Introducing the Center for Teaching and Learning
Lawrence Today magazine, Summer 2002
What do you suppose happens in a Center for Teaching and Learning?
Down the hall and around the corner on the first floor of Briggs Hall at Lawrence is an immaculate new facility that goes by that name -- a name that is, to a large extent, self-explanatory. Located here are people and programs brought together to assist and support those who teach (faculty) and those who learn (students).
And, while those are often separate matters, Geoff Gajewski, assistant dean of student academic services, says, "I think of support for students as support for faculty. We help students develop the very skills that the faculty are interested in helping them develop, working alongside the faculty for the benefit of the students."
What are those skills, and how does the Center for Teaching and Learning operate to help students acquire them?
Historically, the answer to that question begins with the introduction of new general education requirements (GERs), reviewed and revised by the faculty over the course of several years and put into effect for the first time in the 2001-02 academic year (Lawrence Today, Fall 2000).
Beginning with the Class of 2005, students are expected to complete course work in these three categories:
Distribution requirements stipulate that seven courses must be completed among the divisions of the curriculum: the humanities, fine arts, social sciences, and natural sciences.
Diversity requirements call for at least one course with a global perspective focusing on an area outside Europe and the United States and one course exploring dimensions of diversity in contemporary American society.
Competency requirements specify four courses that improve fundamental skills central to a liberal arts education, courses designated as writing intensive, speaking intensive, emphasizing quantitative reasoning, and leading toward proficiency in a foreign language.
Distribution requirements, foreign language requirements, and even math requirements are nothing new, of course, and, as far as the competencies go, the college's statement of purposes has long included the goal of "developing students' abilities to think critically, write clearly, and speak effectively."
What is different is that now faculty members are encouraged to create courses that focus on dimensions of diversity and to teach certain of their courses in ways that allow students to develop and demonstrate their skills in writing, speaking, and mathematical or quantitative reasoning and analysis, as well as proficiency in one of the languages Lawrence teaches: Chinese, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Latin, Russian, and Spanish.
Which is where the Center for Teaching and Learning enters the picture.
Take oral communication, for example. New on the CTL staff this year is Monica Rico, a UC-Berkeley Ph.D. who is Lawrence's first speaking and communications consultant, working with students to develop their speaking and listening skills and with faculty who wish to be able to help students develop their speaking and listening skills.
Rico notes that a recent survey of several thousand American college students found that 70 percent reported feeling "moderately high" or "high" anxiety about public speaking. Increasingly, she says, in the normal course of classroom instruction, students are being asked to give presentations, participate in discussions and role-playing exercises, and conduct interviews -- not to mention the need for communications skills in jobs, internships, community service situations, and -- in fact -- most areas of modern life.
"One of the challenges," Rico says, "is to help students understand that oral communication skills are indeed skills, that they can be worked on and developed and are not something that you either are good at or you're not. There are ways to acquire more confidence and more competence, and we can show you what they are."
The front-line players for the CTL's services for students are students themselves, approximately 80 from all academic disciplines who work as writing tutors, content tutors, quantitative tutors, and communications tutors.
Gajewski, veteran director of the Writing Lab that was one of the CTL's predecessors, notes that the writing tutors, although always available to help their peers with course-specific papers, also deal with writing help more generally: graduate school applications, fiction, poetry, and other forms of written communication. However, he says, the object of writing assistance is perfecting the process, not the product.
"We're not here just to help them create a better product -- that is, the paper at hand," he says, "but to help them develop better skills. One of the things I ask tutors to ask themselves every time they finish a session is 'What is the student going away with that will improve their perception and their ability to write?'"
In addition to writing tutors, the CTL also offers content tutoring related to specific courses. Tutoring in languages, mathematics, or the sciences is most commonly requested, but content tutoring can be available for any course.
"In a number of instances," Gajewski says, "we will have tutors assigned to particular courses and working as adjuncts to the faculty in developing writing and communication skills. We've done that for many years in Freshman Studies; now the model is being applied to other courses, such as literary analysis, art history, and gender studies.
"Another thing we commonly do is consulting with faculty about individual students. Lawrence faculty members have real concerns about the difficulties their students are having, so we don't just say, 'Send your student down, and we'll assign a tutor'; we often talk at great length with the faculty member, look at exams and samples of writing, and try not only to identify a good match for tutoring but to develop an overall assistance program."
General academic skills counseling is also available. Test anxiety, adjusting to the less-structured environment of college life, priority-setting, and time management are all common problems addressed by tutors and counselors.
In the case of students on academic probation, the CTL staff doesn't wait to be asked but instead contacts them directly, offering services.
As part of the Office of Student Academic Services, the CTL also works with students with various disabilities -- providing a quiet place for students with learning disabilities to take tests or arranging for tutors to read textbooks onto audio cassettes for students who are visually impaired, among other accommodations.
The CTL's bright new space in Briggs Hall is a tremendous asset, says Marti Hemwall, '73, dean of student academic services, "but it is important to note that the Center for Teaching and Learning is more than its physical facilities; it is a programming concept."
In the area of developmental offerings for faculty members, that concept may not manifest itself in the center's labs and offices and workspaces but via the telephone or over a cup of coffee in the Grill, as well as through a growing number of specialized programs. Throughout the year, Hemwall says, an advisory committee of faculty members chaired by Beth Haines, associate professor of psychology, organizes workshops, "brown bag" luncheons with speakers, and other learning opportunities for faculty.
For instance, a writing luncheon featured faculty members who are teaching writing-intensive courses who shared their approaches -- tools, techniques, and exercises they have developed to address writing-intensive issues. A workshop on evaluation of speaking answered questions from faculty members who, for the first time, have to assign grades for work that includes speeches, panel discussions, and even debates. The luncheon program on teaching "quantitative literacy" made the point that quantitative reasoning does not simply mean that you should include mathematic problems in your course. Another session asked the question, "What is the purpose of teaching foreign languages," providing answers that proved helpful to faculty members serving as academic advisors. A future luncheon will present two teachers who will be talking about how they re-designed the syllabi in their courses to include more oral communication.
In these and many other ways, the Center for Teaching and Learning is proving itself to be more than a place; it is people and programs that seek to provide necessary competence and confidence to, yes, those who teach and those who learn.
