Overview of the CFT and annual reports

Review the Center for Teaching's Annual Report (pdf) to learn more about its activities during the 2008-2009 academic year.

In order to foster and sustain a culture that practices, values, and rewards university teaching and learning as vital forms of scholarship, the Center takes as its mission to:

• Promote deep understanding of teaching and learning processes by helping both individuals and groups of instructors to gather, analyze, and reflect on information about their own teaching and their students' learning.

• Cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning through orientations, workshops, working groups, and other programs.

• Create and disseminate research-based best practices, models, and approaches to university teaching and learning -- and facilitate access to resources that support them.

The Center was founded in 1986 to advance teaching excellence in the College of Arts and Science, and expanded in 1997 to serve the entire university. The Center's programs and services are thus available to any member of the university's teaching community, including full-time and part-time faculty, teaching assistants, post-doctoral fellows, and anyone else involved in the instructional process at Vanderbilt.

Through conducting confidential individual consultations, facilitating faculty and graduate student working groups, offering practical and theoretical workshops on teaching and learning, and providing other programs and services, the Center supports all aspects of the educational process. The Center's staff includes a director, assistant directors, a program coordinator, administrative support staff, graduate student teaching fellows, and undergraduate students.

All of the senior staff members have earned Ph.D.'s and continue to teach at Vanderbilt in their respective fields. Recognizing that teaching, like research, takes many forms in a variety of disciplinary contexts, these senior staff members combine this institutional teaching experience with their knowledge and expertise in the disciplines of the university to serve as liaisons to colleges, schools, and departments across campus. In this capacity, we help individuals, departments, colleges, and schools to learn about and develop best practices for teaching and learning in their disciplines.

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