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St. Olaf gets $300,000 for scholarship of teaching, learning

By David Gonnerman '90
January 31, 2006

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Hofrenning
St. Olaf College has announced the receipt of a three-year, $300,000 grant from the Bush Foundation to support the programs of the college's Center for Innovation in the Liberal Arts. The grant will allow CILA, which was launched in 2000, to implement a range of activities that enhance classroom experiences for the college's 3,000 undergraduate students.

"CILA has worked to focus the college on the vital connections between teaching and learning. We want to create a dynamic and creative academic culture in which students can learn," says Associate Professor of Political Science Dan Hofrenning, current director of the center. "The grant will allow us to create opportunities for professors to develop their teaching and experiment with new ideas, all the time keeping student learning at the forefront of our work," he says.

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St. Olaf Associate Professor of History Dolores Peters presented her classroom innovations at a national conference on the scholarship of teaching and learning co-hosted by St. Olaf and Carleton colleges last spring.
Professor of Economics David Schodt, the author of the Bush grant who will return as director of CILA in the fall, notes that while the immediate benefit from the Bush grant is to support excellence in teaching and learning at St. Olaf, the college also is discovering that the faculty's inquiry into student learning is helping to make a compelling case for the kind of education provided by liberal arts colleges.

HIGH-TECH TEACHING
Helping faculty incorporate emerging and developing instructional technologies into their work is a prime area where CILA, in cooperation with the college's Information and Instructional Technologies Department, has enhanced learning at St. Olaf. The use of Moodle, for example -- a Web-based platform that supports such elements as electronic journals and class-specific chat rooms and Web portfolios -- is a unique academic element of the college. Moodle even encourages "just-in-time" teaching, an emerging method that uses technology to develop quick-response assignments that allow St. Olaf faculty members to get a clear sense of what their students know before each class session, making class time more productive.

Other CILA projects have included focusing on writing in science classes and using technology to increase history students' access to primary sources.

Archibald Granville Bush, chair of the executive committee of the 3M Company, and his wife, Edyth Bassler Bush, established the Bush Foundation in 1953. Today the foundation serves as an independent grantmaker with a special focus on the needs of Minnesota, North Dakota and South Dakota. Since 1953 the Foundation has provided more than $650 million in grants and fellowships to strengthen the work of nonprofit organizations and the development of individuals.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.