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BRIEFS
Center for Academic Excellence
Born eight years ago to provide teaching and research support through
faculty development workshops, the Center for Academic Excellence (Centro para la Excelencia Académica) now serves
professors, students, and non-teaching personnel. It also conducts educational research that benefits the university community as a whole.
The center was conceived during the American Council of Education
/Kellogg Project on Leadership and Institutional Transformation at UPR, RP in 1996, when professors envisioned and planned
for campus changes. One of the transformational components, “Enhancing the Undergraduate Experience, Including Research,” recommended
that professors create the center. “Pedro Sandín Fremaint and I wrote the proposal to start the center. We visited three
different centers in the States and shadowed them to learn what they did and how they did it,” says the 1998-2005 Director of the Center, Professor Nadia Cordero de Figueroa.
 In 1998 the center was officially created, but it operated
only virtually from Cordero’s office in the Department of Chemistry until it moved in 1999
to its quarters in the Facundo Bueso Annex. Presently, three resident professors, a professor who is an expert in educational technology, an English professor,
and a Spanish professor prepare institutes and provide individual assistance in their areas. Professors, administrators and other members of the university
community create and teach the workshops, offered in 10 areas: teaching and learning strategies, academic technology, assessment of student learning, academic
research, academic management, development of Spanish and English competencies, academic support for students, institutional research, university community,
and professional support for professors. Workshops offered in the teaching and learning strategies area include “Active Learning in the Classroom,” “Collaborative
Work,” “Conceptual Mapping,” and “Rubrics.” Some professors conduct their own educational research, gather and assess data from
their classrooms and laboratories, publish their findings in journals, and share their research with other UPR, RP professors through workshops sponsored by the center.
“We can also help the professor with classroom strategies by providing
the means to evaluate his or her teaching. For example, we have made videotapes
of professors’ classes and have discussed them privately with the professors.
We also have a student evaluation process called GIFT—Group Interactive
Feedback on Teaching. Someone from the center goes to the class and divides students
in groups. Through a number of questions and strategies, the students express
what they think about the class. Of course, the professor is not present. Then
the evaluator meets with the professor privately to discuss the class feedback.
A consensus process is a very fair tool for the professor,” says Cordero.
Research the center has conducted is helping to create a model for the university’s student retention plan. Center personnel began by soliciting input from UPR,
RP offices and researching other universities’ successful retention plans.
They interviewed students from the Río Piedras campus who are either
on academic probation or who have dropped out. “We are finding out that
retention is not just about academics. It has to do with the way students are
treated in all campus offices,” says María del Carmen García
Padilla, director of the center.
The center is also taking into
account research done on the millennial student and what technology
these students expect the university to provide. “Retention
takes into consideration their needs. For example, the center invited counselors
from area high schools to a meeting to get their input about this issue. We
have to realize that these students are different from those of even 10 or
fifteen years ago,” says García Padilla.
Another activity the center sponsors
is the Summer Student Experience. Thirty five students from 10th
grade public and private schools come to the campus for two weeks
to experience campus life and university classes. They are chosen
from the schools that the chancellor visits in her recruitment
process and also from the schools near the campus. At the end of
the experience, the students create a final project, for example,
a drama or a program on Radio Universidad “Last
year, students created a video at the end. The center is studying the student
experience and whether it increases the chances that these students will eventually
attend UPR, RP,” says García Padilla. “If
it works with 35 students, what would happen if we expanded the
program to include more students?”
http://rrpac.upr.clu.edu:9090/~centexa |
