Our Successes: Road Map for Transformative Undergraduate Education

We are proud of and encouraged by the tremendous success of the Road Map for Transformative Undergraduate Education over the past two years.  Some of the top achievements include:

• Defining Teaching Excellence: The Teaching Academy was charged with defining teaching excellence and creating a cultural shift such that excellent teaching is understood, supported and valued across campus. In collaboration with the Center for Instructional Excellence, the Teaching Academy conducted an intentional and deliberate research study. This process led to a framework that describes the elements of teaching excellence at Purdue, descriptors for each element, and tools for holistic evaluation. The final Framework for Teaching Excellence, launched in Fall 2021, provides a developmental model of progression for teaching excellence. This definition will be used to inform evaluation materials and professional development opportunities across campus.
  
  
• Maximizing Student Potential: The Division of Diversity and Inclusion has conducted two successful MSP conferences with the most recent focusing on infusing inclusive pedagogy throughout the curriculum.  The project team has also gathered extensive, longitudinal data on Purdue students including pre-college inputs, demographics, and outcome metrics. University, college, and department level reports on race and ethnicity have been provided to deans and department heads to help guide their work in identifying areas of excellence and improvement.
  
  
• Steps to Leaps: Steps to Leaps modules, created almost entirely by students, are now available to student leaders as well as individual students who want to learn within the Pillar areas.  The Discussion and Dialogue series has reached over 500 students, staff and faculty and has helped them frame the way they can support the Steps to Leaps initiative within their work and with their peers. Graduate student instructors are being trained with the tenets of Steps to Leaps in mind and will enter the classroom understanding how to integrate the pillars into their pedagogy. Over the next year we will see an increase in the integration of the Steps to Leaps brand into program materials and educational language.  We will also see the inaugural year of the Steps to Leaps student organization which will seek to bring together students that see the Steps to Leaps mission as an important part of the Purdue student experience.
  
  
• Innovation College: With the support of a $5 million grant from the Lilly Endowment, Purdue is creating a centralized (virtual) hub for developing and disseminating novel educational practices that can be used throughout Purdue’s colleges. Innovation College will encourage and support the creation of transdisciplinary learning programs and innovative teaching methods.