Wary of Budget Knife, Teaching Centers Seek to Sharpen Their Role

• Wary of Budget Knife, Teaching Centers Seek to Sharpen Their Role

  I'd have called it, "Wary of Budget Knife, Teaching Centers More Vitally Necessary Than Ever." This Chronicle piece suggests repeatedly that teaching centers ought to be anxious, and quotes a few anxious folks. I couldn't agree more, though, with Connie Cook, who speaks to the contrary.
  
  Not everyone is so gloomy. Constance E. Cook, who directs Michigan's teaching center, says that despite the high-profile closures, she believes more centers have opened than have been shuttered during the last two years. (No hard numbers exist, but most people interviewed for this story shared Ms. Cook's instinct.) "In this era in which people care so much about student learning, faculty teaching centers are generally thriving," Ms. Cook says. But she says that some of the recent closures, especially at an institution as large as Missouri, have made her colleagues anxious. As budgets tighten, she says, teaching centers need to strengthen their ties with other university offices and make sure that administrators see that the various offices are working in harmony.

• tags: facultydevelopment, teaching, centers, economy

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