CIRTL Community Commons: Connecting 22 Research Universities to Prepare a National Faculty to Advance STEM Undergraduate Learning

New funding from the Sloan Foundation will help the 22 universities of the CIRTL Network to train 7000 and graduate 2200 future STEM faculty each year.

The Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) is an NSF Center for Learning and Teaching in higher education. CIRTL uses graduate education as the leverage point to develop a national STEM faculty committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences as part of successful professional careers.

This work will result in a new technology infrastructure called the CIRTL Network Commons. Future faculty will use it to connect, learn, and share pedagogical approaches with each other and with experienced scholarly teachers. The Commons will include dash boards and data-collecting mechanisms to advance research and evaluation on whether and how CIRTL participation improves STEM teaching and learning. Extensive evaluation and research on the use and impact of such a connected professional development initiative is expected to guide development of future networks.