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Showing Value in Centers of Teaching and Learning with Derek Bruf
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Could a better way to support faculty actually decide which universities survive the coming years? In this episode, Sarah Holtan, PhD, talks with Derek Bruf, the Associate Director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at the University of Virginia, about how Centers for Teaching and Learning (CTLs) shape a college’s future, even when budgets are tight and change is constant.
Derek shares his candid perspective on what makes a CTL truly matter: it’s not just space and tech, but trust-based relationships, faculty skill-building, and aligning with what the university really values. If you’ve ever wondered why some CTLs thrive while others fade, or how to measure their real value, this episode will surprise you.
Want to know the one key metric that gets admin attention (and how your CTL stacks up)? Listen in as Derek pulls back the curtain on CTL impact.
Episode Highlights:
17:57 - It's important to have people in your center who can build kind of trust based working relationships so that faculty come to see the people in your center as folks they can trust, they can be a little vulnerable with to say, you know what? This part of my teaching is not going as well as I wish it were.
22:46 - It's really hard in 2025 to separate technology out of teaching and to think of those as two separate things. Right? So much of the teaching that we do is technology integrated. And so I think CTLs need to have kind of a a at least a voice and a space in that. They don't necessarily need to run the thing or have a lot of resources in this, but there needs to be kind of a an organizational structure in place where CTLs can speak into those technology issues on campus.
26:26 - If you're not able to hire a full time person into a CTL role, there are a number of campuses that will make this a part time faculty job. And so you might give a faculty member a course release or two or more so to free up time to kind of serve a CTL like function. This is a this can get things started. It's hard to have a huge impact with that model, but it is one that I see a lot.
Sarah Holtan, PhD
Derek Bruff
55 episodes
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