The University of San
Francisco
has created a new Center for Teaching Excellence to
support faculty, with the ultimate goal to improve students’ classroom
experience.
The center aims to draw on USF’s talented teaching pool to
create a campus-wide culture devoted to collaboration across colleges and
fields.
“We want to provide ways for faculty to share ideas and
learn from each other, something that can benefit faculty at all stages of
their careers,” said Tracy Seeley, professor of English with USF’s St. Ignatius
Institute and co-director of the Center for Teaching Excellence with Matthew
Mitchell, professor of learning and instruction.
Faculty already have a strong inclination to come together
to talk and practice the craft of teaching, the center is a way of making that
collaboration into a concrete resource for faculty who are challenged at
different stages of their careers, said Jennifer Turpin, USF provost.
At the center’s core are peer-to-peer mentoring, classroom
visits, a summer pedagogic reading club, technology workshops, and brown-bag
discussions, along with user-generated video presentations, and online
discussion forums accessible 24/7.
