CELTS mission statement

The mission of the Center for Engaged Learning, Teaching, and Scholarship (CELTS) is to foster practices that promote transformational learning experiences at Augustana. By cultivating opportunities for collaboration, development, and reflection, CELTS seeks to help educators develop purpose-filled careers as teachers, scholars, and mentors.

CELTS does this work by promoting high-impact practices, community-engaged learning, the consumption and production of scholarship of teaching/learning, and active/engaged learning that furthers the College’s mission and strategic goals.  Our support to educators is grounded in evidence and the scholarship of teaching and learning.  CELTS seeks to help educators provide a challenging liberal arts education and prepare students to lead and serve in a diverse and changing world.

To achieve its mission, CELTS will: 

• Organize programming that facilitates collaboration and the exchange of ideas about teaching, learning, and scholarship.
• Cultivate a culture of self-reflective, evidence-informed decision making related to teaching and course design, and the creation of curricula in the service of improving student learning.
• Help create both informal and formal sources of support related to teaching and learning for educators at all career stages.
• Organize mentorship opportunities for educators to provide support at different career stages.
• Collaborate closely with the Office of Academic Affairs, Careers Opportunities Research and Exploration (CORE), Institutional Research, Tredway Library, and academic departments and programs in joint endeavors related to teaching and learning and in
• Advocate for teaching and learning focus at Augustana College.
• Assess faculty needs, obtain input from the Office of Academic Affairs, consult with the CELTS Advisory Group, and refine its mission, vision, and functions accordingly. The Center develops annual goals and publishes annual reports related to goal achievement and support of faculty and staff careers.

Outside the scope of CELTS:

CELTS is not charged with evaluating Augustana faculty or staff educators.  Collaboration is key to the success of CELTS, and evaluating educators would impair this collaborative relationship. Therefore, we avoid situations where we are asked or expected to evaluate faculty or staff. Here are some examples of requests we cannot honor:

• We do not provide faculty with letters of recommendation or job references.
• We do not provide evaluative feedback about faculty job candidates or make recommendations to faculty search committees about specific candidates. However, we are happy to support Augustana faculty search committees (e.g., attend teaching demonstrations, answer candidate questions about Augustana teaching support and resources) as our availability permits.
• We do not conduct observations of teaching expressly for evaluation.
• We do not nominate or provide supporting letters of nomination for Augustana faculty teaching awards.