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This episode, hosted by Alex Usher, features a discussion with Mary C. Wright from Brown University about Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) in higher education. Wright, the author of a recent book on CTLs, shares insights from her research on the evolving aims and strategies of these centers across U.S. campuses. The conversation explores CTLs as change agents, advocating for inclusive learning environments despite structural challenges. Wright introduces the HITS framework, categorizing CTLs based on their change strategies—Hubs, Incubators, Temples, and Sieves—and discusses their role in policy implementation and leadership.
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Mary C. Wright
Mary Wright is Associate Provost for Teaching and Learning, Executive Director of the Sheridan Center for Teaching and Learning, and a Professor (Research) in the Department of Sociology, all at Brown University. She is also a former president (2017-18) of the Professional and Organizational Development (POD) Network in Higher Education, the U.S. professional association for educational development.
What is The World of Higher Education?
The World of Higher Education is dedicated to exploring developments in higher education from a global perspective. Join host, Alex Usher of Higher Education Strategy Associates, as he speaks with new guests each week from different countries discussing developments in their regions.
Produced by Tiffany MacLennan and Samantha Pufek.
Alex Usher (AU): Hi, I'm Alex Usher and this is the World of Higher Education podcast. One of the many ironies about universities are its hiring processes. Universities need good teachers, and so of course they find the best researchers to fill those jobs. It was an understanding of the problematic nature of this approach that led to the creation of various activities in universities designed to assist professors in developing their craft as teachers. This in turn led to a more sophisticated understanding of teaching as merely the complement of learning, and from there it was a short step to the creation of Centers of Teaching and Learning, often called CTLs. These offices have become pretty ubiquitous in modern universities, though the strategies, goals, tactics, and efficacy can vary a lot from one campus to another.
With me today is Mary C. Wright. She's the Associate Provost of Teaching and Learning at Brown University, and also the author of the recent book, Centers of Teaching and Learning, the New Landscape in Higher Education, from Johns Hopkins Press. Her book is the result of one of the most comprehensive set of web scrapings I've ever seen, but it's carefully done. This approach yields some real insights into the differences among CTLs in terms of their strategies, goals, and tactics, and the result is a very rare and high quality look under the hood at how one piece of the modern university operates right across the wild west that is the U.S. higher education system.
One of the most interesting threads in the discussion Mary and I had is about CTLs acting as agents of change within institutions. They often do this from a position of weakness, particularly when they're mostly staffed by untenured workers who, let's face it, tend not to have a lot of power in very status conscious universities. And yet, despite this, their advocacy for students, and in particular for creating inclusive learning environments, goes on. And many can count themselves successful in moving the needle on institutional culture to be more focused on the acts of teaching and learning. But enough from me, let's turn it over to Mary.
Alex Usher: So Mary, you've written a book on Centers of Teaching and Learning. What are the aims of these centers? What are they trying to do? What are they trying to change over the, you know, within an institution and how has their mission changed over time?
Mary Wright: Thanks for the question, Alex, and thank you for having me on this podcast. In the book, I looked at over 1,200 U.S. Centers for Teaching and Learning, and I examined what I call statements of purpose. And these are mission, visions, values, and goals that appear on center websites. And so, from that analysis I found that centers aims did change in reference to a previous study 10 years ago. At this time, the most frequent ambition is support of student learning, and this was a very significant increase from a prior study done by Connie Schroeder. And this took the shape of talking about ambitions to support student success most frequently, but also effective and equitable learning environments, focus on student learning outcomes, and then to a lesser degree aims around supporting student faculty partnerships and student lifelong learning. And so I think this changed because number one there have been increasing requirements in U.S. higher education, particularly among accreditors, to exemplify leadership in institutional initiatives around student success and assessment. A second reason is, I think we see from books like Corbin Campbell's book, Great College Teaching, that the number one thing that the U.S. public wants to see from their institutions is evidence around excellent teaching. And so I think centers are supporting that and changing their aims. And then third, I think there's a growing body of evidence that professional learning around teaching, which is a key focus of U.S. Centers for Teaching and Learning, has a positive impact on student learning outcomes and success.
I also saw some emergent aims that hadn't appeared in prior research, and that was a focus on scholarly and creative work. So, I found that quite interesting given that the name of the organizational unit is a Center for Teaching and Learning, that centers were taking a more holistic approach to faculty development, also focus on supporting research, and then diversity, equity and inclusion was another emergent aim.
The last thing I'll note is that we did see a decrease in support of institutional mission, strategic plan, and goals. And I, I speculate that's because centers see themselves as change agent, both working within and against an institution. But I do think that it's going to be, create a challenge for centers to be in that tricky middle position.
Alex Usher: So, so those are the aims. But what are the centers actually do? I mean, it seems to me there's a wide variety of potential activities that you could engage in to, to, you know, to reach those goals. How consistent are CTLs? How similar are they to one another in terms of what they actually do?
Mary Wright: Yeah, I'm glad you asked that question, Alex, because I think there is a stereotype, at least in U.S. Higher education popular literature, that all centers do is focus on one-on-one consultation and the one-off brief workshop. And what I found, again, by looking at center websites, is that there is a wide variety of tactics to support these aims. These do continue to include work with the individual instructor, the one-on-one basis, but they also increase in scale and at different levels, including work on the course, or work in the department or institution, such as assessment.
Alex Usher: Okay. So I mean, one of the things that I think is kind of interesting and I don't think we see this enough in higher education books is you've got a way of creating a topology of these institutions based partly on their missions, but also quite a bit in terms of the, you know, what are the actual tactics that they're using and you call it the HITS framework. So, hubs, incubators temples, I like that word, and sieves. How does this framework help you explain what you see in terms of the diversity of Centers of Teaching and Learning across the country?
Mary Wright: Yeah, well, the framework is actually less about tactics. In the book, I say maybe centers focus a bit too much on programs and services, and we really need to be pivoting our approach to focus on strategy. So, the HITS framework, as I call it, is actually adopted from a 2000 Annual Review of Sociology article where three sociologists, Mitchell Stevens, Elizabeth Armstrong, and Richard Arum, categorized the literature on the sociology of higher education. And I was intrigued by their metaphors, and so I used the same metaphorical approach, but to be honest, I stretched them quite a bit. The article stretched my thinking, I stretched their metaphors. And so, I find these metaphors helpful for thinking about centers, theories of change. Or if these are our aims, so to take the response to my— your previous question, if student learning and success is our aim, how will we get there? How will we achieve them? And so that's what I use as a typology to understand the strategies that centers are using.
So, a hub strategy is the most commonly applied theory of change at centers across all institutions. And so, we're called centers for very good reason. In a hub role, we serve as a convener, a connector, a coordinator. The next most frequent strategy or theory of change is a sieve strategy. Just as a sieve filters and screens out, this change strategy is aligned with evidence-based practice, assessment, scholarship of teaching and learning, and educational research. And then there's a significant drop in frequency for the next two but they are more common at baccalaureate or four-year institutions and master's degree institutions. So, the third is incubator, which is, supports growth and development around people and ideas. An example of a tactic in this strategy would be new faculty orientation or grant programs. And then the last strategy is temple. And so, the key aim for a temple strategy is to elevate the value of teaching and learning and educational development by providing spaces and opportunities for recognition and reward around these activities.
Alex Usher: So that's the, you know, those are the strategies, I guess. Is there any evidence that some of those models actually change institutes, as you say, they're trying to be change agents. So, so is there any evidence that some of those change institutions more than others? And also, how does it intersect? How do issues of structure or goals interact with questions of leadership and governance models?
Mary Wright: Yeah, well, I think there's evidence that all of those strategies can be effective. I present pros and cons for each in the books, Alex. I think in terms of the associated tactics with them, I think there's more or less evidence around that. And in the book, I say it's important for centers in these resource constrained times to also be attuned to alignment. That lining up your aim and your theory of change with your tactic is important because I pointed out some areas of misalignment as well.
I think your next part of your question was around leadership and governance. Is that right? Yeah. So, in the book I think I make three points around this. And again, they can be associated with any of the four strategies. But I do talk about the critical importance of engagement structures for us to stay deeply connected with our key constituencies, and I talk about these as formal mechanisms like advisory boards. But there can also be informal mechanisms like students as partners programs, or faculty fellows. And this is important because many centers for teaching and learning are located within administration. But many of our colleges and universities are run by shared governance. And so to make change, I think it's essential for a CTL or Center for Teaching and Learning, to position itself by staying connected to both administration and faculty, and for its programs to be responsive to the needs of academic staff and students.
I think looking at the leadership of centers is another thing I examine. And most a slight majority of centers are led by faculty. That's lesser proportion for larger centers like the one in which I work right now. I'm personally agnostic on whether that needs to be faculty. I think sociologists, you know, a weberian sociologist could say there's many different ways to achieve authority and credibility beyond a faculty title.
But I do think at some institutions, we do ourselves a disservice through a rotational model where the faculty director changes every couple of years. And I think that does centers a disservice because educational development is a field, and there's a large body of scholarship surrounding effective operations and strategy. And so, I think we need to honor that by having enduring leadership in a center.
Alex Usher: We're going to take a short break. We'll be right back.
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Alex Usher: And we're back. So, maybe you could tell me a little bit, the balance between you, you were just talking about this a second ago, the balance between faculty, non-academic staff within a CTL. You know, how, you know, what's the relationship between the way they're staffed and the way they function? So, are hubs or temples likely to be more run more by non-academic staff? I mean, is there a relationship there, or no?
Mary Wright: Yeah, and it's an interesting question, Alex. I'm not sure it's one that I examine in the book. But again, I think faculty engagement is important across all HITS strategies, all theories of change. In my chapter around Center for Teaching and Learning Evaluation, which I think is a critical activity for all centers to be engaged in, I do say that it's probably most important to keep careful track of faculty reach if one is using a hub theory of change. Again, that theory of change is around connection and convening, and so it seems to me important that if that's your theory of change, that you would be tracking that metric in your, in how you evaluate your center. You know, an example like, I present an example in the book of the Community College of Philadelphia's Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning, which talks about itself as the hub of professional learning. So, so given that, it seems an appropriate method, metric for evaluation would be around faculty reach, given that hub strategy.
Alex Usher: Interesting. So, in the book, you mentioned that there's a there's a challenge in these centers being change agents, right? I mean, universities are famously not keen to change. You know, the, you know, the joke, right? How many universities does it take to change a light bulb? Change? so for a university to be in the position, or, you know, for a CTL to be in the position of trying to change a university, that's a huge challenge. And I imagine that's one of the reasons why they've traditionally shied away from trying to influence institutional policies. So how have they become more engaged in this area or if you're a CTL that's thinking about trying to become more of a change agent, what would you suggest?
Mary Wright: Yeah, so I, I think you're right that policymaking is infrequently mentioned, at least on, on U.S. Center for Teaching and Learning websites. I found that in about 1 percent of websites. Now, it could be that this is not the kind of thing that we put on our website. You know, for example, I do committee work, and I'm not sure that always appears on my center's website. But centers, most traditionally, have, probably have located themselves in the policy implementation space. So, that they're going to use their social networks and learning communities as powerful change strategies to move forward a policy that's been created. I think this is shifting, though. I think your question points to that. In terms of policy making, it may be that centers also haven't done this because they're worried about being perceived as being too top down. And then another challenge is that many centers are most frequently administrative units, not academic units. And because their leaders don't always have tenured appointments, sometimes they might not have priority to lead or participate on key committees. And so, this does create barriers for participating in shared governance processes.
But I do think that to do their work at scale, centers are realizing that this is a really important leadership space for them to inhabit. And I make some recommendations for senior leaders to help centers do that, so that their work can be at scale. One of them is to appoint center for teaching and learning directors or staff on key committees. So that to me seems like an obvious recommendation that follows. I also want to mention, though, a key caution too, in terms of policy work for centers. In that an article that I found particularly influential was developed about ten years ago by three STEM education researchers, Maura Borrego and Charles Henderson, Andrea Beach, and they've studied four different change strategies and whether or not they worked. So, they reviewed almost 200 published articles, grouped them into four different change strategies, and basically took the author's word about whether the change strategy worked or not. A policy orientation was one of the least successful they found in their research. And that was sort of top-down requirements that were going to mandate or make people do things.
In turn, the development of a shared vision or collectively co developing new decisions, as well as developing reflective teachers or developing a community of practice, those were more successful change strategies. And so, I do think that centers have a really valuable way to be in that change space through implementing a shared vision of what that policy might look like.
Alex Usher: Interesting. So, I know your book is mostly, maybe exclusively about American centers for teaching and learning, but it's a global podcast. So, I got to ask you, I mean, have you taken a look at centers for teaching and learning outside the United States? And if so, have you seen any significant differences in their structure or their influence on institutions?
Mary Wright: So, I think there are key differences. It's an excellent question and the differences go beyond the inversion of the R. E. for the center name. One key difference is the incentivization of professional learning for academic staff. So, so in the U.S., in nearly all cases, that is voluntary. And we afford faculty a great deal of autonomy to implement those ideas as well. I think in other countries, it is much more of a required status. But then for me, I think the implication for me and other center directors is to always be thinking about levers of motivate, motivation. So, if it's not required, what is motivation for instructors to participate?
I think a second difference, and this is a point made by UK educational developer, Graham Gibbs, is that U.S. centers might be a little later to the game, in the strategy area, with more of a focus on tactics, programs, and services. This is changing but I think some of the reasons for this lag is, And the U.S. and this is an arguable point, but I don't think we really have a higher education system. At least we don't have a central coordinating body that issues reports and mandates. And so, we're much more responsive to regional accreditors or professional accreditors who vary, and those often require a significant quality enhancement initiative, like around critical thinking or active learning. But that's highly contextual and variable, and again, focuses more on tactics.
The third thing I'll note is that elsewhere, centers are more impacted, sometimes in positive ways, by central government strategy. So, in the mid 2010s, the Chinese government invested a significant funds into the development of model research universities. And that strategy also included funding for centers for teaching and learning. So, in the 2013s, I traveled with colleagues to the Ministry of Education, and we did a multi-day workshop with many educational developers there on Center for Teaching and Learning Operations. And so, I admire elsewhere the central government investment in continuous professional learning. And I think the recognition that centers. are really critical to the success of the academy.
Alex Usher: Interesting. So let me ask you one last question. I mean, teaching has undergone some pretty significant shifts since the pandemic. You know, we've seen a rise of digital teaching, hybrid teaching. You know, now people are learning to deal with AI in the classroom and, you know, what to think about that and how to use it productively.
Looking ahead, do you see any of this changing the role of Centers for Teaching and Learning? I mean, how do you see the evolution of this, these types of organizations over the next decade or so.
Mary Wright: I definitely think centers are evolving in response to those trends and others that predate COVID. The first one that I discuss in the book is there has been a centering trend in U.S. Centers for Teaching and Learning. And I call this the rise of the integrated center for teaching and learning. So, so these are centers that bring together functions that traditionally have been located elsewhere in the academy like instructional technology and online learning. I mentioned before, research and creative work, that type of holistic professional learning is also being centered in centers for teaching and learning, assessment, writing, and service learning and community engagement. So, there's a growing integrative trend in those units.
The second is that centers are having to respond to resource constraints that impact the higher education sector more broadly. We see this through consortia or networked approaches so that centers might be working together with other institutions to collaborate on things as small as an event, but also on more ongoing programming as well.
Another reaction to resource constraints that I talk about in the book is that it's really important to focus on your theory of change and alignment. We need to be mindful that we can't do it all. Because centers often have located in them many different functions, they seem to be a good point for administrators to say, “Oh, let's put it in the center,” and that creates mission creep. So that kind of focus I think is important given resource constraints.
A third change that I mentioned in response to one of your earlier questions was the rise, or is the rise, in learning focus aims. We see this not only in student learning and success, but the second most frequent aim is faculty learning, and the third most frequent aim is organizational change, or organizational learning. So really, learning is now at the center of the work. And I think there's evidence that centers are achieving this, and so, I hope the book communicates the power of a good center for teaching and learning and contributing to institutional effectiveness, the faculty experience, and equitable student outcomes. But I think it also positions centers as critical for helping colleges and universities be learning organizations. With increasing crises these days and challenges coming down the road, it seems every single week, our institutions need to develop institutional resilience. And so, centers can really help higher education institutions navigate those challenges.
Alex Usher: Mary Wright, thank you so much for being with us today.
Mary Wright: Thank you for having me, Alex.
Alex Usher: And it just remains for me to thank our excellent producers, Tiffany McLennan and Sam Pufek, and of course you, the listener for tuning in. If you have any questions or comments about this week's episode, please don't hesitate to get in touch with us at podcast@higheredstrategy.com. Don't forget to subscribe to our YouTube channel — never miss an episode of the World of Higher Education podcast. Join us next week and our guest will be Marijk van der Wende. She is the distinguished Faculty Professor of Higher Education at Utrecht University in the Faculty of Law, Economics and Governance. And she is joining us to talk about the quite brutal set of cuts being imposed by, on universities by the new government in the Netherlands. See you then.