Director's Welcome

The Center for Excellence in Teaching (CET) has a present memory of the future for professional faculty development at Georgia Southern University. Welcome to the CET and our new logo, the banyan tree which, along with our Vision and Mission statements, create the CET's professional dreamscape. With the guidance of the CET Advisory Council, the commitment of CET's strong staff, and the compelling participation of the faculty, that dreamtime is now.

Our new faculty development model is a peer-based, application-assessment-dissemination model that begins with appreciation of the faculty's experience, knowledge and wisdom. The goal of this model is an open, collegial, evidence-based, enjoyable program for teaching, learning, scholarship, and the academic life. Part of the university's mission statement says that

Central to the University's mission is the faculty's dedication to excellence in teaching and the development of a fertile learning environment exemplified by a free exchange of ideas, high academic expectations, and individual responsibility for academic achievement. Georgia Southern faculty are teacher-scholars whose primary responsibility is the creation of learning experiences of the highest quality, informed by scholarly practice, research, and creative activities.

Thus, the CET program focuses directly upon that mission and can help attract and retain students because it can help attract and retain faculty.

We at the CET foresee Georgia Southern becoming a regional and national center for improving student learning through the scholarship of teaching and learning. The CET will publish a peer-reviewed, international eJournal, International Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning, and on November 1-2, 2007 will host the inaugural “The SoTL Commons: A Conference for the Scholarship of Teaching & Learning,” an annual conference at Georgia Southern.

Why do we have such working dreams? Because the CET professes that strong faculty development is

• central to student learning outcomes, leading to more effective and enjoyable teaching, and the fulfillment of the university's mission
• an attitude of trust in which risks and experiments in teaching and learning are encouraged and supported
• respect for the faculty's knowledge and experience of teaching, learning, scholarship, and wisdom about the profession
• a continuous opportunity for interdisciplinary conversations and collaborations
• a resource for the best research on teaching and how students learn

Welcome to our new web site, our program, and a dream.

Alan Altany