DCAL opens its doors in new Baker-Berry location
At a festive ceremony on Sept. 23, the Dartmouth Center for the Advancement of
Learning (DCAL) was formally dedicated in its new space in the Baker-Berry Library. A symposium
the following day, "Teaching Scholars: The Scholarship of Teaching and
Learning at Dartmouth," offered current thinking on pedagogy, comments
from faculty members across the campus and a deeper look into how the Center
will play a role in the continual rejuvenation of Dartmouth's teaching and
learning environment.
The staff of DCAL, l-r: Vicki May, Associate Director for Math and Science;
Susan Fliss, Director of Education and Outreach, Library; Thomas Luxon, Cheheyl
Professor, Director of DCAL; Sarah Horton, Instructional Technologist,
Curricular Computing; Diane Chamberlain, Administrative Assistant; David
Abbott, Senior Lecturer in Physics and Astronomy and Special Assistant for
Graduate Teaching Assistants; Karen Gocsik, Executive Director, Writing
Program. (Photo by Joseph Mehling '69)
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Symposium participants included Thomas Luxon, DCAL Director and Dartmouth's
first Cheheyl Professor; Lee Shulman, President of the Carnegie Foundation for the
Advancement of Teaching; Barry Scherr, Provost and Mandel Family
Professor of Russian; G. Christian Jernstedt, Professor of Psychological and Brain Sciences
and Adjunct Professor of Community and
Family Medicine at Dartmouth Medical
School (DMS); Steve Swayne, Associate Professor of Music; and Martha McDaniel,
Professor and Chair of Anatomy and
Surgery and of Community and Family Medicine, DMS.
Established in July 2004, DCAL provides and coordinates services in support
of effective teaching, encourages research about teaching and sponsors
fellowships for faculty members to pursue pedagogical applications of
information technology. The Center's location in Baker-Berry gives it easy
access to its major campus partners: the Library, Computing Services, and the Writing Program.
"In this new space," said Luxon, "we hope to host many programs,
showcase teaching ideas and use telecommunications and information technology
to foster at Dartmouth a community of conversation and scholarship about
teaching and learning."
Introducing Shulman, Luxon noted that his work as the first Charles E.
Ducommun Professor of Education and Professor of Psychology at Stanford and his
later collaboration with the American Association for Higher Education
"laid the conceptual foundations for a reconsideration of the nature of
teacher knowledge." Shulman has written about the importance of
"teaching as community property," and how the scholarship of teaching
fosters a healthy process of change in the higher education culture.
"Men and women who advance the frontiers of knowledge in their
disciplines," said Luxon, "are uniquely prepared to teach, not
because they possess that knowledge-once it is published, anyone can possess
that knowledge-but because they can help others learn how they do what they
do."
Jernstedt, who is also Director of the Dartmouth Center for
Educational Outcomes, described emerging research on the brain and on the
cognitive processes that occur in real classrooms. "These new insights are
raising profound questions about the best roles for teachers and
learners," he said. "I think the most exciting frontier confronting
us lies within each learner's brain." For McDaniel, the use of
technology in the teaching process has resulted in an innovative Web site on
human anatomy, which provides students and others the opportunity to watch
videos of muscles, tendons, nerves, ligaments and other body structures.
"We and Dartmouth College as a whole believe strongly in creating an
'open-source' product," she said. "We view ourselves and our work as
a resource for the worldwide community."
Swayne, who teaches courses in art music from 1700 to the present day,
opera, American musical theater, Russian music and American music, described
the role technology plays in his classes. "I ask myself," he said.
"Am I a good teacher because of the technology I deploy...or in spite of
[the technology] I deploy? I believe that empathy is the conduit for the
discoveries I hope my students and I will make together."
Making discoveries together about teaching and learning is a hallmark of the
Dartmouth experience and "DCAL's overarching goal," said Luxon,
"is to nurture a continuing conversation about teaching and learning-a
conversation that connects Dartmouth teachers with each other and with the
international conversation that connects Dartmouth around the world. Our
students expect us to teach them how to be scholars themselves; learning the
best habits of careful scholarship prepares [them] for whatever they pursue
after college."
Principal funding for DCAL comes from a gift from Gordon W. Russell '55,
establishing the Gordon W. Russell Endowment for the Advancement of Learning,
and from R. Stephen Cheheyl '67, endowing the position of the Center's
director, the Cheheyl Professor.
By LAUREL STAVIS
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