The Center for Effective Teaching and Learning has been established at Coastal Carolina University to provide programs that support faculty in their work as teachers. The new Center will be led by Louis Keiner, assistant professor of physics and physical oceanography at Coastal, and will be operational beginning in the summer of 2004.

The Center will provide a variety of programs designed to help both beginning and veteran faculty members maximize their potential as effective teachers in today’s higher education classrooms. Proposed programs include workshops on such topics as course design, creating interactive lesson plans, building learning communities, classroom assessment techniques, teaching for multiple learning styles, and integrating technology in instruction. The Center will organize an orientation program for first-year faculty as well as coordinate funding for research activities relating to teaching.

Coastal’s TEAL Center (Technology in Education to Advance Learning), initiated last year to incorporate new technology in classroom instruction, will be combined with the new Center for Effective Teaching and Learning. The Centers will share an operation base located on the second floor of Coastal’s University Hall.

“By establishing the Center for Effective Teaching and Learning, we are not only highlighting the importance of effective teaching at Coastal Carolina but we are also increasing the support of faculty in these endeavors,” said Peter Barr, provost of Coastal Carolina University. “I am confident that Dr. Keiner will provide valuable leadership to the Center as an important part of the excellent academic community that we have here at the university.”

Center Director Louis Keiner, who joined the Coastal faculty in 1998, has been instrumental in introducing new technology-based teaching methods in Coastal’s Department of Physics and Chemistry and in the Department of Marine Science. Keiner earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in physics from Wake Forest University and a Ph.D. in marine studies from the University of Delaware. Prior to joining Coastal, he did postdoctoral work as a programmer for the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).