The mission of the Center for Teaching Excellence is to foster the enhancement of teaching excellence in all its forms. We seek to provide constructive and developmental mechanisms for nurturing the excellence in teaching which already exists at IUP. These mechanisms will honor our differences and build on our strengths.
We attempt to:
- expedite the achievement of the goals and missions of IUP, its faculty, and its students as they relate to teaching
- facilitate the professional and personal development of faculty members through teaching excellence activities
- define and provide mechanisms for enhancing and recognizing excellent teaching
- stimulate thinking, discussion, and research on teaching excellence
- provide forums for the exchange of information and ideas about teaching excellence
History of the Establishment of the Center for Teaching Excellence
In fall 1988, the Teaching Excellence Subcommittee of the Faculty Professional Development Committee adopted the mission statement of the Center for Teaching Excellence. During fall 1988 and spring 1989, the subcommittee met to formulate plans for a concerted, coherent, and continuing effort to enhance teaching excellence at IUP. In developing its plans to achieve the goals listed above, the subcommittee was guided by these basic beliefs:
- Faculty are the university's key resource.
- IUP has a long history of excellence in teaching, and its faculty members are committed to maintaining that tradition.
- Teaching excellence comes from a cooperative relationship between faculty and students.
- Teaching excellence is a multidimensional concept encompassing a diversity of approaches and philosophies.
In fall 1989, the Center for Teaching Excellence was established to serve as a central location for resources and services related to the enhancement of teaching. The center cosponsored a fall conference on teaching styles and learning styles, critical thinking in science and math, and development of classroom-based research programs. The center also developed an orientation program for new IUP faculty members, formally recognized faculty members for excellence in teaching, and held programs focusing on teaching a culturally and ethnically diverse student population.
"In the end, inspired teaching keeps the flame of scholarship alive. Almost all successful academics give credit to creative teachers—those mentors who defined their work so compellingly that it became, for them, a lifetime challenge. Without the teaching function, the continuity of knowledge will be broken and the store of human knowledge dangerously diminished."
—Dr. Ernest L. Boyer, author of Scholarship Reconsidered