Welcome to CITL
Welcome to the website for UMaine’s new Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning.
How did a center of innovation in teaching and learning happen at UMaine?
In the fall of 2015, the Provost appointed a task force, chaired by Associate Provosts Monique LaRocque and Jeff St. John, to develop a plan to provide more comprehensive and coherent faculty development support in teaching. As a result, the idea for a Center for Innovation in Teaching and Learning began to unfold. In April of 2016, the Provost held a faculty forum to discuss and gather feedback on the creation of this new resource center to cultivate, coordinate, and support innovative approaches to teaching and learning at the University.
Under the leadership of Associate Provost LaRocque and Executive Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning (CITL), Peter Schilling, phase I of the new Center started to come together on the ground floor of Fernald Hall in October 2016. CITL brings together under one roof the former Faculty Development Center, the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Assessment, and instructional design and faculty support staff and resources from UMaineOnline. Using existing resources and redesigning staffing needs, CITL will be comprised of the executive director, an administrative coordinator, learning designers, a manager of workshops, programs and training, and a trained pool of graduate and undergraduate student assistants. We hope to launch phase II (the completion of the CITL space) by early summer 2017.
The mission of the Center is to support faculty and graduate students seeking to explore new approaches to teaching in the context of 21st century information culture. This may include new technologies, and/or may include the application of new research in learning and memory to methods of teaching. The Center will work with schools, departments, as well as individual faculty on curricula that spans multiple courses, a single course, or just a part of a course. It will work with online, face-to-face, blended, and flipped classes. Its goal is to help faculty plan, develop, deliver, as well as assess innovative instruction.
CITL is not, of course, the only group that provides teaching and learning support to faculty and graduate students. Rather, CITL partners with departments, centers, and other groups across campus. We work to help faculty and graduate students learn the many ways that the University of Maine supports their teaching.
We are eager to start our first full semester working with faculty and students–especially as our chairs arrived over the winter break! Please stop by Fernald, explore the CITL website or just let us know what you think about this effort.