Center for Teaching and Learning

Mary Majerus, Professor of Mathematical Sciences and Director of Teaching and Learning

Mission

The Center for Teaching and Learning embodies the Westminster College faculty's commitment to perfecting the art of teaching. Our primary goal is to create opportunities through which faculty can talk together about their teaching and share ideas, questions, and challenges they face in their classes and with individual students. In conjunction with the Teaching and Learning Committee, we hold regular workshops and programs on special topics in higher education. We make available to the faculty current information on teaching-related issues, both print and multimedia, and maintain an ongoing collection of materials for faculty to consult. Through the Faculty Mentoring Program, we welcome new faculty and support returning faculty on the track toward tenure. We also work closely with the directors of the First-Year Experience and of Community Engagement to support the Westminster Seminar and to create a strong program for community-based learning. We hope to help all faculty develop as the best teachers, scholars, and academic citizens they can be.

Goals

• Continuing and expanding the Faculty Mentoring Program
• Working with the Director of the First-Year Experience, help faculty with the development and delivery of the Westminster Seminar and other first-year programs
• Working with the Office of Community Engagement, train faculty to offer service-learning course and to engage in other forms of community-based learning courses and to engage in other forms of community-based learning
• Developing an array of teaching initiatives to improve classroom instruction, such as achieving clarity about learning outcomes and their relation to degree requirements
• Sponsoring Focus on Teaching Series of faculty discussions of topics that are part of faculty members' working lives, such as grading, appropriate course loads, Socratic techniques, writing across the curriculum, international studies
• Fostering ways to improve faculty communication and dialogue about teaching and research, and in particular encouraging faculty to attend appropriate professional conferences off campus and to form learning communities on campus; faculty-to-faculty tutorials; student class visitation program
• Improving the availability of teaching resources, with particular emphasis on encouraging training in technology-enhanced learning