T/LC Aquisitions

History of the Teaching Learning Center

In the spring of 1995, Dr. Carol Scott, dean of the Cattaraugus County Campus of JCC, saw a need for faculty to engage in a wider, on-going conversation about their instructional philosophies and strategies. She drew together a faculty task force which, over the course of several months, visited other community colleges and with their assistance established the first Teaching/Learning Center at Jamestown Community College.

Among the principles the T/LC was founded on are the following:

That community college instruction is an honorable, challenging and often frustrating endeavor, which requires a multiple-discipline community of scholars if it is to be done well.
That the best instructors are teacher-researchers, continually testing their assumptions about the way students learn in a discipline against both informal and formal research into their own instructional methods.
That excellent instructors in one discipline have valuable insights and strategies to be shared among all disciplines.
That classroom research raises the standard of teaching excellence, and should be both encouraged and rewarded by the college.

In May of 1995 the Teaching/Learning Center committee submitted a proposal which resulted in

A dedicated space on campus for materials pertaining to the exploration and improvement of college instruction.
A fund to offer $500 Teaching/Learning Exchange grants for faculty who would design and pursue classroom research projects over the course of one semester and share their findings with faculty at large.
A series of forums and presentations to offer both training opportunities and forums for focused conversation on instructional approaches, issues and strategies.

In _________________ the Jamestown Campus instituted its own Teaching/Learning Center, initially to address the complex task of updating faculty instructional computing skills. As it matured, the Jamestown Campus T/LC expanded its interests to include classroom research, faculty idea exchanges and brown bag discussions among faculty.

By 2003 the centers on the two campuses had begun to merge and had begun to sponsor the biannual Faculty Development Day activities. In 2004 they jointly accepted this as their mission: The Teaching/Learning Center will support faculty in their efforts to improve student learning, to enhance teaching, and to develop professionally.

Today, there isn't a full-time JCC faculty member who hasn't been engaged in reflecting on the effectiveness of his or her instructional approaches due to the influence of the Teaching/Learning Centers of Jamestown Community College.