Mission & Goals

Link to PDF Version of CIRTL Overview

Mission

Goals for the CIRTL Network

CIRTL’s primary aim for the first two years was the development, implementation, and evaluation of a prototype professional development program in teaching and learning for STEM graduates-through-faculty based on the three CIRTL pillars: teaching-as-research, learning communities, learning-through-diversity. The prototype program at the University of Wisconsin (UW) is called the Delta Program in Research, Teaching, and Learning. The primary roles of CIRTL with respect to the Delta Program are (a) initial development and funding and (b) evaluation and research on the program’s impact on graduate-through-faculty participants and on UW as an institution. Each component of the Delta Program weaves together the three CIRTL pillars and is designed around research models familiar to STEM graduates-through-faculty. To learn more about the Delta Program, visit the Delta website at www.delta.wisc.edu.

CIRTL has moved into a new phase in its development where the focus is shifting to the CIRTL Network. The CIRTL Network is a learning community, supporting the mutual exchange of successful strategies and programs based on the CIRTL pillars. UW, Michigan State University (MSU), and the Pennsylvania State University (PSU) were the founding members of the CIRTL Network. The collegiality and respect inherent in this learning community approach led naturally to mutual support in program development across the Network. Howard University, the University of Colorado at Boulder, Vanderbilt University, and Texas A&M University joined the CIRTL Network in 2006. View the 2007 CIRTL Network Proposal to the National Science Foundation.

• Establish interdisciplinary learning communities at every Network university, each founded on the CIRTL core ideas and each effectively preparing graduates-through-faculty to use and improve best practices in STEM teaching and learning with attention to diverse student audiences;


• Establish a cross-network learning community by which graduates-through-faculty across the Network are better prepared for teaching as a consequence of the diversity of the universities;


• Foster transitions from the Network learning communities into faculty positions that sustain the concepts, practices, and attitudes developed while graduate students or postdocs;


• Enhance graduate education in teaching and learning at universities beyond the CIRTL Network.

The long-range goal is to produce a national cohort of STEM graduate students and postdoctoral researchers who are launching new faculty careers at diverse institutions, demonstrably succeeding in promoting STEM learning for all, and actively engaging in improving teaching and learning practice.

In 2009 the Network community further developed its CIRTL Learning Outcomes. Three types of CIRTL program outcomes were envisioned: CIRTL Fellow, CIRTL Practitioner, and CIRTL Scholar.  These three CIRTL outcomes recognize first the role of the CIRTL pillars in effective teaching and learning, then scholarly teaching that builds on the CIRTL pillars to demonstrably improve learning and make the results public, and finally scholarship that advances teaching and learning under peer review. In addition to clarifying and aligning evaluation initiatives across the Network, The level of Practitioner is the primary goal for future faculty in CIRTL Programs. Some will move on to Scholarship, and those at the Fellow level will have a foundation for further professional development thereafter. CIRTL program outcomes conceived in this way permit anyone to enter the CIRTL Network learning community from a wide variety of disciplines, needs, and past experiences, and to achieve success as a teacher at a wide variety of engagement.