The McGraw center: Moving to Frist and seeing the light

Before moving into the Frist Campus Center this year, the University's Harold W. McGraw, Jr. Center for Teaching and Learning — which was previously hidden in a Firestone Library room — went largely unnoticed by undergraduates. Patricia Armstrong, program coordinator for the center, recently talked to 'Prince' staff writer George Spencer about the center and the benefits of moving into Frist.

'Prince': Most basically, what is the goal of the McGraw Center for Teaching and Learning here at Princeton?

Armstrong: The simplest way of saying it is that we are here to enhance both teaching and learning here on the Princeton campus. And, in order to do that, we work with faculty members and graduate students primarily about issues of teaching and with undergraduates around issues of learning.

We can go to their classrooms and observe them and then talk with the instructor about certain issues that the instructor has identified. We can arrange for a video tape to be made of someone's class and then talk with that person about what he or she sees on the tape.

We can go in and do what is called a small group instructional diagnostic, in which the instructor would leave the class and we would spend about ten minutes with the undergraduate students, polling them about what's working in the classroom, what's not working and what might be improved. For faculty and graduates students, we also offer a series of workshops. We also do the same thing for undergraduates.

P: How is the typical Princeton undergraduate affected on a daily basis by the efforts of this center?

A: Well, I would say that in the most direct way possible, if we have had the opportunity to work with [an] instructor, and that instructor is able to make improvements or to teach in a way that is more effective, then that has a direct impact on the life of a student. I think the other thing that we do that is, perhaps, more indirect, we really raise awareness; that our presence here and the fact that we are out working with the community helps to raise awareness of teaching, and that there are many pedagogical techniques that professors — because they are very expert in their field and may not have time to go out and look for [them] — we can introduce that [information] to them and maybe they will try that in their classroom and students will see the direct impact.

P: How has your new location on the third floor of the Frist Campus Center affected the program?

A: First of all, we have a lot more space. And we also went from being in the sub-sub-basement of Firestone, level C, to the third floor of Frist, so its just more luminous, for example.

And, I think, metaphorically, we have sort of come out of the bowels up into the light. And, I think one very noticeable impact is that, because we have the reading room right outside our offices — which is very well used by undergraduates and even graduate students — a lot of them know what we are doing because we put it on the windows and they see. So we know that we have had people come to programs that we present right next door because they have been able to see us inside and have looked at our fliers on the window.

P: Can you explain what the center's electronic classroom is and what it is used for?

A: Sure. For the moment I would say that it is not used to its potential. We certainly have had people do Power Point presentations in there. We have shown videos in there. We certainly show transparencies. But basically, it is a room with two screens, a very high power, high-resolution projector, and a media wall where there are any of a number of sources that can be used to project. One of those sources could actually be computers. There are 24 drops in the room that, once they are activated, a professor or presenter could either do a class or a workshop and everyone could be using a laptop at the same time. So, that's what I mean about it currently not being used to its potential, but that capability is there.

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P: What have been some of the highlights of the center's past seminars, or significant ones which are upcoming?

A: We tend to call them workshops because they are more one-time presentations, whereas a seminar may have more parts to it. But, in terms of undergraduates, ones that have been particularly popular have been time management, and then specific skills having to do with being a student.

One that was very popular last semester was a workshop presented by David Thurn on writing, and we are actually presenting another workshop by him [yesterday] afternoon. And actually, in response to request by both students and a director of studies, tomorrow night I am going to be doing a workshop on oral presentation skills. What is interesting about that is that faculty were recently sent an electronic poll about oral presentation skills and so the college seems to be very interested in that.

We have also heard from several departments that they would like to develop some sort of program on presentation skills for their graduate students. So, I think that is a good example of there's something in the wind.

People have asked us about it, and we have developed programming to meet that need. The other thing I can say, too, is that once a program has been successful, particularly at the undergraduate level, we tend to repeat it. We certainly take into account people's feedback; we always have evaluations, and we always read them very carefully. From doing that, we have been able to provide other programming that we might not have.

For example, right after spring break we are also going to be having Kitsi Watterson and Richard Trenor of the Woodrow Wilson School do a workshop on writing a research paper, because the assumption is that for people who have end-of-the-term papers — and I'm not talking about the JP or the senior thesis — that maybe it's right after Spring Break that they will think, 'I haven't done any work; I have really got to get this going. We are hoping that it will be really well timed, and that students will be able to take advantage of their vast experience at helping students write research papers.