Word: center
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...center, squeezed unobstrusively into two rooms on the third floor of the Science Center, was established three years ago with a $205,000 grant from the Danforth Foundation, an organization whose goal is the encouragement of education and teaching. The foundation also set up four other centers at colleges across the nation. Whitla admits that the organization was hesitant at first to locate one of its centers here because of Harvard's reputation for burying teaching low on its priority list. Despite its inauspicious start, the center now is doing just fine, thank you--sponsoring frequent seminars and luncheons...
That interest will soon be put to the test because the original grant for the center runs out after this year and no other funds have yet been found. Whitla says President Bok has been contacting other foundations to seek grants for the center, and the center "has a place" in the impending fund drive for the College. "My feeling is we will be in operation next year," Whitla says. "Everyone has said they want us to stay...
Whitla claims the secret behind the center's success in improving teaching lies in the nature of the videotape itself. "There is enormous power in the medium to get people to be self-reflective," he says. "We are not trying to make you put on a teaching style that is the Harvard teaching style, but rather the teaching style that is appropriate for you and your discipline...
Katherine Krupnick, director of the video program, says the experience of seeing oneself on videotape for the first time can be traumatic--people look older and fatter and their voices sound funny. Krupnick, who has been largely responsible for developing the center's video techniques, has learned not to let someone sit alone while watching a tape of himself. "It's like standing and looking at yourself in the mirror for an hour. It's very distracting. It is helpful to be able to turn around to someone and ask a question or try to sort out your thoughts...
...initial feelings of strangeness wear off, many people spot their own teaching flaws and come up with ideas to correct them, Krupnick says. Teachers who change their style often immediately evoke favorable reactions in their students, or receive better ratings on student questionnaires. One teacher who came to the center to brush up on his lecture style before accepting a prestigious teaching post at another university received substantial criticism from evaluators of one of his taped lectures. Nevertheless, he decided not to make any changes in his technique, and soon after he began his new job students dropped...