Creighton University recently held its biannual Critical Issues Feedback Lunch in Room 105 in the Skutt Student Center on Tuesday afternoon.
The Critical Issues Feedback lunch is held once a semester and gives Creighton faculty members a chance to discuss the current critical issues courses that are offered.
“This is an event we do once a semester where we talk about the critical issues courses and oral communications courses,” Dr. Kevin Graham, Ph.D., said. “We talk about what has gone well, what has not gone so well and what we want to change going forward.”
The faculty members in attendance at the lunch included professors of critical issues and human inquiry courses, oral communications and reference librarians that support both of those groups.
Graham, a philosophy professor at Creighton, gave the main presentation at the lunch and explained some of the feedback he had received over the course of the semester for the critical issues courses.
“Among the things that seemed to have gone well is the topics of the courses are very specific, faculty get to teach stuff that they love at the introductory level and students are engaged because they have chosen something specific that hopefully they are interested in,” Graham said.
“Some of the challenges are having to get more coordination between critical issues and oral communication,” Graham said.
Dr. Guy McHendry, Ph.D., a professor in Creighton’s Department of Communication Studies also gave a short presentation where he talked about some of the opportunities that COM 101 and critical issues together have provided for students.
“An example of that is some of the speaking assignments that happen in the critical issues course have a lot more depth and students know a lot more about what they are talking about because they are taking a whole class on it, than traditional public speaking classes,” McHendry said. “The students just know so much more, their research is so much better.”
McHendry said the coordination between the critical issues courses and oral communications courses has improved tremendously compared to how it had been in the past, but agreed with Graham and said it still presents a challenge.
“One of the challenges we are running into is we are just having a little bit of trouble coordinating among the two classes. It’s a lot to handle. I have 25 students, they have the same 25 students, but it’s two different things. One is online, one is in person and so making that clear to students and getting everyone on board has just been difficult,” McHendry said.
Overall, Graham said that he was pleased with the direction these two groups of professors are going in and is optimistic about this type of collaboration in the future.
“I think that there has been a remarkable amount of willingness to break down barriers and cooperate for the sake of student learning,” Graham said.