Word: whitla
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...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 on different aspects...
...quiet. We're low-profile, but we're infiltrating in our own way to get a lot of people interested in the teaching process," Whitla says...
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...
...assistants. Some junior faculty agree to be taped, but Krupnick can only recall about five to eight senior faculty members who requested the center's services. Some departments--Economics and Romance Languages, for example--require all teaching fellows to be taped, but most of the taping participants come voluntarily. Whitla says, "Most of the people we see tend to be above average teachers already. They are highly motivated. Perhaps we ought to be working with a group that is not quite so good." Krupnick agrees, but says more people will come in when they see their peers improving and when...