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The college classroom is a place where students have the opportunity to be transformed and inspired through learning—but teachers need to understand how students actually learn. This book provides an accessible, hands-on guide to the craft of college teaching, giving instructors the practical tools they need to help students achieve not only academic success but also meaningful learning to last a lifetime. The book explains what to teach—emphasizing concepts and their relationships, not just isolated facts—as well as how to teach using active learning strategies that engage students through problems, case studies and scenarios, and practice reinforced by constructive feedback. The book tells how to motivate students, run productive discussions, create engaging lectures, use technology effectively, and much more. Interludes between chapters illustrate common challenges, including what to do on the first and last days of class and how to deal with student embarrassment, manage group work, and mentor students effectively. There are also plenty of questions and activities at the end of each chapter. This book is an essential resource for new instructors and seasoned pros alike.

The chapters in this book contend that attention to vocational concerns promotes the civic good promised by defenders of liberal arts education. In doing so, their authors suggest that the good of higher education is larger than the immediate, practical benefit an individual student gains while earning a degree, that addressing enduring questions is essential if students are to meet the challenges and crises facing them. Moving beyond generalities about vocation and abstract discussion of higher education, these chapters exemplify the reflective practices at the heart of liberal arts, for faculty and students alike. The authors share an institutional context, St. Olaf College, where they teach in several departments: from biology and economics to history and religion. They each draw upon their own academic disciplines and teaching experience to reflect on both their calling as professors and their practices for fostering students’ ability to hear and respond to their own vocations. All are convinced of the continuing value of the liberal arts particularly when those disciplines generate exploration of the meaning and purpose of life. Their varied notions of how vocation is best understood and cultivated reveal the differing religious commitments and pedagogical practices present within their college community. Together they demonstrate how religion is taken seriously on one college campus and what doing so contributes to their work. Moreover, readers are invited to reflect upon their own commitments and practices within the context of higher education today.