CTE In The News

Boston College CTE’s Executive Director Stacy Grooters was invited to participate as a guest facilitator at our nationally recognized Course Design Institute in June. She worked closely with faculty from the Schools of Law, Architecture, and Commerce as they built their courses for the coming year.

Stern Bicentennial Associate Professor in Education and Neuroscience Jennie Grammer and the CTE's Lindsay Wheeler and Michael Palmer received an award for their project "Using Neuroscience in Real-World Settings to Improve Student Attention and Engagement."

CTE Faculty Fellow and Professor of Law Joe Fore discusses feedback strategies on the School of Education and Human Development's Designed for Online podcast.

Phoebe Cook credits the CTE's Tomorrow’s Professor Today program with helping her to win the biology department’s distinguished teaching fellowship, which gave her the opportunity to design and teach her own class. The experience may also have helped her win UVA’s All-University Graduate Teaching Award.

In this Pedagogue episode, CTE Faculty Fellow and English Assistant Professor Kate Stephenson talks about community-engaged pedagogy.

Students must pass INST 3150 to become an instructor of a CavEd course. CTE Director Michael Palmer teaches that seminar, which aims to help undergraduate students learn how to be effective teachers.

The Contemplative Sciences Center and CTE piloted the week-long Contemplative Institute for Teaching and Learning during Summer 2021. Faculty participants share how this experience impacted their personal and professional lives this semester.

CTE faculty presented several sessions at the 46th Annual POD Network Conference, held virtually November 8-17, 2021. POD Network is the professional organization for educational developers.

Professor Joe Fore joined UVA’s Center for Teaching Excellence as a 2021-22 Faculty Fellow in July.

After receiving a $20,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts, WTJU is developing a jazz curriculum with the help of the CTE.

Q&A with Christina Boltsi who was a PhD Plus intern at the CTE during the 2020-21 academic year to support pedagogical development programs for graduate students.

Author Ken Bain believes in courses -- "super courses," he calls them -- that will transform the teaching and learning experience. He considers CTE Assistant Director Andrew Kaufman's Books Behind Bars course among them.

Programs like UVA Acts bring to life higher education troubles and tensions through original sketches. These performances strive to educate, entertain—and transform.

In his Virginia Politics and Policy course, Batten Professor Andy Pennock asks his students to choose policy problems facing the Commonwealth that they’d like to see solved. Then, the class works together to both determine relevant readings and invite guests to speak on the issues they’ve selected. Pennock designed the class through UVA’s Center for Teaching Excellence, using a model called "open inquiry."

Rachel Most, associate dean for undergraduate academic programs in Arts & Sciences, and Erin Eaker, assistant professor and association dean, credited the Center for Teaching Excellence and the A&S Learning Design & Technology group for helping to develop a structure for their course "The Past, Present, and Future of Humankind."

In Fall 2020, many instructors took advantage of UVA's new or recently expanded technologies to improve assessment and evaluation processes and increase student engagement and collaboration.

In the face of educational inequities exacerbated by COVID-19, how can instructors harness their grading practices to support equitable outcomes and deep learning for all students?

We offer a sampling of strategies that you, your colleagues, or your program can employ to prepare and engage students before, during, and after the 2020 US presidential election.

What and why to teach are more important considerations than how to teach if we are to offer an education that truly matters at this distinct historical juncture, writes Andrew Kaufman.

Learning Tech is officially live. This site is your connection to learning technologies available across UVA that support your teaching and students’ learning. Whether your classroom is on Grounds, online, or a combination of the two, the resources presented here offer opportunities to enhance, refine, or even reimagine your courses.

Under Holmes, the Center for Teaching Excellence established Thrive grants for faculty adding experiential learning to existing syllabi.

Learn more about CTE resources that will help you prepare to teach this fall, regardless of instructional modality.

With c3Design, the learning happens at a distance, is spread out over several weeks, and is less dependent on individual schedules. The current pandemic makes c3Design a perfect alternative to our Course Design Institute.

In early March my university administration informed me that I had a week to transition my University of Virginia course Books Behind Bars online.

Ahead of the first days of virtual classes, CTE Director Michael Palmer shares some advice for instructors on communicating with students and making adjustments, big and small.

As UVA faculty shift all spring semester courses from the classroom to virtual delivery, the A&S Learning Design & Technology team, alongside other partners like the Center for Teaching Excellence, is working to ensure instructors have the tools and support they need to make the transition as smooth as possible.

Since the fund's creation in 2017, approximately 100 professorships have been endowed through the partnership of donors and UVA, including at entities like the Center for Teaching Excellence.

Astronomy graduate student Yiqing Song shares her experience in the PhD Plus Liaisons Program, where she has co-developed and co-facilitated a workshop for Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) in the STEM fields.

Physics graduate student Sharon Philip shares her experience in the PhD Plus Liaisons Program, where she is making efforts to not only encourage active communication between graduate students and the administration, but also bridge the gap between TAs and students in STEM disciplines.

"One of the things that I've always enjoyed doing as a teacher … was figuring out how to make literature exciting to everyone—not just students and fellow academics—but how to take the beauty and the power of literature and share it with many others outside of the academy." The CTE's Assistant Director of Community-Engaged Learning Initiatives Andrew Kaufman shares how he got involved in this work and the impact he hopes to have in his new position.

Curry graduate student Christian West shares his experience in the PhD Plus Liaisons Program under the mentorship of CTE Assistant Director Adriana Streifer.

Facilitated theater is a new problem-solving technique that the University currently uses to indirectly address potential discrimination through performances. UVA's own group, UVA Acts, is expanding the type of issues that the Center for Teaching Excellence is tackling.

Curry Associate Professor Karen Inkelas, CTE Assistant Director of STEM Education Initiatives Lindsay Wheeler, and SEAS' Instructional Technologies Coordinator Michael Redwine built and are piloting a new observational tool designed to identify what makes a class session engaging and effective.

UVA Vice President and Provost Liz Magill urged graduate students to take advantage of opportunities offered by the Center for Teaching Excellence.

SEAS Educational Strategies Coordinator Michael Redwine, Education Associate Professor Karen Inkelas, and CTE Assistant Director Lindsay Wheeler are developing a “suite of digital tools designed to improve college teaching and student learning.”

UVA Nursing Professor Tomeka Dowling shares her story of recognizing a powerful teaching moment last fall, originally recounted at the CTE's Celebration of Teaching Excellence on May 15.

University of Virginia faculty members in STEM disciplines will have the opportunity to enlist more support for using active-learning methods in their large introductory classes–with the help of undergraduate students.

The CTE's Lindsay Wheeler receives a $141,173 grant from the Jefferson Trust to develop tools to improve instructors' teaching and transform student experiences.

The University of Virginia has expanded its commitment to the Bicentennial Professors Fund to further strengthen efforts to attract and retain the best and the brightest faculty members across every discipline.

CTE Associate Director Dorothe Bach has been unwavering and compassionate in bringing innovative, evidence-based teaching techniques and tools to UVA classrooms – effectively spreading her successful, meaningful methods to tens of thousands of students.