Recent research by Chism (2007); Sorcinel/i, Austin, Eddy, and Beach (2006);and Taylor (2005) speaks to the critical roles that faculty developers play in ensuring institutional success. Yet we have not as a profession identified the specific competencies necessary for success at different career stages. Our research generated these competencies for three faculty developer positions-s-entry-level, senior-level, and director-within a teaching and learning center. We used World Cafe, a collaborative discussion-based technique, to engage developers in building a matrix of competencies for each position and in determining how these competencies could be demonstrated.

Recent research by Chism (2007); Sorcinel/i, Austin, Eddy, and Beach (2006); and Taylor (2005) speaks to the critical roles that faculty developers play in ensuring institutional success. Yet we have not as a profession identified the specific competencies necessary for success at different career stages. Our research generated these competencies for three faculty developer positions-sentry level , senior-level, and director-within a teaching and learning center. We used World Cafe, a collaborative discussion-based technique, to engage developers in building a matrix of competencies for each position and in determining how these competencies could be demonstrated.

In Giving Reasons, Bermejo-Luque rightly claims that a normative model of the speech act of argumentation is more defensible if it rests on an internal aim that is constitutive of the act of arguing than if it rests, as she claims existing normative models do, on an aim that one need not pursue when one argues. She rightly identifies arguing with trying to justify something. But it is not so clear that she has correctly identified the internal aim of arguing as showing that a target-claim is correct on the basis that a reason offered in its support is correct. First, if arguing is as she claims an attempt to justify, it is best construed as an attempt to justify the action or emotion expressed in its conclusion. Second, it is doubtful that qualified reasons and conclusions can always be reasonably reconstructed as unqualified claims, and even more doubtful that non-constative reasons and conclusions can always be reasonably reconstructed as indirect claims. Third, she needs to explain and justify her introduction of the concepts of showing and correctness in her analysis of the act of arguing.

Two recently graduated students advocate the use of peer input for influencing drinking behavior among students.