Faculty at the University of Maryland are agents for improving undergraduate teaching and learning. As scholars, faculty discover and generate new knowledge that contributes not only to ongoing academic exchanges but on occasion informs new understanding in transformational ways. Often that work occurs at the boundaries of what is known, what is settled, and what remains to be said. Research scholarship in the disciplines is borne of controversy; it pushes against the complacent and the mundane, and scholars challenge prior understandings and refine the things we know. While discovery through research may not provide our undergraduate courses with immediate content, it does offer a model for all manner of learning in which expectations and prior conceptions are continually challenged. In support of rich and deeper student learning, we can find increased learning by introducing controversy. When new things are agreeable and easily added to what is already familiar, students are not required to negotiate challenges and are therefore less likely to learn new ways, to understand more deeply, to integrate, to create and to communicate.

The 2008-2009 CTE-Lilly Fellows took up the challenge of using controversy as part of their undergraduate teaching pedagogy, seeking to introduce situated controversy in order to simultaneously increase academic rigor and student engagement. That coupled increase in engagement and rigor is of course a foundation for enhanced student learning. Their preliminary finding is that introducing controversy enhances both the content of and learning in their courses. Following the University Strategic Plan’s call for meaningful academic challenge, the Lilly Fellows identified controversial and complex issues within their academic disciplines that could be used as learning objects and activities. As a cohort they adopted a shared project, the pedagogy of controversy, attentive to the individual needs of each of their courses and disciplines. While their work has much to offer the campus generally, its significant first impact took place in real classrooms

during the 2008-2009 year. It is our  shared conviction that their experience in these classes can inform teaching and learning well beyond this cohort’s reach.

Each project introduced problem-based learning as a pedagogical mode. Specifically, each asked students to consider some critical question and to reflect on the ways different stakeholders see their position. Students synthesized and communicated responses to embedded problems that range from silver nanoparticles in Michelle Brooks’s chemistry course, to synthetic biology in Boots Quimby’s cell biology course, to sustainable packaging in Audra Buck-Coleman’s design course, to the risks of structural failure in Deborah Oakley’s architecture course, to questions of intelligent design in Raghu Murtugudde’s Honors seminar, to the controversial role of transgenic animals in genetic change Frank Siewerdt used to integrate a series of lectures in his animal science course. Instead of merely comprehending a history of those controversies, students in the Lilly Fellows’ courses were able to engage with immediately significant questions for and about academic work. They engaged in critical thinking and learning in a way that is sustainable and transferrable to novel problems.

As one Lilly Fellow from this cohort, Jaime Schultz, has noted, the category of “controversy” is itself an unsettled notion. Initially, controversy seemed a straightforward idea: what are the unsettled disagreements about which stakeholders feel strongly? What sorts of questions and problems generate strong convictions and, maybe, discomfort? However, it became clear that not all of the issues the Fellows had identified were controversial. For instance, it is hardly controversial to insist that product packaging ought to be sustainable or that institutional racism in public education is a destructive force. Instead, the Fellows observed, the questions introduced in their course raised problems of complexity and uncertainty. In Raghu's seminar, how can students negotiate matters of faith with science? In

 Jaime’s course, how best to unpack the roles of race in American sports? In Michael’s studio, how to design a truly public building when the very definition of publicness is contested? As the cohort negotiated their own implementations of new modules in their courses, they met regularly as a learning community to discuss an expansive set of issues in higher education. Those conversations, a hallmark of the CTE-Lilly Fellowship, provided faculty the opportunity to share experiences and convictions about teaching across disciplines. Cinzia Cirillo’s project, a survey of her colleagues’ views of teaching, reflects a new connection between the Lilly Fellowship and the larger community of faculty at the University of Maryland.

At least one of the conclusions we at CTE draw from the breadth of “controversy” as a concept for teaching and learning is that each of the Fellow’s projects carefully situates a problem in an academic context. Their work is not an admonition to introduce issues likely to create conflict without providing a rich context, modeling scholarly inquiry, and structuring student response with productive venues. In other words, no Lilly Fellow simply stirred emotion in service of student engagement; each gave students an academic route for investigating significant problems.

The common adage that describes teaching as “comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable,” balanced with another, “no pain for gain,” can introduce productive discomfort of controversial problems in ways that nearly always facilitate enduring student learning.

We have collected a project summary for the campus as a resource for all undergraduate faculty. We invite you to review these project descriptions and encourage you to contact individual Lilly Fellows to discuss their experiences and consider implications for your own teaching. Go to here to learn more.