The inaugural meeting of PEARL took place on November 25th, 2014. At the invite of Dr. Chitra Rangan, Teaching Leadership Chair for the Faculty of Science, faculty members, support staff, educational developers and other interested participants joined together to kick-start the PEARL initiative.
Dr. Marlys Koschinsky, Dean of Science, attended the event and congratulated this initiative during her opening address. The creation of PEARL community of practice will lead the development of curricular initiatives across the Faculty of Science, focusing on innovative models of Experiential and Active learning.
Keynote speaker at this event was Dr. Alan Wright. Dr. Wright’s career has spa
nned the educational spectrum. He began as an elementary school teacher and subsequently worked in curriculum development and teachers’ professional development at the board and provincial level for 15 years before making the transition to supporting and leading change in higher education. A past winner of the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education’s (STLHE) Christopher Knapper Lifetime Achievement Award, Dr. Wright has a strong record in teaching, research and publication. As past chair of the STLHE Publications Committee, he was the chief editor and one of the founders of the widely used STLHE Green Guide series, producing nine monographs on post-secondary teaching and learning between 2001 and 2009. From 2001 to 2006, he was a co-investigator on a project studying the evolution of the teaching profession in Canada, supported by a $2.5 million Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council grant. Under his leadership, the University of Windsor team successfully competed for and completed five 2013-14 Ministry of Training, Colleges and Universities’ Productivity and Innovation Fund grants on teaching cultures, teaching evaluation, inter-institutional course development, large-class learning technologies, and educational leadership totalling $1.3 million. Dr. Wright is a graduate of Mount Allison University, New Brunswick (BA, English and French Literature); McGill University, Montreal (Education and MA degrees); and Université de Montréal (PhD in Foundations in Education).
For a summary of Dr. Wright’s talk, click here.