The Center for Teaching & Learning is a recipiant of the 2003 Hesburgh Award
The University of Denver’s Center for Teaching and Learning earns national honor as one of four universities to be awarded a Certificate of Excellence in the 2003 Theodore M. Hesburgh Award for Faculty Development to Enhance Undergraduate Teaching and Learning.
Julanna Gilbert, director of the CTL, accepted the award during the luncheon at the American Council on Education’s annual meeting in Washington, DC on Monday, February 17, 2003.
The CTL was recognized for its sustainable, programmatic innovation in undergraduate curriculum available through its grants program for curricular reform to improve student learning. Rather than funding individual faculty members working on single courses, these grants are awarded to teams of faculty members working together on series of courses.
The University of Denver’s Center for Teaching and Learning works hard to support programmatic initiatives on campus – teaching and learning projects that span an entire department or a number of departments. This effort seeks to counter the trend in higher education, wherein teaching is a solitary activity by individual teachers writing lecture notes and planning their courses without much interaction with their colleagues. Such individual efforts make a coordinated curriculum difficult if not impossible, and student learning suffers as a result.
TIAA-CREF created the Hesburgh Award to acknowledge and reward successful, innovative faculty development programs. It is named in honor of Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C., president emeritus of the University of Notre Dame.
CTL’s philosophy is to promote broad-based institutional change in undergraduate teaching and learning by selectively supporting initiatives whose outcomes are then shared with the rest of the University. To ensure the sustainability of these efforts, and be sure they led to major curricular changes rather than individual course changes, the Center’s faculty advisory board recognized the need for flexible faculty support that included substantial funding, as well as technical expertise.
Faculty Grants
The Center commits a large proportion of its budget to a faculty grants program for curriculum development. The average size of the awards was set at $20,000, to be allocated only to proposals that would enhance a series of related courses taken by a cohort of students, and that involved a team of faculty members. About twenty-five proposals are submitted annually, and 40% to 50% are selected for funding.
Additional funding obtained through generous support from the Sturm Family Foundation enabled the University’s Center for Teaching and Learning to establish the Donald and Susan Sturm Awards for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. These focus on innovation at the department level stimulating changes in methodology and mode of delivery as well as incorporating technological enhancements.
Because of the availability of these resources, many faculty members, working together, have been able to explore new teaching methods. Teaching methodologies in a series of courses have been changed, resulting in documented improvements in student learning outcomes. Over the four years since the program commenced, some 40% of the University’s faculty have participated in forty projects.
Consistent with the University’s mission statement, the curricular changes initiated campus-wide have succeeded in creating “distinctive environments for effective teaching and learning,” and in providing “programs with appropriate and effective technologies.”
The University of Denver is honored to be acknowledged for its efforts to enhance undergraduate teaching and learning by receiving this prestigious honor. “I am thrilled that we received this award. The creativity and dedication to teaching of DU faculty who have worked on the CTL projects is truly inspiring and this award is serving to publicize these efforts to the greater academic community,” said Julanna Gilbert, CTL director.