Smith Center for Faculty Excellence: Strategic Directions

November 2025

1. Ongoing faculty development. In 2024-25, 80 faculty engaged with the former Center for Teaching, Learning, and Innovation, with 15 CTLI workshops and 2 professional development days. Topics addressed so far include reducing grading load, working with students with disabilities, helping students with cognitive load, and teaching first-gen students.
   • Continued Support: The Smith Center will continue offering topics of interest in workshops, learning communities, and professional development days.
   • New offering: Teaching Circles. We heard your desire to return to these! Beyond our traditional workshops, many of you expressed a desire to return to smaller, more intimate peer learning settings. These circles offer a valuable, low-stakes way to share insights and tackle challenges together, starting this spring.
2. Faculty development for teaching in the competencies. To provide stipends for faculty working on core competencies, we sought a NetVUE grant, and this work in progress. We have 11 faculty on this grant.
   • Continued Support: Ongoing support for faculty teaching Core Competencies (with or without vocational connections) will include sponsored lunch conversations each Fall and Spring semester through 2026–2027.
   • New Offering: Course Design Collaborative. Faculty feedback identified this as one of the three foundational programs for the Smith Center, and we're thrilled to launch it!
     
     The Course Design Collaborative is a significant learning and support experience designed for faculty working in small cohorts. It will be offered in two versions: a semester-long option and a summer option.
     • Format: Cohort-based: 3-7 faculty working on similar pedagogical challenges, such as:
       • Core Competency assignments
       • Gen AI assessments
       • Team-based learning pedagogy
     • Time and resources: Participants will engage in structured learning and design, with a stipend.
     • Details on this spring's Course Design Collaborative will be coming soon!