If you are a member of the faculty at Montclair State University, or a staff member concerned with teaching and learning issues, you are potentially a part of the Research Academy for University Learning. We are a community of scholars who care about the learning of our students and recognize that learning is an enormously complex process. We regard the learning of our students as an appropriate subject of scholarly inquiry: what does it mean to learn; how do we best foster its development; how do we and our students best come to understand the nature and progress of their learning; and how do we evaluate our own efforts? We expect to contribute to the emerging scholarship of learning and teaching, to create powerful learning environments for our students, to address many of the most troublesome social and personal forces that often keep highly talented students from realizing their full potential, and to contribute to a learner-centered, researched-based approach to higher education that has the potential to transform colleges and universities.

Some of us come from disciplines that study human learning; most of us do not. But as college educators we are all concerned with helping other people to learn, and we realize that there is a vast and growing body of research and theoretical literature on learning and motivation that can inform our practices. We realize also that we can learn from one another, pooling the rich insights and best practices of many people to create richer insights for all of us.

The Director and Associate Director have special responsibilities to contribute vigorously and extensively to the conversation about teaching and learning, to assist with faculty research projects, to coordinate activities and services that faculty members will offer one another, to advance university learning, and to pursue the scholarship of learning and teaching in higher education, but they are not the Center. They are part of a larger community of Montclair State University faculty members who constitute the Teaching and Learning Resource Center.

The founding director, Ken Bain, is a historian, with a long interest in teaching and learning issues. He has been the founding director of three other major teaching centers: The Center for Teaching at Vanderbilt University, the Center for Teaching Excellence at New York University, and the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence at Northwestern University.

The Academy's Associate Director, Dr. James A. Zimmerman, spent many years contributing to institutional programs that support faculty from all disciplines interested in scholarship of teaching and learning studies while sustaining a more traditional nuclear chemistry research agenda. His professional development activities have included the mentoring of university and college faculty team projects designed to improve science and mathematics education with an emphasis on addressing issues that often discourage women and ethnic minorities from pursuing study in the sciences or mathematics, and presenting the National Science Foundation-sponsored Multi-Initiative Dissemination (MID) project curriculum to cohorts of science faculty from a wide range of academic institutions. Dr. Zimmerman is an Associate Professor of Chemistry, and comes to Montclair State from Missouri State University.

Julie Dalley is the Program Assistant for the Research Academy for University Learning. She has brought a strong background in education to the Research Academy, with experience as a high school history teacher, debate club mentor/coach and historical researcher of women in antiquity. She worked for five years as a marketing and program coordinator for an Internet Recruitment software company and a human capital research institute (non-profit). She has served in several volunteer positions, including as an Emergency Care Attendant for a local ambulance service in her hometown in Vermont, as well as a youth soccer coach for Vermont Technical College's youth programs. She continues her research into the historical, social and cultural power and influence of women, and between genders.