Faculty and Staff Resources

Center For Teaching & Learning Excellence

Introduction

The Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at Benedictine University is guided by the work of Ernest Boyer, and fosters the scholarship of teaching. Thus, the goals of the Center include providing dialogue and professional development opportunities in areas of curricular design, development, teaching methods, and assessment for fostering reflective critiques, informed practice, scholarly investigations into teaching practices, accountability to students and public, and scholarly works.

To achieve these goals, activities of the Center include:

  • Presenting seminar and workshops on topics including:
    • Active teaching pedagogies
    • Working with students with different learning styles and challenges
    • Development of learning assessment tools
    • Researching educational outcomes
    • Grant writing (teaching/learning related)
    • Effective use of technology in the classroom
    • Exploration of new instructional tools for improving student learning
    • Diversity
    • Interdisciplinary teaching
    • Classroom management issues
  • Organizing colloquia
  • Coordinating with library staff for faculty resources
  • Providing formative peer teaching reviews.

This website serves as a resource for teaching and learning by providing information about academic assessment and outcomes, Academic Quality Improvement Program (AQIP) activities and accomplishments, use of Desire2Learn, faculty development, and the IDEA student evaluation system.

Team Leaders

Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence

  • Cheryl Heinz, Ph.D., Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence, cheinz@ben.edu
  • Patrick Polasek, Ph.D., URSA Coordinator, ppolasek@ben.edu
  • Alice Sima, M.S.N., M.B.A., RN, Faculty Liaison for Advising, asima@ben.edu
  • Thomas Wangler, Ph.D., Assistant to the Provost for University Academic Assessment Coordination, twangler@ben.edu
  • Andrew Wig, Ph.D., IDEA Campus Director, awig@ben.edu
  • Allison Wilson, Ph.D., Director of New Faculty Mentoring Program, awilson@ben.edu
  • Mengyu Zhai, M.S., Learning Technologies Expert, mzhai@ben.edu