Center for the Advancement of Teaching
(CAT) 107 ITS, Box 6370, Illinois State University, Normal, IL 61790-6370
Kathleen McKinney, Coordinator (309-438-5943; cat@ilstu.edu)

Illinois State University is a public, Doctoral I institution with about 17,000 undergraduates, 2,600 graduate students, and almost 800 full time faculty.

The Center for the Advancement of Teaching is a new unit. A planning committee worked on the program in 1995-1996, funding became available for fiscal year 1997, and the Center opened in July of 1996. The Center is located, organizationally, in the Office of the Provost/Academic Affairs; we report directly to the Assistant to the Provost. Our staff includes a 75-100 percent time Coordinator (faculty member), a full-time civil service administrative assistant, one graduate student, and 3-5 one-quarter time faculty center associates. In addition, the University Teaching Committee serves as our Advisory Board. We are funded by state appropriated funds, but plan to obtain additional funds via fundraising through our Development Office and external funding sources. In addition to providing extensive programming, we support the efforts of many colleges and departments. Furthermore, Instructional Technology Services provides training for faculty and Graduate Students in the area of instructional technology. Services related to faculty development in the area of research are housed in the University Research Office or College offices.

Our mission is to "serve the entire instructional community at Illinois State, including graduate students and those with temporary teaching assignments" as we offer "support for individual instructors; and promote a community of teacher-scholars, wherein views, experiences, and research about the theory and practice of pedagogy are shared." We offer many services, programs and activities including a website (http://www.ilstu.edu/depts/CAT), several listservs, a newsletter (the CATalyst), an annual multi-day university-wide teaching workshop, a resource library, five or more semester events (panels, workshops, discussion groups) on pedagogy, a Teaching Resources Group (TRG; about 25 faculty volunteers who have expertise in certain areas of teaching and are willing to assist other faculty on campus), an individual consultation program (including classroom observation, videotaping, discussion of evaluations), and funding opportunities for faculty (research on pedagogy, special classroom projects, travel to teaching conferences/workshops, projects connecting research with teaching, planning and implementing teaching conferences at ISU). We plan to expand our services in our second year of operation!

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