On Sept. 30, Elizabethtown College’s Teaching and Learning Design Studio announced its Learning Design Fellows for the 2025-2026 academic year.
Two members of the College faculty are selected for this fellowship at the beginning of the year. This year’s fellows have been named Dr. Laura Cunningham and Dr. Patrick Allen.
The Learning and Design Studio supports the efforts of faculty to improve and grow teaching methods on campus. Learning Design Fellows are given coaching and support to develop projects in their respective research fields with the goal of having their projects used by other faculty on campus.
“We offer confidential coaching, course and assignment design consultations, and support for educational technologies,” Dr. Katie Caprino, director of the Studio, said. “We aim to be a safe space for instructors and help support them in their teaching efforts.”
The fellowship is eligible to all full-time faculty members in any discipline or area of study.
Cunningham is an alumnus of the College, earning her bachelor’s, master’s and doctorate in occupational therapy from Elizabethtown. She also minored in child psychology.
Currently an assistant teaching professor of occupational therapy, Cunningham has been a full-time member of Elizabethtown’s faculty since August 2020. Previously she served as an adjunct for seven years.
Her project involves bettering the learning experience for neurodiverse students at Elizabethtown, a topic she has already visited during her doctoral research.
“My work directly supports Etown’s commitment to fostering belonging and cultivating each student’s strengths,” Cunningham said. “This fellowship gives me the platform to help create a campus where everyone can thrive.”
As a part of her work, Cunningham and Dr. Sharon Birch, the Studio’s assistant director and Cunningham’s project coach, organized programming for the College’s Instructional Development Day in early August.
“In the months leading up to the event, I consulted with her several times to help identify the key challenges both faculty and students face in creating inclusive and effective classroom experiences,” Birch said. “Dr. Cunningham was a valuable collaborator in the early planning process—her insights helped ensure the day was relevant and impactful.”
Allen, assistant professor of English literature since 2022, received his bachelor’s in English and his Master of Education from Providence College before obtaining his master’s and doctorate in English from The Pennsylvania State University.
Allen’s project involves developing an annotation tool to help students with their close reading and critical research skills. Currently, this tool is being developed for students researching South Africa’s 1998 Truth and Reconciliation Commission Report.
“Dr. Allen’s project is intriguing because it can scale up to help influence the way our campus thinks about supporting students’ social annotation and critical reading skills,” Caprino said. “His commitment to thinking carefully about students’ annotations skills has the potential to help support students’ reading skills more broadly across campus.”
Once his project reaches completion, Allen hopes to distribute his annotation tool to other faculty for use in their classes.
“Collaborative learning and knowledge-building excite me,” Allen said. “I see this project as a starting point for developing, and encouraging others to develop, similar projects that invite students to follow their interests and seek out reliable information.”
As with previous fellows, Cunningham and Allen were selected based on the potential for their projects to further advance Elizabethtown’s teaching proficiency, something that the college was ranked highly by U.S. News & World Report in its 2025-2026 college rankings.
In the northeast United States, Elizabethtown tied for sixth among peer colleges for undergraduate teaching and ranked first in the state of Pennsylvania.
“I would love to think the Teaching and Learning Design Studio played a role in this ranking about undergraduate teaching,” Caprino said. “I do believe the Teaching & Learning Design Studio is a product of Elizabethtown College’s ongoing commitment to excellence in undergraduate teaching, and we work with faculty members and instructional staff across campus to hone their teaching so that we can best support our wonderful students.”
