CENTRE FOR TEACHING
EXCELLENCE & INNOVATION
CENTRE FOR TEACHING
EXCELLENCE & INNOVATION

History

The Early Visioning 

The arrival of Dr. Julia Christensen Hughes in July 2021 as the President and Vice-Chancellor of Yorkville University brought the seeds of our Centre for Teaching Excellence and Innovation (CTEI, or “The Centre”) through her championing of faculty excellence from her own history with teaching centres and educational leadership. As new roles and directions came into existence for advancing this institutional priority of Faculty Excellence, one of our YU + TFS Distinctive Capabilities specifically ensconced the creation of The Centre to centrally coordinate and complement existing activities and initiatives with faculty development. This, in turn, led to the successful recruitment of CTEI’s founding director, Dr. Tommy Mayberry, joining in October 2023.  

The Launch 

From late 2023 through spring 2024, the Centre launched inaugural faculty development programming, which included workshops, a webinette series on generative AI and teaching, and a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) speaker series. Throughout this period, we were also recruiting a team of Senior Educational Developers, who officially joined the Centre in April 2024. With these critical roles filled, CTEI is positioned to advance our institutional priorities and mandates around Faculty Excellence and Development, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, and Digital Pedagogies and Innovation. 

 

A PowerPoint slide with the title, “Centre for Teaching Excellence & Innovation” and the subtitle, “Inform. Innovate. Celebrate.” There are five boxes of text and icons that, reading clockwise from the top-left are titled: “Scholarship & Innovation”; “Orientation to Teaching”; “Professional Development & Community Building”; “Recognition & Celebration”; and “Advocacy, Strategy & Policy.” The “Scholarship & Innovation” box has an icon of a lightbulb on it and the following text: “Assess the impact of teaching innovations at YEC. Contribute to the scholarship of teaching and learning by leading or supporting teaching-related research projects, publications, and academic conferences.” The “Orientation to Teaching” box has an icon of a compass on it and the following text: “Welcome new faculty by emphasizing the value that YEC places on exceptional teaching and student experience. Introduce them to key policies, course documents, digital systems, instructional approaches, and student services.” The “Professional Development & Community Building” box has an icon of three human-figure shapes in a heart formation on it and the following text: “Bring faculty together through webinars, programs, consultations, guest speakers, communities of practice, and conferences, to reflect on their work and explore evidence-informed teaching practices.” The “Recognition & Celebration” box has an icon of a five-point star-shaped balloon on it and the following text: “Recognize, share, and celebrate teaching excellence at YEC in formal and inform ways, including through internal and external teaching awards, an annual YEC teaching conference, and communications that spotlight exceptional faculty.” And the “Advocacy, Strategy & Policy” box has an icon of a sparkling diamond crystal on it and the following text: “Provide expert guidance to inform teaching-related strategy and policy at YEC. Contribute to provincial, national, and international organizations that advocate for teaching excellence.”
Image: Early vision for the scope of influence of the CTEI (2023) 
Matthew Dunleavy wearing a pink and purple polka-dot shirt under a grey blazer with red-framed glasses and a long reddish-brown beard smiling into the camera
Matthew Dunleavy

Senior Educational Developer, Faculty Excellence and Development

mdunleavy@yorkvilleu.ca 

Matthew Dunleavy (he/him) is an educational developer and scholarly teacher with over 9+ years’ experience. He immediately joins our CTEI from York University where he was an Educational Developer with the Teaching Commons; before entering that role, he served as the Program Director of the Online Learning and Technology Consultants (OLTC) Program at the Maple League of Universities (Acadia University; Bishop’s University; Mount Allison University; and St. Francis Xavier University). In 2022, he was awarded the D2L Innovation Award in Teaching and Learning by the Society for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education (STLHE) for this work.