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For Community Discussion: Recommendations from the

Ad Hoc Committee on a Teaching and LearningCenter

April 8, 2009

Created in fall 2008, the Ad Hoc Committee on a Teaching and Learning Center was charged by the Dean of Faculty with determining whether a teaching and learning center (TLC) should be established at Williams, and if so, what form it would take.

The TLC committee members (and for those members appointed to represent a particular committee or campus office, their affiliations) are, respectively: Ralph Bradburd (Chair), Lori DuBois (Reference and Instruction Librarian, Libraries), Will Dudley (CEP), Susan Engel (Director, Program in Teaching), Joyce Foster (Director, Academic Resources), Tom Garrity (Director, PET), John Gerry (Associate Dean of Faculty), Jonathan Morgan-Leamon (Director, Instructional Technology), Wendy Raymond (Associate Dean for Institutional Diversity), Karen Swann (Writing Program pilot), and Safa Zaki (ex-officio, CPR).

Background: Why are we discussing a Teaching and LearningCenter?

In May 2004 the Committee on Pedagogy and its Evaluation (CoPE) issued their report with recommendations on supporting pedagogical development at Williams. Although they rejected the idea of creating a "TeachingCenter" at that time, a number of factors have brought this issue up for discussion again:

  • While the Project for Effective Teaching (PET) offers two all-faculty lunches per semester, there continues to be widespread sentiment among instructors (faculty at all levels and staff with teaching roles) that more discussion of teaching is desirable and necessary.
  • The Committee on Educational Policy (CEP), Academic Resources, and other groups have revised and continued to discuss the writing-intensive course requirement and how to support faculty teaching these courses and students developing their writing skills. For example, in 2008 a one-year position for Writing Coordinator was created and filled, and it has now been extended for the 2009-10 academic year.
  • The changing demographics of Williams students have highlighted the need for a framework of inclusion in academic excellence, including pedagogical discussions for educating a diverse student body (which leads to better teaching for all students), mentoring students, and providing new academic supports, such as writing assistance for students for whom English is not thefirst language and diversity/inclusion training for faculty.
  • The continued growth in online resources and information and communications technologies points to the need for a more integrated approach to working with faculty to improve students' information and media literacy skills, and to assist faculty in making excellent use of technology in their courses.

The Williams 2020 proposals also proposed establishing a teaching center (F11), providing training and support for faculty in using emerging technologies (T1), providing ESL writing support (D1), and supporting international and first-generation college students through creating “a learning center with a broad mandate to engage faculty and to offer academic support” or expanding the Multicultural Center as a teaching and learning center (D2).

Our Process:

The 10-member committee has met weekly during the fall and the spring semesters. We began by looking at other institutions’ on-campus centers that support teaching and learning, including a review of the results of a June 2008 survey conducted by the Annapolis Deans Group reporting on the experience of TLCs at approximately two dozen liberal arts colleges(June 23, 2008). The Committee met with the director of the Jacobson Center for Writing, Teaching, and Learning at Smith College and video-conferenced with the director of the Perlman Center for Learning and Teaching at Carleton College; individual committee members visited St. Lawrence University’s Center for Teaching and Learning and Bucknell’s Teaching and Learning Center, and other members had extended conversations with the Directors of Princeton’s McGraw Center and Wellesley’s Pforzheimer Learning and Teaching Center. These programs, each of which is housed in a dedicated space with both staff and administrative support,vary greatly in scope, fromone that just assists faculty to improve pedagogy to others designed to address both the academic needs of students and the pedagogical concerns of faculty. Nearly all of the institutions housing these different kinds of programs viewed their own program as successful or very successful.

Following these fact-finding meetings, we focused on needs and opportunities specific to Williams. We reviewed previous Williams reports including the Writing Across the Curriculum and Critical Analysis Pilot Update (April 25, 2008), the Writing Sub-committee of the CEP report (February 1, 2008), the Report of the Committee on Pedagogy and its Evaluation (May 2004), and materials related to information literacy, changing demographics, and diversity. We also invited campus constituencies to present and discuss with us issues related to student academic support (Dean Karen Merrill), inclusive academic excellence (Wendy Raymond), writing support (Monique Deveaux, CEP chair), instructional technologies and media literacy (Jonathan Morgan-Leamon), information literacy (Lori DuBois), and possibilities for locating a TLC in the existing or proposed library (Dave Pilachowski and Christine Ménard). We also had a joint meeting with CEP in January to further discuss student writing and faculty support for teaching of writing. In the weeks following these presentations, we have discussed our findings and drafted a preliminary set of recommendations.

The TLC Committee feels that the appropriate next step in our process is to gather feedback from the Williams community, an exercise that we began by holding an open forum on April 14, 2009. We offer below our “Rationale and Recommendations for Action” not as a finished policy proposal but rather as a preliminary document to spur further discussion that will enable the college community to clarify its needs with respect to student learning and faculty pedagogical support, and to determine how best to meet those needs.

Rationale and Recommendations for Action:

When we began our discussions of a teaching and learning center early in the fall semester, the fiscal environment was more favorable than at present. However, even in the context of current budget realities, we arrived at a strong consensus regarding three goals:

  1. To create a variety of virtual and physical opportunities to bring educators together to discuss teaching;
  2. To create online and hard-copy resource guides encompassing the full range of teaching and learning resources currently available to faculty and students; and
  3. To provide additional professional support for student writing and the teaching of writing.

Because of the current economic climate, we deferred consideration of creating a physical TLC space and focused instead on these three relatively low-cost priorities. As we looked more closely at these priorities, we realized that the college already has many important pieces in place, and we determined that greater coordination and collaboration among various offices and programs concerned with student academic support and faculty pedagogical development could lead to more effective and efficient support for teaching and learning, and could do so at very modest cost.

We offer for comment and consideration three recommendations:

Recommendation 1: Create a Teaching and Learning Committee

Background: The 2004 CoPE report rejected creating a standing committee on teaching, recommending instead that pedagogical issues fall more naturally within the purview of the CEP and should be addressed within the existing committee structure. While the CEP has been engaged in looking at writing support over the last two years, it has not had the time to consider pedagogical support more broadly or other skill areas needing support. The CoPE report also did not address the role of other educational professionals on campus who are not included within the CEP and the current committee structure (e.g., staff from Academic Resources, the Libraries, and Instructional Technology).

Currently, Williams provides an impressive range of programs that support teaching and learning, but our committee concluded there is a lack of coordination among these programs. Better coordination would provide faculty and staff educators with a more effective way to share of resources, knowledge, and experience, and would provide clear destination for proposals and concerns. We propose the creation of a committee whose mission is to coordinate existing programming and collaborate on new programming aimed at fostering improvement of teaching and learning on an ongoing basis. This committee would include Williams staff educators who are expert in information literacy (Head of Research and Reference Services or Reference and Instruction Librarian); instructional technologies and media literacy (Director of Instructional Technology); student academic resources (Director of Academic Resources); writing support (the proposed (see below) Director of Writing and Rhetoric); the Director of the Project for Effective Teaching; the Associate Dean of Faculty; a representative from the office of the Vice President for Strategic Planning and Institutional Diversity; two students selected by the Dean of the College; and two faculty members selected by the Dean of Faculty.

We welcome discussion about whether this should be an ad hoc or standing committee.

New programming would be designed to meet our first goal: creating a variety of virtual and physical opportunities to bring educators together for discussions of pedagogical issues and strategies. Such new programming might include substantive discussions that regularly incorporate AR, Experiential Education, Instructional Technology, Libraries, and MCC staff, and a resource bank of conferences dedicated to, or inclusive of, scholarship of teaching and learning.

Recommendation 2: Enhance the PET website to become a virtual Teaching and LearningCenter

The 2004 CoPE report recommended that a web site with links to materials on pedagogical issues be established (I.2.v.). While a website for PET exists, it does not currently offer ways for learning about pedagogical methods, sharing teaching strategies and materials, or becoming aware of faculty development opportunities and resource contacts. The PET Director is currently adding content to the PET site and will be working with the summer Williams Instructional Technology (WIT) program to develop the site further. Further, because we see a need for a virtual Teaching and LearningCenter, the website should also incorporate resources for students and links to other on-line resources for students.

Recommendation 3: Make the temporary Writing Coordinator position a permanent, full-time position and expand the role to a Director of Writing and Rhetoric[1].

In addition to the two very low-cost initiatives above, both of which are at least in the planning stages, we also view as a high priority that the college should hire a full-time permanent Director of Writing and Rhetoric (DWR). The DWR’s responsibilities would include those of the current Writing Coordinator—directing the Writing Workshop peer-tutors program and the Writing Assistants Pilot, which may be converted to a permanent program— which we view as essential, and in addition, a permanent person in this position would also provide support to faculty and staff instructors in the teaching of writing and would serve on the Teaching and Learning Committee.

We recommend that the individuals and groups who have been involved in these discussions over the past two years (e.g. Dean of Faculty Office, CEP, Academic Resources, TLC) be convened to determine the exact nature of the position and qualities of a person who would fill the position.Ideally, these discussions would result in a job description by December 2009, which could permit us to have the DWR assume his/her responsibilities by July 2010. Although hiring a full-time DWR will involve some increment to the current amount budgeted for the Writing Coordinator and the associated Pilot Program, the additional expenditures will not be large. Even in the current climate of budget cutting we regard this as a high priority.

Issues not addressed by our recommendations:

- Dedicated TLC Space:

The committee has not achieved consensus regarding the utility/desirability/priority of having apart-time or full-time dedicated space on campus devoted to a Teaching and LearningCenter. Some feel that we can manage just as well with a virtual or conceptual space; others feel that having some sort of physical space will serve both to facilitate face-to-face interactions regarding pedagogy and to raise the profile of writing and rhetoric issues on campus. In the context of the difficult budget issues that the college is confronting at present, even those who support some sort of dedicated space recognize that this may not be possible at present, or at least not in a form more ambitious than a modest amount of space carved out of existing or already proposed facilities.

- ESL Writing Support

As we admit more diverse student populations, ESL writing support is a pressing issue. However, hiring an ESL writing specialist would compete with other campus hiring priorities. Requiring the Director of Writing and Rhetoric to have this specialty would limit the pool of possible applicants, and therefore we do not recommend that the DWR have responsibility for ESL support.

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[1]For some, the term “rhetoric” has a negative connotation, roughly equivalent to “sophistry” or “bombast,” but this is not the classical meaning, and certainly not the meaning that we intend; rather, rhetoric refers to the skills necessary to effectively communicate ideas and develop arguments.