Abstract
When could have been over the course of that first year’s set of “Conversations,” which have become our Center for Teaching and Learning’s (CTL’s) hallmark. Or, it could have been when we found those little-used blue chairs in our library’s basement and asked if they could be made available to our new office; and it could have been when our office space itself was moved from the library to a room on one of the main corridors of our campus’s central building. Maybe it was even when faculty and staff crowded themselves into a classroom and jotted down on the board ideas for what a regional campus’s teaching and learning center might look like. It could have been when our campus’s graphic designer started crafting the image of the white tree against the blue background that has become our logo; or it could have been when a task force met weekly to develop a set of guidelines for selecting CTL staff members; or maybe it was when a candidate for our associate executive director’s position asserted that the formation of a CTL would be at the top of her agenda. It might even have been when our faculty began winning university-wide awards for effective teaching, using their own scholarship for teaching and learning to make their case; or it might be when the university decided that faculty at their open-access campuses would carry 4/4 loads and not have their disciplinary research weighted as heavily as their main-campus counterparts in promotion and tenure decisions.
