Welcome to Smith Center for Faculty Excellence

We are so glad that you stopped by!

We are absolutely thrilled to launch this new hub for the Smith Center for Faculty Excellence, a resource made possible by the incredibly generous endowment from Kathy ’71 and Alton Smith! This significant support allows us to deepen our commitment to your growth and provide two core resources: 24/7 faculty development support for every OWU instructor, and a single spot for all Smith Center event information (upcoming, recordings, and materials).

The two main goals for this website are to provide faculty development support that is available 24/7 for all OWU instructors, including part-time instructors, and to provide information about Smith Center for Faculty Excellence events, both upcoming events and the recordings and materials from prior events.

Over the next six months, we’ll be sharing a series of posts highlighting how the Smith endowment is creating exciting new professional growth opportunities for you. Each piece will directly include specific needs faculty raised in the General Education Proposal (found here), ensuring our support is responsive to your priorities for the new general education program.

So, what’s new and what’s continuing? We’re starting with two needs noted in the proposal. For each one, we detail the foundational support we’ve been offering, and then share the new, enhanced opportunities coming thanks to the generous Smith Center endowed funding.

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Meet Our New Faculty (2026-27)

We are excited to welcome six new tenure-track Assistant Professors and one Visiting Assistant Professor to our teacher-scholar community. Meet Esther Akheituame (Journalism and Communication), Caio Batista de Melo (Math/CS), Hayden Bishop (Chemistry), Matthew Bowser (History), Leslie MacColman (Sociology), Abby Trollinger (History), and Patrick Wensink (English).

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