Berea’s integrated Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), brings faculty, staff, and students together with each other and with trained faculty, staff, and student leaders to deepen their confidence, skills, perspectives, and insights as readers, writers, learners, and teachers

Mission

The Center for Teaching and Learning exists to equip and empower members of the Berea College student, faculty, and staff community to become effective, well-informed, and confident thinkers, writers, learners, and teachers through individual consultations, mentoring, workshops, and communities of practice.  Together these programs enhance participants’ knowledge and skills and contribute to humanizing and historicizing traditional classroom practices, norms, and assumptions for the purpose of creating greater equity in higher education.

CTL Focuses: Professional Development and Writing

Three threads intertwine at the heart of Berea’s integrated Center: 1) continued teaching-related professional development for faculty and staff professionals, 2) support for undergraduate TAs and tutors as they begin to professionalize, and 3) writing support for all students, staff, and faculty members at the College.

Philosophy, Goals, & Values

CTL programming and services highlight dialogue and collaboration, and all offerings start from the assumption and recognition of the learner’s or teacher’s assets and strengths, even as growth and development are ultimate goals for individuals who participate in Center work.  The CTL also envisions and aims to foster an educational community where all members serve as learners and teachers: student consultants, teaching assistants, and tutors function as teachers and guides, helping peers become better and more successful students; faculty members learn from the perspectives and insights of student partners and TAs how to better foster learning; and faculty and staff members  learn from sharing teaching experiences and perspectives, and from the literature on teaching and learning, in workshops, seminars, and learning communities.

Major Programming & Services of Berea’s Integrated CTL

Faculty Development

Faculty Development provides programming, services, and resources to foster individual instructors’ teaching-related growth and professional development at all career stages.  The faculty development arm of the CTL also works with groups (for example, cohorts such as new or midcareer faculty, departments, Division Council, etc.) on targeted areas for professional development, instructional development, curricular development, and organizational development that can enhance the learning environment for all students.

Teaching and Learning Assistants Programs

Teaching and Learning Assistant Programs provides resources for teaching assistants and tutors across campus to learn specific skills and strategies for assisting their peers. Through yearly orientation meetings, a general training series, department-specific workshops, one-on-one consultation meetings, and a certification program, TLAP bridges the gap between contemporary scholarship on peer instruction and leadership and Berea’s many peer-assisted learning opportunities. The objective of TLAP’s programming is for all students, whether TAs or those who work with TAs, to gain greater confidence as teachers and learners.

Student-Faculty Partnerships

The Student-Faculty Partnerships Program brings students and faculty together to explore teaching and learning.  Students are paired with faculty partners to engage in dialogue about the student’s observations of a target class and to engage in conversation about the professor’s pedagogical goals for the course. Students participate in a half-credit, semester-long course focused on deepening their understanding of pedagogy, student learning, and student-faculty partnerships.

Writing Resources

Writing Resources partners with students and faculty across campus to provide one-on-one peer support and training individualized for each writer. Our consultants and our director also offer a variety of in and out-of-class workshops to improve student understanding of the academic writing process.

Visit us in Hutchins Library

• Faculty Development and Student-Faculty Partnerships are located on the main level near the circulation desk (Room 206).
• Writing Resources, TLAP Programs are located on the Ground Floor (Offices 110, 111, 112 and 130).