Advance the mission of Northwestern University.
We invite University Teaching Award winners to embrace their roles as Distinguished Fellows, amplifying exemplary teaching practices through public engagements and enriching the Center’s work and the University’s culture of learning and teaching with their unique perspectives and inspiring approaches.
We grapple with GAI by fostering dialogue, developing AI literacy resources, and showcasing innovative approaches that leverage GAI to optimize learning, enhance students’ critical thinking and workplace readiness, and save instructors’ time in creating customized materials, while preserving the human interaction essential to learning and teaching.
We design meaningful transitions for faculty new to Northwestern, followed by ongoing outreach to build community among the cohort and lay the foundation for career-spanning engagement with the Searle Center—events include New Faculty Welcome with the Office of the Provost and the Reflecting on Your First Year Teaching at Northwestern Luncheon with Distinguished Fellows.
We collaborate with the new STEM Education Advisory Board to guide departmental-/program-based curricular change projects with a focus on gateway, large-enrollment, lab, and high attrition courses, empowering change agents to design for student success and transform STEM education at scale so all students can thrive.
We launch events and curate resources that fortify teaching-line faculty’s shared purpose as educators and sense of belonging at Northwestern, heighten the visibility of their pedagogical expertise, and foster an open dialogue attuned to evolving needs around feeling seen and supported.
We catalyze ongoing pedagogical development by building institutional infrastructure, convening the Advisory Board to review assessment data and select the annual topic, and leading the multi-disciplinary Content Design Team to create and deliver the flexible online series addressing “wicked problems” in higher education that has now reached over 1,000 instructors.