Mission Statement

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center (TFSC) at the University of Arkansas was established in 1992 to assist the faculty with their scholarship of teaching and to act as a resource center for new teaching techniques and programs.

Representing a part of the University's commitment to excellence in teaching, the TFSC provides a central facility to assist departments, faculty, and teaching assistants in the continued improvement of learning and teaching.

Our mission embraces the following four dimensions:

Learning

The TFSC promotes our understanding of research on improving student learning. The TFSC encourages discussion of the links between student learning preferences and teaching strategies to promote learning. We promote knowledge sharing and active learning, along with faculty development to improve learning. We focus upon how to help students learn. We support the training and feedback for excellence in teaching and learning. Our programs utilize scholarship and solid methodology based upon current research.

Teaching

We work with individual teaching needs. We provide a venue for workshops, seminars, confidential consultations, and other teaching centered resources. We work with individuals and groups and help at various career levels to assist better teaching. We use our library and video resource to enhance teaching.

Community

We bring together people to share skills, and improve our classroom and outside of classroom teaching. This process changes the ways that we view ourselves in learning and teaching. This process ushers individuals into a shared sense of community. We cooperate with other units on campus that focus on teaching.

Advocacy

The TFSC promotes the importance of teaching and learning at the University of Arkansas. We promote the recognition of teaching effectiveness on campus, to the state, and to the nation. We encourage an environment to nourish teaching, learning, and the scholarship of teaching.

It functions as a resource clearinghouse for addressing instructional issues, offering support for faculty with a variety of instructional services and programs that fit into our overall mission and focus on learning, teaching, community, and advocacy.

Since the Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center is designed to facilitate and assist faculty with pedagogical issues, involvement of, and feedback from, the entire campus community is critical. This feedback is routinely solicited, and is greatly appreciated.

Structure of the TFSC

The Center functions independently of the individual colleges and is served by an Advisory Council which includes nine faculty members from across the campus.

The center has three faculty members (one-quarter time appointments each) who serve as Co-Directors with term limitations of three years. They are appointed by the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs after recommendations are submitted by the Co-Directors.

The TFSC Co-Directors are: