The Kirwan Center plays a critical role in bringing together leaders in academic change from across the system and across the country to collaborate, share ideas and best practices, and build capacity to guide academic transformation.
In 2014, the Kirwan Center convened the first national Leading Academic Change Summit, bringing together 60 academic innovation leaders representing public and private universities, colleges, and state systems offices. During the two-day conference, participants shared insights into how people learn and how that knowledge can be combined with emerging technologies to transform and improve the student experience. Additionally, in 2015, the Kirwan Center released a market scan of postsecondary academic innovation centers across the country.
Most recently, the Kirwan Center has been focused on supporting academic change within the University System of Maryland through the USM OnTrack initiative. The COVID-19 pandemic has dramatically shifted how courses and programs are being offered and how faculty and students are engaging in teaching and learning. Moreover, the pandemic is likely to have a far-reaching impact on student mobility and institutional operations going forward. To be prepared for the fall 2020 semester as well as the post-COVID-19 world, USM institutions must adapt both their technology infrastructure use and teaching methods to produce optimally effective learning environments—whether online, face-to-face, or some combination of both. The Kirwan Center and University of Maryland Global Campus (UMGC) are partnering to help build institutional capacity to meet these needs. USM OnTrack is working with provosts, teaching and learning center directors, instructional designers, and academic technology professionals across USM institutions to support and assess the expansion of high-quality learning into fall 2020, with an eye toward sustaining and building upon these improvements into the future.
