Introducing Center for the Advancement of Teaching (formerly OID) and Announcing Reappointment of Adrienne Lavine

UCLA Office of the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost

To: Administrative Officers, Deans, Department Chairs, Directors, Faculty, Vice Chancellors, Vice Provosts, and CAT Staff

Dear Colleagues:

We are delighted to formally announce that the Office of Instructional Development (OID) will now be named the Center for the Advancement of Teaching (CAT). The new name resulted from a consultative process with the organization’s faculty director and Faculty Advisory Committee, the Academic Senate’s Executive Committee and Committee on Teaching, the Chancellor’s Office and our respective offices.

The new name was chosen for a number of reasons:

• It signals a renewed commitment to supporting teaching excellence at UCLA.
• Nationally, most similar organizations now have “teaching” in their names. The former name was hard to find internally and externally without “teaching” in it.
• It more deeply evokes CAT’s newly stated mission to “foster and champion effective teaching, grounded in sound pedagogy and enhanced by innovation, to promote successful learning for our diverse student population.”

The Center’s new name was announced at a campus-wide teaching symposium on March 6, which was organized in collaboration with the Center for Education Innovation and Learning in the Sciences. This was one example of many initiatives around pedagogy, curricular innovation, educational technology, learning spaces and assessment that have been launched by this re-vitalized organization as it strives to support teaching campus-wide and at all levels. CAT has especially focused its new efforts on faculty pedagogical development and grant opportunities, including the aforementioned teaching symposium; two collaboratively developed pedagogy workshop series called Faculty Teaching Faculty about Teaching in engineering and social sciences; a New Faculty Teaching Engagement event at the Luskin Conference Center, to which all new faculty and lecturers starting July 1, 2018 were invited; and the recently announced Provost’s Grants to alleviate barriers to timely graduation for undergraduates and address disparities in graduation rates.

In concert with this name change, Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Professor and Faculty Director Adrienne Lavine will be reappointed to a five-year term starting July 1, 2019, with the title of Associate Vice Provost. Please join us in thanking Adrienne for her leadership and recognizing her accomplishments since her initial appointment — which include mobilizing an impressive array of teaching initiatives. We are grateful for her continuing dedication to excellence in teaching that honors our commitment to those who seek an outstanding education at UCLA.

Sincerely,

Patricia Turner

Dean and Vice Provost, Undergraduate Education

Scott L. Waugh

Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost