Center For Teaching Excellence

Professor Rob Peters teaches outside

The Center for Teaching Excellence carves out a space both physically (Academic Building 107) and in our vision for the future of Aquinas College where faculty can reflect on and develop their pedagogy to best serve our students. With an emphasis on constructivist and engaged learning styles–especially as we look toward the block model– the Center will support faculty in researching and restructuring curricula.

The expected outcomes for the Center for Teaching Excellence include:

improvement in student performance and satisfaction, especially among Pell-eligible and first-gen students,
creation of a more inclusive learning environment,
a bolstered commitment to attracting, preparing, and retaining talent in the West Michigan Community by providing graduates with exceptional experiences applicable to their future careers.

Workshops

The Center will provide professional development opportunities throughout the academic year, utilizing internal and external presenters. Stipends will be available for faculty interested in leading workshops. In addition, small cash incentives will be provided to faculty who attend.

Please contact Mae Rickey if you have a workshop idea.

Grant Opportunities

Faculty can also apply for grants to support course redesign, experiential learning opportunities for their students, supplies and travel for professional development opportunities such as conferences and block institution visits.

General Grant Information:

You may apply for all grants but you may only receive one grant per category per academic year.
Faculty should try to make requests at least 30 days in advance. Requests that are made 30 days in advance will have full consideration.
All grants can be combined with other grants such as NetVUE
The deadline for all spending must occur before December 19, 2025

Curricular Stipend

Maximum award: $500 per instructor.

Deadline: May 23, 2025

Examples of Course Re-design:

Use the stipend grant to develop materials and methods for laboratory education of non-science majors, particularly teaching science (physics and chemistry) content to elementary education majors
Explore, set up, and revise syllabus for visits at four different holy sites of worship and community for my Spring 2024 Block students in the humanities.
Analyze how you can continue, and improve on, the current experiential learning students in my Assessment of Student Learning and Inclusion & Co-Teaching courses if they were taught in the Block Model.
Incorporate experiential learning in both courses by building the courses on a series of projects that give the students first-hand experiences putting the mathematical concepts into direct practice.

Travel Project

Maximum award: $1200 per instructor.

Deadline: May 23, 2025

Details: The Travel Project grant may be applied for professors and staff to attend conferences, experiential learning, or further professional development. This grant may be applied toward travel expenses (planes, trains, etc.), hotel accommodations, and conference fees.

Examples of Travel Project Spending from recent faculty applications:

I paid for part of my funding to travel to present at the National Council of Teachers of English. I will be presenting about research started and continued at Aquinas College.
My travel funding supported my attendance at the NCTE conference in Boston. I was accepted to present multiple sessions which include a panel presentation around AI, a co-lead presentation about e-poetry connected to a book project, and a round table presentation related to humanizing digital technology
As the SOE continues to support the block model at AQ, I hope to get a sense of how this model might work within the requirements of our certification program.

Supplies, Software, and other Expenses

Maximum award: $500 per instructor

Deadline: May 23, 2025

Examples of Supplies, Software, and other Expenses from recent faculty applications:

With the supplies grant I was able to use the software in all 3 of my courses this semester. Students were able to have more meaningful assessments of their learning while enjoying learning how to use the software for their own future K-12 teaching experiences.
My CTE supplies grant was used to purchase two types of assessments. The Boehm-3 Examination Kit is a test of Basic Concepts for children in grades K-2. The TOWL-4 is a norm-referenced, comprehensive diagnostic test of written expression.
This funding supported guest speakers in IRST210 Irish Culture and Identity.
We used the funds to purchase the Advanced Version of Kahoot. I generated "pop quiz" competitions based on the content in our FlatWorld textbook. What fun to see the students get so energized about management skills and techniques.