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Kirk Ambrose named founding director of Center for Teaching and Learning

Senior Vice Provost for Academic Planning and Assessment Katherine Eggert today announced that the campus will establish a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) and named Kirk Ambrose founding director of the center.

Kirk Ambrose

Center for Teaching and Learning Director Kirk Ambrose

“The CTL will be a faculty-instructor-graduate student-facing entity, supporting the improvement of teaching while serving as a hub for developing and supporting a campuswide community of practice,” said Eggert. “It will serve as a conduit for implementing research-based educational best practices, taking advantage of the excellent work done across campus and elevating these practices.”

Creating the center was a recommendation of the Foundations of Excellence initiative for first-year education and is a feature of the campus’s IDEA Plan for diversity, inclusion and equity. It was a key recommendation of Project I of the Academic Futures report—“Creating a Common Student-Centered Approach to Learning.”

“From the Academic Futures white papers to our outreach sessions and the digital input we received, creating a Center for Teaching and Learning was a common desire, and viewed as a lynchpin to our campus’s taking the next important steps in evolving our approach to teaching and pedagogy,” said Jeff Cox, professor of English and humanities and convener of Academic Futures.

Ambrose, who currently serves as chair of Art and Art History at CU Boulder, will formally begin the appointment as founding director on July 1 but will spend the spring semester reaching out to important groups on campus to hear their thoughts on the CTL, beginning with an Academic Futures town hall 1–2:30 p.m. Thursday, Feb. 21, in UMC 425.  

Ambrose said he was “both honored and energized” by the appointment and is “looking forward to forging a collectively conceived and vital Center for Teaching and Learning that helps our faculty and graduate students be the great teachers they are and want to become, and that supports student learning in every way possible.”

Eggert lauded Ambrose’s experience as “one of our most respected educators and teachers on campus” and added, “He is the ideal person to help lead this transformative effort for our academic community.”