D’Amour Center for Teaching Excellence

Individual faculty members can request consultations with the Director at any time throughout the year.  The consultation process may include everything from informally discussing course ideas and teaching strategies to a full review of course materials and pedagogical practices.  The Director can also provide feedback to faculty members through classroom observations.  All consultations and observations are entirely confidential, and do not play any role in the evaluation of faculty members for tenure or promotion.  The Center can also provide consultation to committees, departments, or programs who are doing work related to teaching and learning on campus, including members of the staff and administration.

The Center's office space on the second floor of the Tsotsis Family Academic Center contains shelving dedicated to the print and video resources. In addition to DVDs and books on a variety of subjects related to teaching and learning in higher education, the shelves contain multiple copies of several highly recommended resources: Ken Bain’s What the Best College Teachers Do; Susan Ambrose et al’s How Learning Works: Seven Research-Based Principles for Effective College Teaching; and Make it Stick: The Science of Successful Learning, by Roediger, McDaniel, and Brown.  Although very different in style and scope, each of these books provides a solid foundation for understanding what we know about how students learn and how our course design and classroom practice can benefit from that research.  New titles are constantly being added to the Center's library. Faculty may browse and borrow from the collection at any time, and we welcome suggestions for new titles to acquire.

Faculty can apply to the Center for funding to attend conferences or workshops on teaching and learning in their disciplines or within higher education more generally.  The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at Kennesaw State University maintains an excellent list. Faculty can also make requests for conferences they have identified on their own. Funding for Center-sponsored conference travel or professional development does not count as part of the normal faculty travel allowance.  Awards for conference travel are made on a rolling basis throughout the year; funds are very limited. 

The Center has funding to offset research-associated costs for faculty members who are pursuing projects related to the scholarship of teaching and learning.  This funding cannot be used for faculty stipends. Interested faculty should contact the Director for more information. 

If you have an interest in experimenting with new teaching techniques and strategies and would be willing to formally study their effectiveness and present your findings at conferences or in published form, the Center wants to help. We can assist you in finding grant money, in designing and conducting experiments on teaching and learning in your classes, in identifying suitable outlets for presentation and publication, and in connecting you to others who share your interests.  Contact the Director at any time if you would like to discuss how you could contribute to the fast-growing field of the scholarship of teaching and learning in higher education. You can borrow the many published works of Assumption faculty on teaching and learning on our blog pages. 

The DCTE provides financial support for Assumption faculty who wish to take courses or pursue the Certificate in College Teaching through the Higher Education Consortium of Central Massachusetts.  Please contact the Director prior to registering for courses.