Teaching and Learning Centers Mission

The University of California Teaching and Learning Centers provide support, resources, and advocacy for all who teach and learn at the University of California. We embrace the opportunity to renew and rethink the instructional mission of the University for a new century characterized by the need to create dynamic, equitable education for California’s diverse population in a climate characterized by fast-paced change and constant innovation. Over the past half century, there has been a revolution in higher education pedagogy and curricula, as colleges and universities have increasingly turned to research on the social, psychological, and cognitive dimensions of learning to reimagine the structure, delivery, and purpose of a university education. The UC Teaching and Learning Centers provide professional development for faculty and graduate students to turn this body of research into teaching practices and curricular programs, so that every student may thrive and have the opportunity to excel at the UC.

As our campuses have become increasingly diverse, with rising numbers of First Generation college students and a much-heralded increase in the number of students from groups minoritized in higher education, the UC Teaching and Learning Centers have vigorously taken up the challenge of redressing educational inequality. We aim to ensure the potential for academic success for every UC student by educating instructors about evidence-based teaching practices that enable students from diverse educational backgrounds to succeed. The rapid adoption of learning technologies--particularly in the wake of Covid-19 and remote instruction--is giving us a wide range of new tools at our disposal to support this evolving vision of academic success, while an array of opportunities and challenges arise in the face of the technological transformation of all of our daily lives by a nonstop flow of information, communication, and entertainment.

The UC Teaching and Learning Centers offer a wide array of professional development opportunities to current and future faculty; skillfully and ethically use data to measure student learning and track progress through academic programs; foster communities of teachers and learners committed to tackling the challenges facing institutions of higher education in the 21st century; conduct original, groundbreaking research that promotes outstanding teaching; and endow educators with skills to advance students’ learning and agency by creating equitable, inclusive, and antiracist learning environments that foster a sense of belonging and holistically support student success.