Elon University has received a $150,000 grant from the Arthur Vining Davis Foundations to establish a program to allow high school and college faculty members to collaborate on ways to improve teaching. Details...
The Elon Teaching and Learning Partnership (ETLP) will involve 14 teachers annually, with seven coming from the public school systems in Alamance and Orange counties and seven from the faculty at Elon University.
The program will bridge the divide that often exists between high school and post-secondary teachers. Participants in the program will work together to investigate specific problems in student learning. For example, they could look for more effective methods to help students understand abstract mathematical concepts.
Co-directors of the Elon Teaching and Learning Partnership will be Peter Felten, director of Elon’s Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning, and Mark Rumley, director of Elon’s School Outreach Programs.
“This program has the potential to transform teaching and learning at Elon University and in high schools throughout our community,” Felten said.
“It is our hope that many viable solutions to common problems will emerge and that the work of these faculty members will yield some new ‘best practices’ related to effective teaching and learning,” Rumley said.
The program will include three phases. During a week-long summer institute, participants will work in teams to develop learning research projects. Then during fall and spring semesters, the projects will be implemented in classrooms, with teachers analyzing student learning. At the end of the academic year, findings of the research projects will be shared widely with educators through workshops and an online gallery.
Planning for the program will take place in 2007, with the first group of educators launching the academy in summer 2008. The program will be headquartered in the William Henry Belk Pavilion, which opens this year in Elon’s Academic Village as the home of the Center for the Advancement of Teaching and Learning. The program will eventually expand to include teachers from other school districts and universities in the region.
This is Elon’s first grant from the prestigious Arthur Vining Davis Foundations, which award grants primarily in the areas of private higher education, secondary education, graduate theological education, health care and public television. Davis was one of the nation’s most successful businessmen of the 20th century, leading the Aluminum Company of America (ALCOA) and later developing land and a number of major enterprises in Florida. He established a foundation in 1952, directing his philanthropy to causes that would strengthen our nation’s future. He died in 1962 at the age of 95.