical inquiry.
Writing Center Faculty Outreach ProgramWriting Center Resources for Faculty
FACET-Supported Degree Boosts
For many of our Degree Boosts, the best way to get involved is to contact FACET to learn how to best provide experiences for students.
Learning Communities
The key goals for learning communities are to encourage integration of learning across courses and to involve students with “big questions” that matter beyond the classroom. Students take two or more linked courses as a group and work closely with one another and with their professors. Many learning communities explore a common topic and/or common readings through the lenses of different disciplines. Some deliberately link “liberal arts” and “professional courses”; others feature service learning. Faculty are encouraged to connect with Housing and Residence Life to learn more about Living Learning Communities in addition to reaching to out to FACET for strategies and support.
Peer Coaching
Peer coaching is a type of approach/technique used in a peer-to-peer educator roles where there is an on-going relationship component and where the role itself is selective and incentivized. Peer coaching is a high‑impact practice because it empowers students to learn from one another through shared experiences, collaborative problem‑solving and authentic support that strengthens academic and personal growth. By cultivating belonging, leadership and reflective learning, peer coaching deepens engagement and boosts student confidence and success.
Common Intellectual Experiences
The older idea of a “core” curriculum has evolved into a variety of modern forms, such as a set of required common courses or a vertically organized general education program that includes advanced integrative studies and/or required participation in a learning community. These programs often combine broad themes—e.g., technology and society, global interdependence—with a variety of curricular and cocurricular options for students.
Collaborative Assignments and Projects
Collaborative learning combines two key goals: learning to work and solve problems in the company of others and sharpening one’s own understanding by listening seriously to the insights of others, especially those with different backgrounds and life experiences. Approaches range from study groups within a course to team-based assignments and writing to cooperative projects and research.
ePortfolios
ePortfolios can be implemented in a variety of ways for teaching and learning, programmatic assessment, and career development. ePortfolios enable students to electronically collect their work over time, reflect upon their personal and academic growth, and then share selected items with others, including professors, advisors and potential employers. Because collection over time is a key element of the ePortfolio process, employing ePortfolios in collaboration with other high-impact practices provides opportunities for students to make connections between various educational experiences.
Capstone Courses and Projects
Whether they’re called “senior capstones” or some other name, these culminating experiences require students nearing the end of their college years to create a project of some sort that integrates and applies what they’ve learned. The project might be a research paper, a performance, a portfolio of “best work,” or an exhibit of artwork. Capstones are offered both in departmental programs and, increasingly, in general education as well.
Get support to provide students with Degree Boost experiences.
Connect with FACETContact the HIPs Leadership Team
| Name and HIP Focus | Contact |
|---|---|
|
Emily Bailey |
ebailey AT_TOWSON |
|
Matthew Durington |
mdurington AT_TOWSON |
|
Laura Gough |
lgough AT_TOWSON |
|
Romy Hübler |
rhuebler AT_TOWSON |
|
Kanika Jackson |
knjackson AT_TOWSON |
|
Lorie Logan-Bennett |
lloganbennett AT_TOWSON |
|
Alison McCartney |
amccartney AT_TOWSON |
|
Nicholas Miller |
nicholasmiller AT_TOWSON |
|
Jessica Minkove |
jminkove AT_TOWSON |
|
Wayne Robertson |
wrobertson AT_TOWSON |
|
Liz Shearer |
lshearer AT_TOWSON |
|
Patricia Westerman |
pwesterman AT_TOWSON |