Experienced Educational Developer Joins CTE for 2024-2025

Educational developer, technology expert, board game enthusiast—these are just a few of the ways to describe the Center for Teaching Excellence’s (CTE) new Associate Director Derek Bruff, who joins the CTE for the 2024-2025 academic year.

Widely regarded as a leader in the educational development community, Bruff has made significant contributions to the field through his publications, consulting work, conference presentations, and much more. Rewind 20 years, his journey started when he "got bit by the teaching bug in college."

Bruff pursued his PhD in Mathematics from Vanderbilt University, with the intention of being a math professor. While there, he took advantage of their Center for Teaching’s (CFT) services and eventually worked at the CFT as a graduate student because he liked having those conversations about teaching, he said.

After graduate school, he landed a job as a non-tenure track faculty member at Harvard University in the math department. Then Bruff made his way back to Nashville to take a position as Assistant Director at Vanderbilt’s CFT, where he stayed for the next 17 years. During that time, he was promoted to Director and finally Executive Director, ultimately leading the CFT for more than a decade.

“I really enjoyed that work. … I liked working at a research university, because advocating for good teaching, supporting faculty and good teaching, was always a little bit of an uphill battle, sometimes very uphill. But I love the challenge of trying to figure out: how can we not only directly help faculty invest in their own teaching development, but also how can we work at an institutional level to create the structures and resources that enable good teaching? I like thinking at those different levels around the teaching mission of the university.”

In 2022, he left Vanderbilt’s CFT to seek out new opportunities and took on the role of Visiting Associate Director at the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Mississippi.

“[Ole Miss is] the flagship university of Mississippi. It's essentially open access for the state of Mississippi and so it … has a lot of implications for teaching, especially teaching first-year undergraduates,” he said. “My focus there was mostly on STEM teaching, building in active learning, thinking about inclusive teaching practices, and getting them ready for a whole bunch of new active learning classrooms that [are opening this month].”

Fast forward to today, as Bruff begins his next chapter with the CTE, bringing a wealth of wisdom and expertise to our team.

“Derek is a seasoned and exceptional educational developer with 20 years of experience in the field,” said Michael Palmer, CTE Barbara Fried Director. “He has extensive knowledge of learning technologies, including in-depth knowledge of generative AI (artificial intelligence).”

Bruff is diving right into the new Faculty AI Guides program, offered by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost and CTE, which has 51 Guides in the inaugural cohort.

“[The program] aims to equip faculty who are interested in teaching with and about and in some cases against AI and equipping them to work with their colleagues to think through some of these teaching choices that we're really all facing now.”

Along with CTE Assistant Directors Andrew Kennedy and Jessica Taggart, Bruff will support the Guides with a kickoff institute and then throughout the year through learning community meetings and as they work to offer professional development opportunities for their departments.

“Both of the books that I've written are on using technology to support teaching in higher ed. When ChatGPT and the other AI tools hit in 2022, it was kind of a natural space for me to start thinking about, what does it mean for our teaching? How do we use these tools thoughtfully? Over the last almost two years, I've done a lot of work with faculty at different institutions thinking about what the implications of those are for our teaching. I'm excited to keep moving that along and figure out what UVA faculty are doing.”

Another focus of Bruff’s work is Teaching Hub, the CTE’s website “meant to be a one-stop shop for some of the best teaching and learning resources around.”

“Most of the collections on Teaching Hub thus far have been curated by UVA faculty and staff. My main role is to help expand that set of curators to folks outside of the university. The vision is to have it pretty cosmopolitan in terms of who contributes and what topics are covered and what perspectives are shared,” he said. “Given my work in the field for the last 20 years, I've got a decent professional network, so I've been trying to draw on that to invite other curators from outside the university.”

He’s already published collections from 5 external curators, on topics such as Universal Design for Learning, Discipline-Based Education Research, and Students as Partners, in addition to authoring several of his own on Alternatives to Traditional Essays and Supporting Neurodivergent Learners. Many more collections are in the pipeline.

Beyond his work with the CTE, Bruff writes a weekly newsletter called Intentional Teaching and produces the Intentional Teaching podcast. He also has many personal interests that keep him busy.

“I have more hobbies than time, but I do like to travel. I like photography. I used to be more of a runner than I am, but I do like running. Bird watching since 2020 has been a real passion. A lot of those hobbies work well together. … I'm also big into board gaming, … and I have a board game podcast because I don't have enough to do in my free time.”

Bruff will be working for the CTE remotely from his home outside Nashville, while making a few visits to Grounds during the year. Connect with Bruff by emailing him at derekbruff@virginia.edu or following him on LinkedIn.