Mission & History
Mission Statement
The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) has a number of missions in the pursuit of improving instructional performance and thereby student learning:
- Provide campus-wide leadership and coordination of activities aimed at supporting excellence in teaching.
- Create a campus culture in which excellent teaching is recognized, respected and rewarded.
- Enhance student learning through effective pedagogical approaches, assessments and technologies.
- Support innovation in instructional practices and the scholarship of teaching and learning.
- Encourage and disseminate best practices in teaching that are evidence based.
- Introduce effective teaching practices to instructors with limited experience.
- Encourage self reflection, assessment and improvement by instructors.
CTL supports multiple levels of instructional faculty: graduate teaching assistants, post-doctoral associates who also teach, part-time lectures, non-tenure track faculty and tenure track faculty members.
Programs that support CTL missions include multiple graduate and post-doctoral teaching certificates, workshops on pedagogy, instructional improvement grants, task forces for addressing instructional challenges, a course on teaching for junior faculty, a formative peer observation program for new junior faculty, and reading groups on emerging educational issues.
History
The Center for Teaching and Learning at The University of Texas at Dallas was officially launched on Jan. 12, 2016 and reports to the Provost’s Office.
The CTL’s directorship is a part-time administrative position assisted by a part-time associate director. There is also a full-time administrative assistant II, who provides all clerical support for CTL. Supplementing the core personnel are two assistant directors who are responsible for organizing events related to specific topics, such as nondiscrimination and equality and international education. Funding for all salaries comes from the CTL budget.