UC Santa Cruz’s Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) held our 2023 Convocation featuring Founding Director Jody Greene. From its foundation, the TLC has drawn inspiration and wisdom from the work of the late bell hooks, educational visionary and early proponent of active and activist learning. According to hooks, our practices of teaching and learning can and should be as transformative and revolutionary as what we teach. More than three decades ago, not long after she finished her graduate work on this campus, hooks offered us a roadmap to transform educational practice to be equitable, student-centered, relationship-rich, and dynamically engaged. In this talk, Jody revisited hooks’ influence on recent efforts to reshape teaching and learning at UC Santa Cruz as it takes up the challenge of being a genuinely minority-serving institution.

In June, Founding Director Jody Greene will be stepping down to make way for new leadership for the Center in the next phase of its evolution.

This program is made possible by generous funding and support from UCSC’s Executive Vice Chancellor/Campus Provost and is co-sponsored by The Humanities Institute.

On the evening of Wednesday, April 27th, CITL is excited to celebrate its sixth annual convocation with a talk by Dr. Chanda Prescod-Weinstein.

A keynote address by Estela Bensimon with opening remarks by UCSC Chancellor Cynthia Larive and Campus Provost / Executive Vice Chancellor Lori Kletzer

In celebration of CITL’s 5th Annual Convocation, CITL and the HSI Initiatives are honored to present a talk by renowned equity pioneer Estela Bensimon. Considered a Higher Ed legend, Bensimon has published extensively about equity, organizational learning, practitioner inquiry, and institutional change, including 2019’s From Equity Talk to Equity Walk, which she coauthored.

The good news is that the word “equity” is no longer feared, as was the case two decades ago, when people felt more comfortable with diversity talk. On the other hand, the popular appropriation of “equity” risks being whitewashed and decoupled from racial justice. Professor Bensimon will speak about engaging in everyday practices guided by racial equity as corrective justice, anti-racist action, and decentering of whiteness.

Co-sponsored by UCSC’s HSI Initiatives and the Division of Student Affairs and Success.

Please see Jacqueline Wernimont’s statement regarding postponement.

This event was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, you can still watch Professor Wernimont’s talk at the 2021 Data Science Day.

The same hopes that have landed FitBits on millions of wrists, Rings on thousands of doors, and Echoes in so many homes have brought us the latest in educational technologies. These hopes include better support of ourselves, our goals, and our dreams for success, health, and safety. As universities and colleges increasingly buy into smart systems for grading, tracking attendance, monitoring student and employee wellness, and more, we also need to reckon with the costs – human, fiscal, and environmental – of these innovations in education. We’ve got the Quantified Self, the Quantified Home, even the Smart/Quantified City — what does it mean that we now have Quantified Education?

The Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning welcomed Professor Bryan Dewsbury, a leading proponent of inclusive teaching, active learning, and community-building in academia, for the 2019 Convocation, “How to Be a Kickass STEM Learner.”

Professor Dewsbury engaged with UC Santa Cruz students, faculty, and staff about effective learning strategies and the significance of inclusive learning environments, especially in STEM courses, in order to support the UC Santa Cruz community to address equity and community-building in the curriculum.

Co-sponsored by the Academic Excellence Program (ACE), Baskin School of Engineering, Division of Student Success, First-Gen Initiative, Genomics Institute Office of Diversity, Hispanic Serving Institution (HSI) Initiatives, HHMI Active Learning Initiative, Learning Support Services (LSS), Mathematics Engineering and Science Achievement (MESA), Poodry Diversity, SACNAS – UCSC Chapter, and STEM Diversity Programs.

The Center for Innovations in Teaching and Learning and The Humanities Institute welcomed Cathy N. Davidson, Distinguished Professor of English and Founding Director of the Futures Initiative at the Graduate Center, CUNY, for the 2018 Annual Convocation, “The New Education.”

In her keynote, Davidson invited participants to consider how they might transform their teaching to encourage engaged, activist learning and to prepare students for an age of constant change.

Read about Cathy Davidson’s talk: “Author calls on faculty to reimagine higher education”

Co-sponsored by the Arts Division, Physical & Biological Sciences Division, Baskin School of Engineering, Student Achievement & Equity Innovation, Literature Department, History Department, Social Sciences Division, Sociology Department, Philosophy Department, and Chicano Latino Research Center.

CITL celebrated its inaugural convocation on May 18, 2017 with a visit from UCSC alumna Susan Longerbeam (Merrill College, ’84), a specialist in classroom cultural climate. In her keynote, Longerbeam, Associate Professor of Educational Counseling Psychology at the University of Louisville, emphasized how taking into account the diverse cultural origins of students and instructors in classroom settings can improve teaching and enhance learning. Read more about the 2017 Convocation at the University Newscenter.