Centers, Institutes and Programs
The Oxford Center for Teaching and Scholarship is an important resource for the Oxford College faculty, providing a focus on faculty development.
Oxford College has been associated and actively engaged with the Carnegie Foundation's Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) since 1999. In 2003 Oxford College was selected by CASTL as one of 12 national leadership sites. This designation was made on the basis of our work in and promotion of Cognitive-Affective Learning (CAL) as a necessary requisite to advancing the scholarship of teaching and learning. Together with cluster institutions Agnes Scott College, Kennesaw State University, Wright University School of Medicine, and the Community College of Philadelphia we articulated specific affective dimensions of learning, created a comprehensive bibliography on the cognitive-affective relationship in teaching and learning, published an electronic, peer-reviewed international journal, Journal of Cognitive- Affective Learning (JCAL), integrated undergraduate students in all stages of our work, assessed both student and faculty perspectives of CAL pedagogies via quantitative and qualitative methods, and initiated a national conversation focused on CAL.
In 2006 Oxford College was once again selected by CASTL as a national leader in the area of cognitive affective learning. We assume this leadership position for the period of 2006-2009 and are joined by Creighton University, Kennesaw State University, St. Martin's University, University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, University of Portland, and University of the Pacific. Each of our institutions is committed to scholarship and research focused on linking affective and cognitive development. The focus on CAL by our individual institutions will both maintain our national conversation and expand the scholarship of teaching and learning on our respective campuses.
The Institute for Pedagogy in the Liberal Arts (IPLA) is a professional development conference that aims to inspire creativity and foster effective teaching in the liberal arts.
The Oxford Mathematics Center, located in Pierce Hall, offers tutoring for all math classes. Paul Oser, lecturer and director of the Mathematics Center, is available for one-on-one help Mondays through Thursdays from 3:00-6:00 p.m. Student tutors are also available at these and other times (see website cited below for a detailed schedule). All tutoring is done on a drop-in basis, so no appointments are necessary. Students are encouraged to use the center as a place to do their math homework, asking questions of the director and student tutors as needed.
The Oxford Research Scholars Program offers selected students the opportunity to work directly with faculty members on disciplinary research projects or projects related to the scholarship of teaching and learning.
A liberal arts education prepares students for participation in public life, participation that includes being informed and thinking critically, but also communicating and leading. This connection has a long history—the ancient Roman rhetoricians Cicero and Quintilian recognized the importance of a liberal education for developing a flexible, “copious” style that would allow citizens to respond effectively to diverse rhetorical situations throughout their lives.
Oxford College takes this relationship seriously, providing students with both a liberal arts education and attention to students’ development as communicators, including written communication. Oxford’s writing program is designed around the principle that all writers have more to learn—our growth as writers takes time and never truly ends. It is also designed around the recognition that it takes a village to grow a writer.
While writing is integrated throughout the curriculum, Oxford College’s writing program centers on three main components: first-year writing, continuing writing, and the Oxford Writing Center.
In their first year, students take Critical Reading and Writing (ENG 185/186), Oxford’s gateway writing course that provides students with both practice in college reading and writing and a conceptual framework that will help them maximize their growth as writers at Oxford and beyond.
This practice and conceptual framework is then taken up in continuing writing courses that are offered across the Oxford curriculum. Oxford students are required to take one continuing writing course here at Oxford, with a total of three during their undergraduate course of study at Oxford and Emory combined.
Together, these courses expose students to the multiple ways writing is used for inquiry and communication across disciplinary communities and to practice adapting their writing for new audiences and purposes with a range of faculty mentors.
The third component of the writing program, the Oxford Writing Center, is there to extend students’ growth as writers by providing support for their course-related writing, as well as professional, public, and personal writing. We believe all writing situations are opportunities to grow as flexible, thoughtful writers.