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The University of Akron gained national recognition this spring for its achievements in the scholarship of teaching and learning.
UA has been selected to co-lead a three-year national research effort aimed at improving first-year college students’ learning and success and increasing quality and effectiveness of first-year programs.
In mid-March, the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) and the American Association for Higher Education (AAHE) announced that The University of Akron will co-lead one of only 12 AAHE/Carnegie Clusters in the Carnegie Academy Campus Program. According to the Carnegie Foundation and AAHE, the selection of the cluster leaders was based on competitive proposals and on the campus’ reputation for leadership in teaching, learning and scholarship.
“With this AAHE/Carnegie Cluster leader designation, The University of Akron has achieved another of its ambitious goals,” says Terry Hickey, senior vice president and provost. “Much of the credit for this tremendous accomplishment goes to Associate Provost Tom Angelo and all those involved in our Institute for Teaching and Learning and our rapidly developing Freshman Year Experience Program.”
UA is collaborating with Portland State University to co-lead this AAHE/Carnegie Cluster.
Called the “Collaboration for Learning Achievement, Success, and Sustainability in the First Year,” it includes several other universities and two higher education policy and research centers as “core members.” Among those proposed core members are Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis, the University of Missouri at Kansas City, Miami University in Ohio, Wagner College, the City University of New Jersey, the Project on the Future of Higher Education and the Policy Center on the First Year of College.
Over the next three years, the AAHE/Carnegie Cluster will identify, develop and disseminate a “toolbox” of approaches to define, assess, measure and communicate common first-year learning outcomes — approaches that can be adapted and used across different disciplines and institutional types.
“In the past two decades, we have learned a great deal about success in the first year of college — what matters and how much. We still know relatively little about how and why different experiences matter,” observes Hickey. “Results from this project will be shared with our colleagues in higher education through conferences, and Web- and print-based publications and journals.”
The American Association for Higher Education is an individual membership organization that equips members and institutions with the knowledge they need to affect the changes that higher education must make to ensure its effectiveness.
The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching was founded by Andrew Carnegie in 1905 and chartered in 1906 by an act of Congress as an independent policy and research center charged with doing and performing “things necessary to encourage, uphold and dignify the profession of the teacher and the cause of higher education.”
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