Re-Centering Academic Centers

Abstract
This paper argues that we have lost the original intent and power of an institutional Center. Theoretically, Centers use centralized resources to support people and projects core to the mission of the institution. Many Centers now are located external to the campus, where isolated directors pursue specialized interests. Thus, Centers, which serve the entire community, become marginalized. This paper provides a model to re-center academic Centers toward their original intent, through collaboration between specialized and generalized centers. The authors also suggest concrete steps to help examine, evaluate and create clear structures and communication for effective use of Centers in Higher Education.

Introduction
There seems to be an increase in institutional Centers around the world, which can be favorable, although it also has the potential to dilute the power of a centralized location and operation. To address this issue, this paper describes the idea of partnering Centers around a collaborative hub to offer more powerful opportunities in the context of resource utilization. It would appear that many institutions had originally used the word “Center” in association with typical mainstream definitions of center, which include a person, or group, or thing in the middle; to focus or bring together; to have as a main point, or theme. Others may perceive Centers as the ring around a bull’s eye, i.e., a potential target. Regardless, of the specific viewpoint, most believe that the intent of developing an institutional Center would be to develop a centralized gathering place for ideas, people and events. However, in actual practice, university Centers are generally established by administrative decree with limited faculty integration and support. They operate on the periphery of institutions, with little interaction or coordination with other university priorities or stakeholders. This leads toward a marginalization of centers and a shift of undermining and undervaluing their original intent and purpose. Center directors, now working on the margins, create a self-fulfilling prophecy of isolation, by failing to find means to integrate with other institutional partners and to develop a set of faculty stakeholders to link back toward integration. In this paper we hope to present a viable argument that due to the increase in Centers, there may be a need to reorient them – physically, financially and philosophically – away from the periphery and toward a central discussion that links to broader university initiatives.
The idea of integrating Centers, so that each School or College would not need to resource individual capabilities, would seem to make financial and logistical sense, however, we are aware of the political reasons why some people and departments might wish to have more control over their resources, and what they offer to their faculty and staff. But this current approach of establishing peripheral Centers weakens the interaction, and subsequent possibilities, which Centers could impact. Many Centers are now being developed that focus on very narrow and specific interests that often fail to fully integrate faculty, staff and students, drawing significant limited resources from more broadly delineated university missions toward narrow objectives. Thus these multitudes of ‘quasi’ Centers not only drain resources to pursue limited agendas, but they often do so in a vacuum without integrating faculty and students in the process.
In addition, they create an atmosphere of uncertainty and political instability that undermines the concept of Centers and the work of those Centers which attempt to implement university wide objectives and to integrate key faculty, staff, and student stakeholders. Our argument is that this often random and non-strategic proliferation of Centers is not only unwarranted, but dangerous, and that institutions should re-consider the use of the term, reserving Centers for those that truly provide broad, generalized appeal, and linking various specialized ‘centers’ to a central hub to create a more robust, collaborative, and stable platform from which both generalized and specialized interests can emerge.
A key starting place to resolve the tension between Centers that focus on broad university priorities and the plethora of specialized Centers is the use of a Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) as the centralized hub from which other centers, institutes, projects, and programs may link. CTL might broadly include any type of activity, function, and opportunity, which encompasses teaching and learning, which appeals to multiple university stakeholders. Most CTLs around the world quickly realized the power of partnerships, outreach, involving internal and external stakeholders and connecting faculty members to a wide array of resources and opportunities. Given their broad generalized mandate, their focus on collaborative process, and their link to university wide objectives, CTLs are the natural staring point from which a strategic Center plan may emerge.

A Tale of Two Centers
This paper will draw upon our mutual experiences as Directors of the Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL) and the Center for Social and Emotional Competence (CSEC). We will discuss our Centers, our collaborative projects, and to provide a model, rationale, and process for re-aligning Centers within a centralized, collaborative framework. The Centers are located at a long-standing, small, predominantly residential, private liberal arts University in California, USA. The institution has a focus on professional school programs with satellite campuses within a two hour drive. The campus is unique in the extensive number of schools, programs, and campuses for a smaller, private institution, and a unique student demographic which is split between Caucasian, Asian, and to a lesser extent, Hispanic students, most of whom receive some type of financial aid. Finally, due to changing accreditation standards and the proliferation of professional schools, as with many institutions, the university is struggling with how best to implement more rigorous scholarship requirements without losing its core mission of teaching and learning. The following is our own personal story of collaboration between Centers, building a coalition of faculty stakeholders, and focusing resources on broad university objectives.
Faculty Center for Teaching and Learning (FCTL)
The vision for the FCTL is to actively create, maintain, offer and support foundational and innovative methods and resources to advance exemplary teaching and learning. Our mission is to support the pursuit of excellence in teaching and learning. The FCTL provides services and resources to assist faculty in becoming more effective, active teachers and scholars, subsequently enabling students to become more engaged stakeholders in the construction of their conceptual process. Our positioning statement proposes to be is a rich, collegial resource for Pacific’s faculty who would like to access quality pedagogical resources in an efficient and powerful way that provide useful and targeted instructional methods to enhance their teaching and learning. The type of services include organizing workshops and seminars, conducting classroom observations, facilitating small group student perception sessions, fostering Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research, creating formative assessments, building effective syllabus and other activities as faculty request. The Center also offers assistance in integrating emerging instructional technology into the classroom.
The major, over-arching strategic goal for the FCTL is to assist and promote the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL). SoTL is an efficient way to both assist faculty with peer- reviewed, refereed scholarship and provide empirical research on effective teaching and learning as it pertains to their discipline and classroom. Secondly, the FCTL has a major role in assisting in the development and enculturation of new faculty during the New Faculty Orientation (NFO) and throughout their first year with monthly luncheons, research and writing circles, educational technology initiatives, and social events. Finally, the FCTL provides a longitudinal, highly sustainable method of assisting faculty in their teaching and learning by offering semester long Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Certificate programs.
The prior year’s goals included to expand Blended Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Short Courses from two to three courses; elevate support to the faculty relationships built at the Law and Dental Schools last year; increase use of our FCTL Learning Lab and Faculty Commons area during the first full year of being completely finished and offering full services; engage faculty in SoTL research, submitting at least four manuscripts to peer-reviewed journals; solicit guidance from faculty on how to appropriately allocate the Learning Management System savings to increase the relevant use of instructional technology into the classroom; and offer a dynamic, three-day NFO, with extensive follow-up through monthly luncheons, research circles and social networking with new faculty. Other notable outcomes include classroom confidential observations; Faculty Artist Showcase repeated for the third year; assisted with developing new Flexible Learning space in the School of Education; co-developed the Global Education Leadership Program and traveled for five weeks through eight countries, meeting with 52 faculty and administrators of 18 different institutions; work with the College of Engineering and Computer Science assisting in their monthly “Lunch and Learns”; as well as developing a week long seminar on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education; and presented at several Scholarly Conferences.
Center for Social-Emotional Competency (CSEC)
The CSEC Vision is to become a nationally recognized, self-sustaining, leader in research and practice of whole student learning through social and emotional competence development in higher education. Our mission is to facilitate whole student learning through the development of social and emotional competence (SEC). SEC is a set of related, intentional behaviors of self- awareness, consideration of others, connection to others, and influence orientation that fosters successful outcomes in school, work, and life. SEC emerged from the theory of social intelligence and emotional intelligence and is a culmination of applied research toward educational practice. The type of services provided by the Center includes scholarship opportunities for faculty and students, curriculum support, co-curricular training, and assessment that focus on the social emotional competence development of students, faculty, and staff.
Initially, SEC emerged as a component of the strategic planning process and an answer to our call to action for whole student learning. The concern was that it is not enough to produce the best and the brightest technical experts (in arts, sciences, business, education, engineering, music, dental, law or pharmacy) but to also to develop social and emotional expertise that raises the bar for future student success. The goal is to develop the social and emotional capability of our students and provide knowledge, resources, and programs to the University. How well students develop their capacity to understand themselves, the world around them, build meaningful relationships, and foster positive changes in our world are all hallmarks of our education.
The Universities initiative in SEC started in 2005, under the advisement of Dr. Dan Goleman and Dr. Richard Boyatzis, building upon the University’s culture and commitment to whole person education and its mission to prepare graduates for “responsible leadership in their careers and communities.” Our university is the only U.S. University with a comprehensive undergraduate SEC initiative. The CSEC was officially established in 2009 with support from administration, faculty, staff, and students. The CSEC is now actively working toward developing a new model and measure of student social and emotional development as well as developing curricular and co-curricular development modules using SEC.
The CSEC has produced numerous scholarly endeavors related to SEC development in higher education, coordinated two university-wide symposiums, provided guest lectures and presentations across schools, departments, and program, developed a modular curricular and co- curricular teaching and learning curriculum, created a self assessment of SEC, and pioneered an innovative peer coaching training program.

Create Collaborative Centers
There are two main opportunities afforded to Centers that are often missed, which are to actively collaborate with other centers and to build a coalition of faculty across centers. For better or worse, being an effective Center director is about relationships. Building effective relationships drives the process of collaboration and coalition. One of the initial building blocks was when the Director of the FCTL reached out to find potential points of mutual interest with the Director of the CSEC. It was the little things, like inviting the Director to speak at a faculty seminar, introducing the Director to faculty and administrators in different schools and programs, and mutually supporting each other in various initiatives and cooperating on joint ventures. Specific interactions included being a FCTL Faculty Fellow, conducting a joint university-wide symposium, and facilitating faculty scholarly productivity, especially in the area of the SoTL.
In addition to active collaboration and coalition building, centers need to align their own objectives with the goals of the faculty and institution, that is, to mentor scholarship, develop teaching and learning, and provide opportunities for university service. It is the cross pollination between centers and the support of core faculty interest that opens opportunities for centers to move beyond the periphery and become central to the vision, mission and goals of institutions.

Symposium
Expanding institutions.active, appropriate partnerships continue to be a hallmark of the FCTL. Partnership in this context means more than a label, it includes a frequent and sustained conversation and identifying connection points between their missions. This year, the FCTL partnered with the CSEC to organize the first annual university-wide “Celebration of Teaching and Learning Symposium”. This is a faculty-driven teaching and learning symposium to showcase the exemplar instructional methods currently used by the faculty at our institution. The symposium attracted seventy two faculty members from all disciplines to attend the four-two hour day symposium and recorded each presentation for colleagues to view via iTunesU. Presenters were asked to translate their presentations into manuscripts, which were submitted to a refereed SoTL journal for consideration of a special summer edition publication. The presentations were highly varied, including and excluding educational technology. The following presentation videos can be viewed on iTunesU athttp://deimos3.apple.com/WebObjects/Core.woa/Browse/pacific.edu.1716405272.06309138453:
“Using clickers to gauge and engage student learning”
“Reflecting on personal biases before learning begins”
“A faculty mentored critical thinking and writing exercise”
“Thinking on your feet: collaboration between business and forensics”
“Whacky world of wikis: Using the Sakai wiki to support collaboration”
“Active learning using student groups”
Using students in curricular mapping”
“Experiential learning through field study requirements”
“Case studies to foster research innovation in students”
“Community partnerships, emergent technology, and experiential learning”
“Cost minimizing students: method to encourage student studying”
“The personal is historical: Oral history and undergraduate research”
The symposium demonstrated collaboration and coalition building by coordinating with other university stakeholders and building a connected network that leveraged stakeholder interests. To build the coalition the center directors used a two pronged strategy. First, to identify interested parties in a cross discipline endeavor, encourage members to suggest additional members, and to proceed with an open call for participation. Second, to align the goals of the symposium with those of the stakeholders, in this case, the symposium was a venue for a few key faculty members to showcase their teaching and learning techniques, it provided an opportunity for school and programs to show support for teaching and learning; and it developed into a scholarly opportunity for faculty to gain a conference proceeding and potential peer-reviewed journal publication. The key determinants were open access to build the coalition and tangible benefit to create a collaborative venture.

Scholarship
Many faculty members, both new and experienced, are feeling a shift of responsibilities. This is particularly pronounced in professional schools, where faculty are often not trained in scholarly endeavors. In addition, increased scholarship is expected from traditional teaching institutions often mandating a minimum scholarly output for promotion and tenure. Therefore, to maintain academic qualifications in an environment in which there may be few mentors for junior and senior faculty to partner, engaging in SoTL could offer a viable opportunity for peer-reviewed, publicly disseminated research, typically accepted by most university tenure committees. This is an opportunity for center directors to build collaborate coalitions around mutually shared research agendas with the goal of producing quality work, developing scholarly competence, and facilitating the creation of interdisciplinary research teams. In general, given the new demands of scholarship placed on institutions and the reality that faculty need to be concerned with the concept of being “tenurable” regardless of individual institutional requirements, provides a unique opportunity for directors to provide guidance to faculty that may result in shared collaborative work and building supportive coalitions.
An opportunity for cross pollinating of mentoring with junior faculty to provide multiple outlets for learning and development is enhanced. For example, a junior faculty new to publishing was mentored by both center directors, resulting in different, yet complimentary conversations and guidance, which included transparent communication. The interaction involved multiple projects (some joint and some separate) to build the new faculty members self efficacy and tangible portfolio products that demonstrated process and outcomes of scholarship as it relates to tenure and promotion.
In addition there are opportunities for facilitating interdisciplinary teams of both junior and senior faculty on shared research areas. For example, a team of junior and senior faculty in a professional school were paired with the center directors to integrate teaching and learning within discipline. As an outgrowth, members of the initial team have brought in other faculty, outside of their discipline, to continue to share, discuss, and assess various classroom techniques and write up the results.
In terms of productivity as measured by academic scholarly activity during the 2010-2011 academic year, each Center was fortunate to assist faculty to produce the following: For the CSEC there were 4 accepted peer reviewed journal articles; 3 manuscripts under review, 5 manuscripts in progress, 4 published monographs, and 8 conference presentations, posters, workshops. For the FCTL, there were 8 accepted peer reviewed journal articles; 7 manuscripts under review; 6 manuscripts in progress; and 8 conference presentations, posters, workshops. For only two Centers at a small institution with about 350 faculty members, this total of 53 scholarly products in one year is a significant indicator of success.
Finally, the FCTL sponsored a new faculty writing circle, where they provided resources (food, laptops with wireless Internet, quiet Faculty Club space, consultations, etc.), which resulted in an Assistant Professor of Biology to finish two manuscripts that are now published; work on a grant that was funded and another in progress; and complete the Results section of a paper that will be submitted in June. Another Assistant Professor of Pharmacy prepared two successful grant proposals, two poster abstracts and working on two manuscripts. A Professor of Speech Pathology wrote four peer-reviewed presentations. The reason for this high return on investment is the collaborative connection of the two Centers, the coalition building of the directors, and the leveraging of the FCTL as the central hub that linked the more specialized focus of the CSEC. If the Centers had been truly independent without cooperation, then the scholarly productivity would have been minimized.

Provide Central Services
True Centers should be considered service organizations which are open to any faculty member who volunteers to contact and partner with the Centers. As such, identifying the services needed to help meet general institutional and specific initiative goals is generally accomplished through a needs assessment; subsequently developing the requested services. However, often Centers are established not based on faculty or institutional needs, but rather on individual initiative champions who have an idea that may or may not resonate with the broader academic audience or meet a particular institutional goal. Our argument is that although needs assessment is difficult, as these tasks are challenging and time-consuming, they are critical to achieving buy-in to the Center and to keep the Center away from the periphery. In the case of our Centers each was developed out of an apparent need and each had initial broad support.

Center Centers
Simply naming a program a Center, most likely will not accomplish the goal of creating an environment where people and resources flow towards achieving the overall objective and value of actually creating a Center. Centers work within a complex, academic environment with multiple stakeholders who are all competing for scarce resources. Therefore the input of the Center is necessarily clouded by the competition of other school, university, discipline and administrative centers. The work of each Center is then influenced by the existing administrative, faculty, department, and staff support of their program. Finally, the output, ideally of enhanced teaching and learning, scholarship, services, and cost are all impacted by the relationship of Centers to each other and the various university stakeholders. Therefore, having a common collaborative focus, with a true university wide Center (such as a CTL) as the hub for various institutional and program priorities may provide the optimal framework for achieving significant, sustainable, value-added benefits.
In our case, since the institution is focused on teaching and learning, it makes sense for the FCTL to be that focal point of a Center model. For other institutions the funnel point may be different. For example for a doctoral granting institution then a Center for Research and Development (CRD) may make sense, for an institution with a service mission, then a Center for Community Engagement may be the focus point. The key is to identify the core values of the institution, the major broad-based university wide mission, and then align a central collaborative partner for all Centers that exemplifies that mission.

Centers Implement Institutional Mission
We believe that Centers are uniquely positioned to implement institutional missions. The following is a brief list of potential benefits of centering Centers in institutions:
Enhanced Teaching and Learning is an exposed value with most leveraging this concept as a core identity for their institution. As a broad institutional mandate that touches all areas of a university, it is appropriate to consider a CTL as a hub Center for other, specialized Centers.
Peer-Reviewed Scholarship has historically been the academic coin of the realm, and continues to becoming increasingly important, however, many universities are ill equipped to make the transition. This provides both an opportunity for CTL to assist, as well as the possibility for doctoral granting institutions to consider their CRD as a potential central hub.
Centralized Resources in a time of limited resource and greater pressure to demonstrate added value, the need to better align resources away from overly narrow specialties with limited impact toward more global goals that manifest university wide missions is more important than ever. These economies of scale provide better, more efficient allocation of resources.
Sponsored Grants provide additional opportunities for interaction with colleagues, which can result in more grant submissions, external service and connecting/centralizing experts. By integrating services, universities are better positioned to utilize resources efficiently to maximize effectiveness.
At the same time, we realize that some people may argue against centering Centers, using the following rationale for resistance:
Loss of Control may be seen by some schools and departments, who would prefer to maintain control of their faculty in their thoughts, philosophy, and beliefs. When they can limit external sources beyond their discipline, it is easier to manage, control and move the department in one particular direction.
Silos of faculty may have established a habit of remaining in the building, which their department is housed, seldom venturing out and mingling with their colleagues from other disciplines, except for infrequent commitments on university committees.
Public scrutiny of faculty who may not want other people to perceive them as needing additional assistance. Some administrators, who are naive of Centers may interpret the mission of a Center is ‘fix’ people, when they are not receiving satisfactory student perception ratings.
External Expertise (“the grass is always greener on the other side” syndrome) can be centralized, although occasionally, departments use their limited funds to bring in speakers and consultants to assist faculty in their teaching, assessment and promotion. A reluctance may be seen on the departments to use Centers, either because they simply do not know these services are available, or they do not trust the quality.
Ten Steps to Center Centers
We certainly do not have the magic bullet answer; however, over the years, and institutions, which we have been fortunate to assist, here are ten steps, which we believe are important toward developing integrated Centers.
Prior to establishing a Center, there needs to be a clear and compelling area of focus that would require the specialized resources of a Center in order to tackle. In particular, broad areas of concern, such as Teaching and Learning or Assessment and Research are particularly important areas of focus that may be better served through an integrative, collaborative Center. Other areas of more specialized focus could then filter through the core, collaborative Center.
Hire an experienced ‘building’ Director using a full faculty search committee, which include cynics. Ideally, there needs to be a mix of new and veteran faculty, all of which are open to change, and progress. The Director needs to have strengths in building on several fronts, including relationships, physically building space, services, opportunities, and scholarship. Most of all, they need the full support and confidence of the administration, with a small amount of flexible funds.
Develop and deploy in both hard-copy and electronic a substantial Needs Assessment survey to all faculty. Strong encouragement for faculty to complete the survey is encourage, otherwise, the voice received will be limited and subsequently the new Director will begin to initiate programs based on data, which is not generalizable.
Act and act efficiently on the results of the Needs Assessment. Make this action public and transparent, with responses on which items will be acted upon, and when. If there are items which cannot be addressed, indicate upfront, with rationale as to why. If the assessment has broad input, the Director should be able to gather support from those who responded to assist in accomplishing the responses.
Build both extrinsic and intrinsic rewards to encourage stakeholder support. Although offering stipends may be necessary (and a potential early step), even better would be to identify appropriate extrinsic and intrinsic motivators such as preparing a SoTL manuscript, mentoring newly hired faculty members; supplementing travel accounts; sending faculty to teaching and learning, or educational technology conferences that they would not normally spend their departmental funds on; technology-teaching tools; Faculty Fellows Programs; opportunities to meet and work with colleagues across the campus, as well as leaders in the community, who could possibly fund their research; offering social or cultural opportunities, such as attending museums, theatres, or local professional sports games, culinary classes, wine tasting, and travel abroad opportunities. They key is to identifying a menu of driving rewards that are valued by different stakeholders.
Once a critical mass of credible, respected faculty across disciplines are engaged in the Center, other stakeholders will begin to become interested. By this point, a well developed and diverse set of opportunities should be developed which can be offered to this second wave of participants. They can be partnered with the early adopters. Ultimately, the Director should be prepare for the final wave of participants, the late adopters, who will begin to notice and most likely will not wish to engage because no one likes to be late to the party. An entirely different strategy needs to be used for these folks to help introduce them to the programs, yet not make them feel as an outsider, or someone who did not understand the value of the Center earlier. Developing individual new programs, for these people is key and then providing a stage for them to invite others to ‘their’ programs, may be a creative way to make them feel like leaders.
Developing a ‘process’ to further the Centers mission, as opposed to being reliant on a particular ‘person’ is key step toward sustainability. In addition, as the programs begin to show early success, the administration needs to be ready to increase the support, in voice and in resources. Some staff will need to be hired to allow the Director the ability to roam, and be in the community, while the director is committing resources/time of the Center. This ‘selling’ is important, although delivering on the promises is essential. A focus on people skills, rather than technical skills is essential. Much of the technology and support can be taught, however, the prime attribute is the ability conscientiousness, professionalism, and service-orientation.
Results are key for a Center to flourish. This can be accomplished by demonstrating a value added benefit by having clear, compulsive results that match university and stakeholder needs. These can include scholarly publications, teaching and learning effectiveness, aligned assessments, grants, expanding constituents, or other tangible, measurable outcomes.
The Director needs to document, track, and empirically show the effectiveness of the programs frequently – more than annually. There needs to be reports, newsletters, updated websites, emails, perhaps even a weekly twitter, blog or podcasts maintaining the energy of success. This could be accomplished by a staff member or Faculty Fellow with expertise in psychometrics.
Reaffirmation and renewal needs to be honestly and accurately assessed. Institutions change, their missions change, their administration, faculty, staff and students all shift.
Therefore it is incumbent on Centers to be ahead of the curve, anticipate shifting landscapes and reaffirm and renew their place within the institution. Toward that end, it the cycle begins a new, with a review of the purpose, value, and need of the Center and reframing of the action, stakeholders, staff, and support as needed.

Conclusion
The hope for this paper is to challenge various stakeholders to reconsider fundamental organizational flow, and perhaps modify a traditional, archaic design into one, which offers more connectivity, interaction and attends to the strategic mission of their university. Obviously none of the prior steps are easy. They all take a great deal of energy, relationship building, support, time, and a bit of luck to succeed. However, the benefits of following the steps and focusing on building collaborative coalitions, founded on a central hub that integrates specialized and generalized Centers is key for organizational survival in a time of uncertainty and accountability.