Expand Center for Teaching and Learning

Proposal

Center for Academic Excellence could be expanded to be a true center for teaching and learning, and faculty members could be given incentives for participating in this center (course releases, stipends, grants for course development or books).

Rationale

Lots of recent research points to value of practice and coaching and exploration of new techniques in teaching. The January 2012 progress report on the previous strategic plan noted "The Center for Academic Excellence is up and running. This focuses mainly on learning. Proposals for developing teaching excellence are continuing."

Unfortunately, few faculty members have extra time to devote to things like this (even though we really want to! This is why we became teachers!). In order to succeed, such an operation has to go beyond "build it and they will come" or "build it and you can make them come." Providing incentives that resonate with actual work schedules and professional needs will allow faculty to work this into their busy schedules.

Data/Research

• Before deciding how to proceed, let's get a sense of how many faculty would be interested in participating in such a center, how many faculty actually have time to participate in such a center, what kinds of incentive would, in fact, make it more likely one would participate.
• What is best model of such a center at another school?  Send some faculty to visit it.