In May 2003, when I was hired as a graduate assistant to promote the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning at the University of Maryland, I knew little about the movement, its background, or the potential of this work to transform higher education. What I have since learned has affected my teaching, learning, and research interests. It has also affected countless other people, including graduate student peers, students in courses I teach, and faculty at Maryland and other institutors. Each student who experiences curricular or co-curricular engagement in this work has gained and offered innumerable learning experiences. Involvement in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) has enhanced my understanding of various sets of complex interactions in higher education, including the often competing priorities of teaching and research and divisions between student affairs and academic affairs. Involvement in SoTL at the campus, national, and international levels has shaped my scholarly pursuits. I enrolled in a graduate program in curriculum theory to study and transform how diversity of identity affects the teaching of adolescents, as well as how we teach them about that diversity. I was specifically interested in how and why we teach urban young people of color differently from their middle class suburban peers. I will soon complete doctoral coursework through which I have explored this and related issues from multiple perspectives. My dissertation research has grown out of that question, in the context of Professor Jo Paoletti's SoTL work in an American Studies classroom. I created a dissertation group of graduate students whose work has a SoTL component. We are in three different fields: education, journalism, and women's studies. What our work has in common is a commitment to morefully incorporating student perspectives into assessing student learning in our own classrooms. The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning has also transformed my teaching. I had practiced scholarly teaching, using others' writings about teaching and learning to inform what I did in the classroom. I had not, however, publicly shared what I learned from that scholarship, nor did I intend to do so. Rather, I planned to separate my teaching and research interests, studying others' teaching. Although I came to Maryland having used democratically inspired classroom practices, I did not risk trusting undergraduate students with power. I have now co-taught three distinct courses in partnership with at least one undergraduate student, some courses more than once, and serve on an advisory board to support more fully including students in teaching leadership on campus. Exploring student voices in SoTL fundamentally challenged how I think about teaching and learning. Diversity of identity became part of a larger question of power relationships. Once I unpacked my fear of trusting students, several opportunities followed naturally. I facilitated an eight-week dialogue in which, together with a dozen undergraduate students, we examined the complex power dimensions of university teaching and learning. I co-presented at academic conferences, each research partnership incorporating major contributions from a faculty member and undergraduate student. Through these experiences I have learned that before students can participate as co-inquirers in SoTL, we must make space for them to participate equitably in conversations about teaching and learning. Along this journey, I return to my initial question about this work: What is the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning that is different from scholarship in my field, education? My current answer is that SoTL is the public exchange of knowledge and understanding about teaching and learning within a particular field. For example, the SoTL component in my dissertation project relates to teaching and learning about identity diversity in American Studies. It is relevant to, but not the same as, teaching and learning about identity diversity in the College of Education or elsewhere on campus. back to University of Maryland page back to student voices homepage