Office of the Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning

When I returned to UCLA in August 2023 as the inaugural Vice Provost for Teaching and Learning, my highest priority was to encourage and advocate for our campus community of educators to support their commitment to teaching excellence. I saw opportunities for us to advance UCLA’s research, educational, and service mission through educational innovation and reflective and scholarly teaching. Realizing this vision requires taking bold actions to modernize teaching and learning infrastructure, elevating teaching as an engaging and learning-centered practice, and advancing inclusive and evidence-based teaching across the disciplines.

I was excited to champion these initiatives, and I knew there would be challenges. However, I can’t say I expected the last couple of years to be quite as difficult as they have been for higher education, especially for instructors. I recognize there may still be obstacles before us, but my hope is that we can acknowledge these realities while also moving forward in the ways that will allow us to build on our successes and help shape the future we want for ourselves as educators and our students as learners.

Today, I am delighted to share that the reimagined Teaching and Learning Center (TLC) is providing support for instructors across campus by offering resources and workshops, helping renovate our learning spaces to support a 21st-century education, building strong learning communities of committed instructors, and investing in innovative and inclusive teaching and learning practices through our Educational Innovation Grants program. We are doing this while also taking the time to celebrate the impressive and inspirational accomplishments of our dedicated instructors.

I am grateful for the collaborations with colleagues from across our instructional community who have helped the TLC learn about and meet the needs of instructors. Thank you for inviting me into conversations to envision and implement creative ways to advance our academic mission. At the TLC, we are committed to our continued work that centers on engaging all of our stakeholders in collective action and partnership to elevate teaching and learning here at UCLA in the coming year.