Advancing the Culture of Teaching on Campus: How a Teaching Center Can Make a Difference

“A valuable contribution to the literature on institutional change. This book is full of lessons that CRLT has learned through the years. I hope that you find it as informative as I do.”―Lester P. Monts, Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, University of Michigan

Written by the director and staff of the first, and one of the largest, teaching centers in American higher education – the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) – this book offers a unique perspective on the strategies for making a teaching center integral to an institution’s educational mission. It presents a comprehensive vision for running a wide range of related programs, and provides faculty developers elsewhere with ideas and material to prompt reflection on the management and practices of their centers – whatever their size – and on how best to create a culture of teaching on their campuses. Given that only about a fifth of all U.S. postsecondary institutions have a teaching center, this book also offers a wealth of ideas and models for those administrators who are considering the development of new centers on their campuses.

In the concluding chapter, to provide additional context about the issues that teaching centers face today, twenty experienced center directors who operate in similar environments share their main challenges, and the strategies they have developed to overcome them through innovative programming and careful management of their. Their contributions fall into four borad categories: institutional-level challenges, engaging faculty and students and supporting engaged pedagogy, discipline-specific programming, and programming to address specific instructor career stages.

Constance Cook has served as Executive Director of CRLT since 1993. She was named Associate Vice Provost for Academic Affairs in 2006. Prior to becoming the Director of CRLT, Connie was the executive assistant to the president of the University of Michigan and, from 1987-1990, Connie was coordinator of the FIPSE (Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education) Comprehensive Program at the U.S. Department of Education. Before going to Washington, Connie was an associate professor at Albion College, where she chaired the political science department. At CRLT, her focus is on institutional transformation (i.e., creating a culture of teaching at a research university), a topic on which she has been writing and lecturing for more than a decade. Her scholarship concerns strategies for pedagogical improvement (e.g., action research, the scholarship of teaching and learning, curricular reform, and multicultural teaching and learning). As Executive Director, Connie coordinates new initiatives at CRLT and represents both CRLT and the broader University community on issues of teaching and learning. She also coordinates professional development programs for international higher education leaders. Connie is Clinical Professor of Higher Education at the Center for the Study of Higher and Postsecondary Education, as well as adjunct associate professor of political science. She received her B.A. from Barnard College, her M.A. from The Pennsylvania State University, and her Ph.D. from Boston University―all in political science. Her two books concern American political interest groups: Lobbying for Higher Education: How Colleges and Universities Influence Federal Policy (Vanderbilt University Press, 1998), and Nuclear Power and Legal Advocacy: The Environmentalists and the Courts (D.C. Heath/Lexington Books, 1980).

Matthew Kaplan Kaplan is CRLT’s managing director. He focuses on university-wide initiatives (e.g., Provost’s Seminars on Teaching, assessment and re-accreditation, evaluation of teaching) and external projects, such as a Teagle Foundation grant to improve writing and critical thinking. He also co-directs the LSA Teaching Academy and oversees the Thurnau competition, the University’s highest undergraduate teaching award. He received his Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, where he worked at UNC’s Center for Teaching and Learning for three years before joining CRLT in 1994. Matt has published articles on the academic hiring process, the use of interactive theatre as a faculty development tool, and the evaluation of teaching, and he co-authored a chapter of McKeachie’s Teaching Tips on technology and teaching. He has co-edited a volume of New Directions for Teaching and Learning on The Scholarship of Multicultural Teaching and Learning (Jossey Bass, 2007) and edited two volumes of To Improve the Academy (New Forums Press, 1998, 1999). He was a member of POD’s Core Committee from 1998-2001.

Lester P. Monts is the Senior Vice Provost for Academic Affairs, Senior Counselor to the President for the Arts, Diversity and Undergraduate Affairs, and Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Music, University of Michigan.