PSU Magazine Spring 1996

D on't be fooled by it highfalutin name, the Center for Academic Excellence. Think of it as PSU's excellent adventure. The center-which works closely with PSU's ambitious new program in undergraduate curriculum-is at the core of a major shakeup quietly rumbling through the corridors and classrooms of Portland State University. If research and scholarship have been the great strengths of the university system, fragmented learning, less-than-inspired teaching, and courses taught in isola– tion from the real world have been its pitfall . The Center for Academic Excellence attacks these problems, aiming to make the classroom more vital, alive, and real. To do this, it must overturn decades-in truth, centuries---of entrenched traditions. In the past, professors often entered the classroom for the first time with virtually no training as teachers. They learned by the ropes. But from then on, the classroom was their kingdom. How well or miserably they taught was nobody else's business. Besides, it usually didn't count for advancing their careers in the university. What mattered was published research. So how does a new kid on the block-the center opened in 1995---overcome such a tradition? How does it get longtime faculty-who might be resistant to the idea-to focus on improving their teaching? "We ask them what kind of help they would like. We offer them a service," says Devorah Lieberman, director of Teaching and Leaming Excellence, one of the three principle functions of the center. "They tell us what they need. We try to find ways to meet that need by bringing a variety of topics and resources to their attention," she says. One crucial need was addressed by seminars on how to make the best use of technology in the classroom. "The seminars weren't about how to use technology but about how to achieve goals in the classroom using new technology which you couldn't accomplish with current resources," says Lieberman. In the seminars, faculty developed individual projects and then shared what they had learned with their colleagues-itself a major departure from the tradition of teaching in isolation. Michael Toth, profes or of sociology, studied ways to make better use of the World Wide Web in the classroom. "Students need to be introduced to all the things they're going to encounter in business and government later," he says. "Being comfortable and at ease with technology like the Internet i very important. It's like typing used to be. If you were looking for a job and didn't know how to type, you went immediately to the back of the line." Cathleen Smith, professor of psychology, learned how to make multimedia presentations for PSU's new high– tech Harrison Hall. "The seminar was invaluable," she says. "It really rescued me. I was scheduled to teach in Harrison Hall and had no idea what I was going to do." 12 PSU MAGAZINE SPRING 1996 SHAKING UP THE IVORY TOWER PSU's Center for Academic Excellence is finding ways to keep teaching relevant, alive, and demanding. By Jack Yost Now Smith uses what she learned not only in the class– room but in lectures outside the University as well. In another effort to improve teaching, the center holds a class each term for graduate teaching assistants. There are some 300 graduate assistants at PSU and in the past, few of those outside the School of Education had much help in learning how to teach. W hile other colleges around the country have offices for "faculty development," PSU's center is unique in combining efforts to improve teaching with a second function-a far-reaching mandate to tie the classroom to the real world, by linking coursework with service and experience in the commu– nity. Its aim is to take the irrelevance out of the academic forever. It's called Community-University Partnerships, and the choice of the word "partnerships" is no accident. Since her arrival at the University, President Judith Ramaley has made PSU's relation to the city and the community a living creed, a touchstone for defining the mission of the University. Here PSU is carving out a new role for itself as an urban university, as distinct from traditional land-grant colleges like Oregon State University and the University of Oregon. And here the Ivory Tower really comes crashing down.