Why CIRTL – Making the Case for Institutional Memberships
The CIRTL Network is a growing collaboration of universities dedicated to improving teaching and learning in higher education. Our teaching development work is rooted in decades of practice and research, and reaches thousands of future faculty dedicated to becoming effective practitioners. Our impact also extends to the faculty and staff who work with local CIRTL programs and benefit from our teaching and learning communities of practice, opportunities for leadership development, grant mentoring, and more.
Best practices in pedagogy
For the past 20 years CIRTL has taught thousands of hours of courses and workshops on evidenced-based teaching development and through that practice has developed a collection of refined, cutting-edge practices and content to advance teaching and learning for all. While our work was originally rooted in STEM disciplines, today we serve future faculty across all disciplines.
We teach courses and workshops developed exclusively for CIRTL and iteratively improved through years of assessment and evaluation. This core programming includes courses on research mentor training, based on work from CIMER (see syllabus); deepening instructor understanding of equity in the classroom (see syllabus); and teaching-as-research, CIRTL’s unique approach to developing reflective practitioners (see syllabus); as well as workshops on developing teaching philosophy statements through peer collaboration (see description).
Experts have collaborated across member institutions to develop inclusive, evidence-based teaching resources that speak to common instructional challenges. Network instructors have collaboratively designed a new course on inclusive teaching, and teaching and learning staff have developed a casebook guiding instructors through how to teach about common inclusive teaching challenges and dilemmas in the classroom. Additionally, instructors across the Network bring new programming to our audience that deals with contemporary DEIJ issues in the classroom.
Evaluators within the CIRTL Network have developed evaluation and assessment resources both unique to CIRTL’s work and relevant for teaching and learning broadly.
Grounded in research
Our work is grounded in decades of research into educational development, learning communities, networked organizations, and CIRTL’s own Teaching-as-Research framework.
Researchers within the CIRTL Network have explored key questions about CIRTL’s work in a series of research briefs:
- How do we build successful teaching development programs for future faculty?
- How can we develop and sustain learning communities?
- What do teaching-as-research programs look like across CIRTL?
- How do teaching-as-research programs impact participants in those programs?
- How do institutional leaders contribute to CIRTL’s work and sustain our collaborative community?
- How does CIRTL produce local benefits at our member institutions?
Instructors who have collaboratively developed and taught CIRTL programming have turned their coursework into published research on student learning, professional development for educational developers, teaching-as-research, and equity in education (among many other topics).
- Baiduc, R., Linsenmeier, R., & Ruggeri, N. (2016). Mentored discussions of teaching: An introductory teaching development program for future STEM faculty. Innovative Higher Education, 41(3), 237–254. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-015-9348-1
- Colclough, T. M., Howitz, W. J., Mann, D., Kearns, K. & Hoffmann, D. S., (2023) “Meanings of community: Educational developers experience care, satisfying contributions, and belonging in a collaboration across institutions”, To Improve the Academy: A Journal of Educational Development 42(2): 9. doi: https://doi.org/10.3998/tia.2637
- Goldberg BB, Bruff DO, Greenler RM, Barnicle K, Green NH, Campbell LEP, et al. (2023) Preparing future STEM faculty through flexible teaching professional development. PLoS ONE 18(10): e0276349. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0276349
- Knezz, S.N., Pietri, E.S. & Gillian-Daniel, D.L. Addressing Gender Bias in STEM Graduate and Post-graduate Students Using Equity in STEM for All Genders Course. J Sci Educ Technol 31, 638–648 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10956-022-09983-y
- Prevost, L. B., Vergara, C. E., Urban-Lurain, M., & Campa, H. (2018). Evaluation of a high-engagement teaching program for STEM graduate students: Outcomes of the Future Academic Scholars in Teaching (FAST) Fellowship program. Innovative Higher Education, 43(1), 41–55. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-017-9407-x
- Hill, L.B. Advancing SoTL through Boundary-Spanning Leadership: A Study of Four CIRTL Institutions. Innov High Educ 48, 1033–1054 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10755-023-09667-4
- Hill, L. B. (2020). Understanding the impact of a multi-institutional STEM reform network through key boundary-spanning individuals. The Journal of Higher Education, 91(3), 455-482. https://doi.org/10.1080/00221546.2019.1650581
- Hill, L.B., Savoy, J.N., Bantawa, B., & Austin, A.E. (2019). Factors of success: Building and sustaining teaching professional development opportunities for STEM graduate students and postdocs. Higher Education Research and Development, 38, 1168-1182. https://doi.org/10.1080/07294360.2019.1616677
- Hill, L.B., Savoy, J.N., Austin, A.E., & Bantawa, B. (2019). The impact of multi-institutional STEM reform networks on member institutions: A case study of CIRTL. Innovative Higher Education, 44(3), 187-202. doi: 10.1007/s10755-019-9461-7
- Austin, A. E., & Mathieu, R. D. (2021). Shared Leadership in a National-Scale Network: The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) as a Case Example. In Shared Leadership in Higher Education (pp. 182-194). Routledge.
- Connolly, M. R., Lee, Y. G., & Savoy, J. N. (2018). The effects of doctoral teaching development on early-career STEM scholars’ college teaching self-efficacy. CBE—Life Sciences Education, 17(ar14), 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1187/cbe.17-02-0039
- Mathieu, R. D., Austin, A. E., Barnicle, K. A., Campa III, H., & McLinn, C. M. (2020). The center for the integration of research, teaching, and learning: a national‐scale network to prepare stem future faculty. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 2020(163), 45-53.
- McDaniels, M., Pfund, C., & Barnicle, K. (2016). Creating dynamic learning communities in synchronous online courses: One approach from the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL). Online Learning, 20(1), 110-129.
Developing future faculty throughout higher ed
CIRTL teaches participants across the continent through our online, “cross-Network” programming. Read about recent programming, our engagement, and evaluation feedback from participants in annual reports covering 4 years of cross-Network programming.
Teaching-as-Research (TAR) is CIRTL’s framework for developing reflective future faculty by applying scientific inquiry practices to guide their own scientific exploration of contemporary questions in teaching and learning. This TAR core idea guides our work, and in the past 10 years more than 250 graduate students and postdoctoral researchers across the network have pursued TAR projects to deepen their knowledge of teaching and learning in their discipline. These projects become defining aspects of participants’ CIRTL experiences; you can hear TAR participants speak to the value of this work – as educators, as scientists, and as academics on the job market – in a Spring 2021 discussion.
Research based off of CIRTL’s teaching development model has shown that participation in teaching development helps future faculty improve their teaching skills, and can help improve their chances of getting a faculty position, without extending their time to degree completion.
CIRTL guides member institutions through the development of local CIRTL programs with context-specific teaching development opportunities. When your institution joins CIRTL, you’re joining a well-planned program.
Return on investment
Annual institutional dues opens the door to benefits that start with our teaching development for future faculty and continue far beyond.
Future faculty from member institutions get priority access to courses, workshops, events, and teaching institutes on contemporary teaching and learning topics that reflect CIRTL’s pedagogy and expertise from across the Network. That expertise comes from more than 40 faculty and staff who volunteer their time each year to teach our programming, creating unique learning opportunities that break through institutional silos and expose our students to an international network of peers. “CIRTL Central”, the professional staff who manage the Network’s day-to-day operations, provide tailored support to students and instructors alike.
Staff and faculty from member institutions often partner on grant initiatives; recent initiatives include NSF’s INCLUDES Aspire, IUSE Change Leadership, IUSE Inclusive Teaching, and AGEP. When staff and faculty come into these partnerships without significant grant experience, peers across the Network provide mentorship and encourage leadership development in grant applications. Our funding impacts extend to grant opportunities within individual institutions, too. As an example, since 2014, 40 proposals for institutional grants at UT-Arlington have mentioned CIRTL membership and been awarded a total of $1,766,019.
Our Network is rooted in shared values and genuine intellectual collaboration with colleagues at teaching & learning centers and graduate schools that are situated across political, cultural, and institutional contexts. That collaborative spirit feeds formal and informal communities of practice around contemporary issues in educational development; some of these communities produce novel teaching development programming that results in published research and conference presentations. We are also a member-led Network, with faculty and staff at member institutions serving in elected leadership positions to guide our organization growth, teaching development programming, and strategic directions.
Participant testimonials
