News Release
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April 20, 2006
Boise State University
Initiates Plans to Establish New Center for Teaching and Learning
Chemistry professor Susan Shadle named center’s first
director
Boise State University has initiated plans to establish a new Center for
Teaching and Learning to foster innovation and excellence in
learner-centered teaching across the university.
The center is currently in the process of obtaining approval from the State
Board of Education. After the center is permanently established during
fiscal 2007, it will begin to create and develop the programming and
infrastructure to provide services and fulfill its mission, according to
university officials.
Boise State chemistry professor Susan Shadle will assume duties as director
of the new center beginning in July. The center will be located on the
seventh floor of the Education Building on an interim basis and then
permanently located in the new Interactive Learning Center after the
building’s completion in May 2007.
The Center for Teaching and Learning will offer consultations, resources and
programs aimed at the promotion of best teaching practices, the development
of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and the support of course and
pedagogical development across the university, according to Provost Sona
Andrews.
The new center will report to the Provost’s Office and serve as an umbrella
organization for the university’s Academic Technologies and Service Learning
programs. “By bringing these two units into the Center for Teaching and
Learning, full-time and part-time faculty and graduate teaching assistants
will benefit from a coordinated effort to provide services and opportunities
to improve our learning environment,” Andrews said. “Service Learning and
Academic Technologies will continue to have their own identities as well as
being part of this larger effort.”
As building plans were being conceived for the Interactive Learning Center,
President Bob Kustra simultaneously asked university officials to create a
center for teachers that would provide them with the resources and support
to continually improve the learning environment for Boise State students.
“The Center for Teaching and Learning is just such a resource. It will play
an important role in Boise State’s commitment to educational quality and our
development as a metropolitan research university of distinction,” Andrews
said.
Shadle, who joined Boise State’s faculty in 1996, has received many
teaching, service and research awards, including the Foundation Teaching
Award and the College of Arts and Sciences Teaching Award. Her research has
been funded by the National Institutes of Health and several other agencies.
Shadle has served in a variety of positions within the Division of Chemical
Education of the American Chemical Society. As co-chair of the university’s
Core Curriculum Committee, she has provided leadership for the development
of an assessment program for the university’s core curriculum. Shadle
received her Ph.D. in inorganic chemistry from Stanford in 1994 and was a
postdoctoral fellow at Johns Hopkins University from 1994-96.
Shadle noted that that university-wide center will provide a structure to
support and engage teachers across campus and disciplines. She likened the
center to a fitness center, where people go for all sorts of reasons —at a
doctor’s insistence to deal with a medical problem, for the camaraderie of
working out in a group, as a daily habit to stay fit, or to take on a new
challenge such as weightlifting. In the same way, Boise State’s new center
can support teachers facing a variety of situations who are seeking to
improve their skills.
The center is for anyone wishing to improve their teaching or explore new
ideas in learning. “Frequently, it is a discussion with another instructor
that can jumpstart one’s thinking about how to modify and improve one’s
approach in a course.” Shadle said. “The center will initiate and facilitate
these types of discussions.”
The center will also provide assistance to instructors seeking to address a
particular student learning goal in their course, Shadle added. Or, when
several people in a department are coordinating to modify curriculum, the
center can provide expertise in teaching and learning as part of the
planning process. “The center seeks to foster a culture in which we as
teachers are all engaged in an ongoing learning process about teaching and
learning so we’re constantly renewed and refreshed,” she said.
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Contact: Sona Andrews, University Provost, (208) 426-1202,
sonaandrews@boisestate.edu
Media Contact: Janelle Brown, University Communications, (208)
426-1790, jbrown2@boisestate.edu
Boise State University is the largest institution of higher education in
Idaho with about 18,600 students and 2,200 faculty and staff. More than 190
undergraduate, graduate, doctoral and technical degrees are offered within
eight colleges. A metropolitan university located in the capital city, Boise
State is committed to life-enhancing research, teaching excellence and
public service.
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Last reviewed on Wednesday, January 03, 2007