UW-Madison won a $10 million grant from the National Science Foundation as part of a national competition. It will be allocated over a period of five years.
The grant, given to the Wisconsin Center for Education Research to form the Center for Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning, will be used to help UW-Madison faculty and graduate students better understand aspects of teaching science and math courses.
UW-Madison has established itself as one of the top research institutions in the nation but critics complain that professors and graduate students are research based and not education based.
CIRTL will assist current UW-Madison faculty and graduate students through workshops and courses focusing on the development of teaching skills. Graduate students will also be given internship experience at local colleges including Madison Area Technical College and UW-Whitewater.
\[One of our goals is] to train graduate students to prepare them for becoming faculty elsewhere in the nation,"" said Robert Mathieu, a UW-Madison professor of astronomy and a principal investigator in CIRTL.
The program will focus on teaching and learning with the diverse students on campus, such as students of color and women, according to Andy Porter, director of the Wisconsin Center for Education Research. CIRTL will also emphasize improving course materials used in the classroom setting to make them most efficient.
""Quality of instruction here at the university will profit from it,"" Porter said.
UW-Madison is acting as a ""laboratory"" for this project. The effects of these programs will be assessed and, if successful, similar programs will be instituted at other universities around the nation.
