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Main Menu Session 2230

Suggestions for Establishing Centers for Engineering Education Trevor S. Harding and Cynthia J. Finelli Kettering University

Introduction

At the 2001 ASEE Annual Conference, a group of individuals gathered for a session entitled “A Roundtable Discussion of Best Practices for Developing Centers for Engineering Education, Teaching, and Learning”. The event was part of the Breakfast of Champions session, regularly sponsored by the Educational Research Methods division of ASEE. Eleven people directly involved in existing centers for engineering education were invited to serve as experts for the discussion, and 32 people not officially involved in such a center joined in the discussion. The background of attendees varied from engineering educators and administrators to instructional and professional development practitioners. The participants represented 33 different institutions.

After brief introductions, participants were divided into small working groups of five to eight to discuss one issue relevant to emerging centers for engineering education. These issues included:

1. Developing support for a teaching and learning center 2. Engaging faculty in programs developed by teaching and learning centers 3. Sustaining changes implemented by teaching and learning centers 4. Relating teaching and learning center innovations to assessment efforts 5. Providing opportunities for other institutions to benefit from existing teaching and learning centers 6. Maintaining useful contacts among current and future centers for teaching and learning

This paper examines the current state of centers for engineering education within the United States and provides some information regarding their structure and mission. Results from the roundtable discussions described above are also provided. Finally, the authors share their insights on developing the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) at Kettering University over the past year, and they relate these to the best practices developed at the session described above. The authors’ experiences in establishing CETL, as well as their reflections on the roundtable discussion, may prove valuable to others wishing to propose their own center. For further information on developing teaching and learning centers, the reader is encouraged to review material by Wadsworth [1] and Sorcinelli [2].

Current Centers

Centers for teaching and learning are widespread at colleges and universities nationwide. The website of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Kansas (www.ku.edu/~cte/resources/websites.html) lists more than 125 universities and community

Proceedings of the 2002 American Society for Engineering Education Annual Conference & Exposition Copyright © 2002, American Society for Engineering Education

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Finelli, C., & Harding, T. (2002, June), Suggestions For Establishing Centers For Engineering Education Paper presented at 2002 Annual Conference, Montreal, Canada. 10.18260/1-2--10200