Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (ATL) at the University of Rhode Island

The primary focus for Faculty Development within the Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning at URI is on providing services and programs that make it simple for faculty to get better at teaching.

Academic Affairs, University of Rhode Island
Established: 2014

http://web.uri.edu/teach/

Profile submitted by Joshua Caulkins (Assistant Director, STEM)

Vision and Goals

Faculty Development at the Office for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning (ATL) at URI is charged with supporting the professional development of all educators at our institution. Our primary focus is on providing services and programs that make it simple for faculty to get better at teaching.

Center/Program Structure

Faculty Development in ATL currently has two full-time Assistant Directors, one focusing on STEM, the other on Humanities and Social Sciences. There is significant overlap between our positions and jointly run the office and our programming. As part of ATL, there are Assistant Directors for Online Learning (2 people) and Student Assessment (1 person). We also have a Director overseeing all three office in ATL, two administrative positions and two graduate student workers. No other positions currently exist in our office.

Description of Programming

While new, we are currently designing our programming. We currently have our "ATL Conversations" which are a weekly brown bag / coffee hour for faculty to discuss interesting topics related to teaching and learning. We are also looking to develop our "Large Classroom Transformation" program aimed at (you guessed it!) improving instruction in large classes. All of this work is built on evidence-based practices and the primary education literature.

Successes and Impacts

We'll let you know when we have some! Only formally started working in August 2015.

Elements Contributing to Success

Again, more on this soon.

Supplemental Materials