Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT)

Highlighting Innovative Faculty

My name is Adam Brewer, Ph.D., and I am the new director for the Center for Excellence in Learning and Teaching (CELT). I am an Associate Professor from the Education and Educational Psychology Department (https://www.wcsu.edu/education/). I serve as a faculty member in the Applied Behavior Analysis program.

I want to share my excitement for the upcoming year as CELT director! I am proud to report that we have a fantastic foundation of success to build on from the strong efforts of past directors and a wise advisory board. One of my first priorities will be to make “good” teaching visible to the Western Connecticut State University teaching community.

A major priority of mine is to make rewarding “good” teaching into a habit. To accomplish this mission, I would absolutely love to highlight innovative teaching and dissemination practices (e.g., Aloni & Harrington, 2018) on the CELT website (https://celtwcsu.wordpress.com/). Do not hesitate to share your own practices or praise your colleague’s teaching. Please share with me their name and an example of why what they are doing is awesome. Two or three sentences will be sufficient. My email is brewera@wcsu.edu

In terms of the bigger picture, we want to continue moving forward and nurture a growth mindset culture (e.g., Rhew, Piro, Goolkasian, & Cosentino, 2018). We should be fearless as we approach innovative teaching practices (https://wcsuprovostblog.com/2019/09/09/being-vulnerable/). The hope here is that the rewards for approaching innovation will outweigh the risks of trying something new. The keys to success will include self-reflection and careful analysis of measurable outcomes to determine what worked and what did not work. To paraphrase a popular movie from the 90s, “Show Me the Data!”

Now let us have some fun and celebrate our successes as a teaching community in a visible fashion. I look forward to receiving your examples of innovative teaching!

Forward!