Center for the Enrichment of Teaching and Learning hosts: “Teaching: That delightful, messy sacrifice”

The Center for the Enrichment of Teaching and Learning recently sponsored a talk entitled “Teaching: That delightful, messy sacrifice” featuring award-winning professor and author Jeremiah Conway, Ph.D.

Conway’s talk focused on the importance and impact of teaching, a theme prevalent in his 2013 book, The Alchemy of Teaching. The Transformation of Lives. He challenged the more than 60 91ֱƵfaculty members in attendance to consider why they teach and to remember that teaching is a privilege.

The Center for the Enrichment of Teaching and Learning was founded in 2014 to provide faculty development and support across the university with the goal of enhancing student learning through optimal and varied approaches to teaching.

As someone who teaches in the natural science, but who strongly supports the liberal arts for their worth, this talk echoed how I feel about the current state of higher education and our students’ learning for the sake of personal development, not just meeting learning outcomes and skill proficiencies.

-David Guay, CAS

In the midst of the current pedagogical ethos focused on technique, it is refreshing to hear a voice prompting us to never forget those deeper questions, and through our shared "messy and delightful" vocation of teaching, to continue finding our way toward more satisfying answers.

-Rick Peterson, CAS

It is critical that we, as teachers, reflect on the meaning of teaching. We should have many talks like this as possible. 

-Brad Moser, CAS

It is simply essential for those of us who teach to devote time and thought to the question:  What is the consequence?  What are we really doing in out institution?  

-Owen Grumbling, CAS

The talk validated an experience I have had in a class that is dictated by professional accreditation requirements where I was able to make a connection. 

- Kathy Thompson, COM