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Harriet's Legacy

Martha Sharp Joukowsky, Chair
Advisory Board
The Center for the Advancement of College Teaching
Faculty Bulletin, 1993

The Center for the Advancement of College Teaching is Harriet W. Sheridan's legacy - and challenge - to Brown University. As Dean of the College, Professor of English and Director of the CACT, she was committed to the improvement of teaching and learning at this University. Before her death in September, Prof. Sheridan asked a group of interested fellow faculty members to form an Advisory Board to the CACT which would shape its future. It is the task of this group to review the goals and activities of the Center, to ensure that CACT serves the best interests of the University community, and to establish realistic long-term plans.

The Center evolved from a one-day series of Saturday workshops for Graduate Teaching Assistants on strategies for teaching. Many of the faculty joined Prof. Sheridan in exploring what constituted effective teaching, whether in labs, discussion sections or tutorials. Naturally, lunch was included, and those graduate TAS who attended those first efforts discovered a collegial forum of faculty and fellow graduate students from across the University for talking about their ideas, hopes and anxieties about teaching.

From that early beginning, the CACT activities rapidly expanded. First four, and later three, Graduate Fellows were appointed to assist Prof. Sheridan organize and promote a menu of plenaries and workshops held in the Graduate Center. These were designed to broaden the horizons of graduate TAs on such subjects such as Developing a Teaching Style, Balancing Teaching and Research, and Building a New Curriculum and to help prepare them for their careers in the teaching profession. Graduate students who attended a specified number of these CACT events were awarded a Teaching Certificate at the end which recognized their commitment to concern for pedagogy.

With the award of a grant from the Assoc. of American Colleges and FIPSE in 1989 to examine the issue of teaching in a college as opposed to in a research university, the CACT was able to offer an extensive and more comprehensive program. The plenaries and workshops were organized in an interdisciplinary Core Seminar. Concurrently, discipline-based pedagogy seminars were held by the graduate students and faculty of English, History, Religious Studies, Classics, and American Civilization. The CACT assisted these seminars through its Graduate Fellows, and participants were expected to attend the CACT Core Seminar and complete a Teaching Certificate. The three year program constituted a sound growing experience for the CACT and its Fellows. In addition to exploring pedagogical issues, participants enjoyed the chance to meet regularly with other graduate students from all across the university to explore mutual concerns and dreams. The overall assessment at the end indicated that those who had participated felt it had a positive impact on their commitment to an academic career, both as scholars and as teachers.

The CACT has continued to expand its activities along the lines envisioned by Prof. Sheridan during this past six months. The Core Seminar has been reshaped into the Sheridan Seminar, and offers a broader range of topics, including Teaching to Diversity (learning, racial, ethnic, economic). The concept of the departmental seminar has continued in several departments, albeit in forms best adapted to departmental needs. One graduate student from each department, whether a TA or not, has been invited to form a Graduate Student Liaison Council to advise the CACT Fellows and Assistant Director about what they, and their departmental colleagues, perceive their needs as teachers to be and how the CACT can serve them most effectively.

In order to plan properly for the long-term, the Advisory Board decided it was essential to canvass the faculty for their views on the CACT and what it can do to assist the performance of teaching within the departments. During February and early March, many of you will have met with a team of the Center's Assistant Director, Rebecca More, a Graduate Fellow, and often an Advisory Board member as well. They have been grateful for the gracious reception they have received at all the departments, and for the opportunity to learn about what is needed in them. Needless to say, the differences and the similarities of needs are profound and striking. It will be the task of the Advisory Board to study these needs with care, to formulate a plan which will address them fully, and to implement that plan as expeditiously as possible.

Among the possible suggestions which the Advisory Board will consider are more extensive support for teaching workshops/orientations within departments, an expansion of the present staff of Fellows from three (representing the Humanities, the Social Sciences, and the Natural Sciences) to five or six (Humanities, Social Sciences, Life Sciences, Physical Sciences, International students, and possibly one from the Medical School), and orientations for new faculty among other ideas. The Advisory Board welcomes any suggestions the faculty might have, and encourages their active participation in the direction of the CACT.

There is no question but that the challenge of Harriet Sheridan's legacy has given us the opportunity to review and evaluate the substance of our commitment to teaching and learning at Brown. The future of the Center, and the value placed on teaching and learning, depends primarily upon leadership of the faculty to realize that commitment.