The Center for Teaching and Learning

What is CTL?

The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) fosters open exchange about teaching and learning among faculty and staff at Hampshire College, providing a forum for faculty to share classroom teaching ideas and discuss challenges.

It is a place to innovate, to imagine ways to unite academics and student life, and to engage faculty and staff in new ways, enriching the intellectual life of the college.

The founding faculty who established the college in 1970 were encouraged to experiment with different approaches to teaching and learning. The center continues to support that tradition of innovation today as original faculty members retire and new ones join us.

Our Mission

The CTL’s mission is to encourage and support faculty development in all aspects of their professional lives. The CTL promotes excellent and innovative pedagogy that helps students develop as independent, creative learners; helps faculty and staff develop and reflect on their own distinctive practice; and stimulates and supports honest exchange about teaching and learning within the context of our distinctive pedagogy. The CTL supports faculty in developing their scholarship and artistic production through programming on grant-writing, balancing teaching and scholarship, and by creating peer writing groups.

Objectives

• Provide forums for discussion of exciting student-active pedagogies and student learning
• Along with the Center for Academic Support and Advising, develop and run programs for new faculty
• Enhance collegial exchange of information and ideas about teaching and learning, research and artistic production across faculty, staff, and students
• Promote cross-school discussions about teaching, learning, and scholarship
• Provide support (information, personal, and financial) to improve classroom teaching
• Promote reflective teaching practice
• Support the scholarship of teaching and learning
• Support grant-writing