Overview
The DU Center for Teaching & Learning works hard to support programmatic initiatives on campus. This effort seeks to counter a widespread trend in higher education, wherein teaching too often 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.
The CTL works closely with the teaching and learning committees that exist in each academic unit at DU. Through these committees, the CTL provides support for unit-specific teaching initiatives that are designed to address the needs of their faculty. These unit efforts are shared with the campus community through the CTL Central Teaching Committee which is composed of one member from each of the unit committees.
The Center’s philosophy is to promote excellence in teaching and learning on a broad scale, hence a large proportion of its budget is committed to faculty via a grants program for curricular development. Awards, averaging $20,000 each, are made for projects that enhance a series of related courses taken by a cohort of students, and that involve a team of faculty members. Through a competitive process, only the most innovative and well-conceived projects are funded. Each faculty team is asked to include information in their proposal about how the course innovations will be integrated with the departmental curriculum, how the changes will be sustained, the numbers of students impacted, and how the learning outcomes will be assessed. Additional awards of $5,000 - $10,000 are also made available for workshops to help faculty learn from each other about new pedagogical approaches or new tools for teaching.
The CTL Faculty Advisory Board evaluates the proposals received from the university community and selects for support those initiatives whose outcomes promise to be significant. To ensure the sustainability of these efforts, the Board recognizes the need for flexible faculty support that includes substantial funding as well as technical expertise. The technical expertise is made available to all units free of charge so that departments with restricted resources may participate fully in teaching and learning initiatives.
The CTL has a variety of other large-scale projects, many of which are described on this web site. Please send us your comments and suggestions on other activities that will serve to promote and enhance teaching and learning at DU.