The mission of the Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT) is to promote excellence, equity, and innovation in teaching in all 19 schools and colleges at the University of Michigan.

CRLT is dedicated to the support and advancement of evidence-based learning and teaching practices and the professional development of all members of the campus teaching community. CRLT partners with faculty, graduate students, postdocs, and administrators to develop and sustain a university culture that values and rewards teaching, respects and supports individual differences among learners, and creates learning environments in which diverse students and instructors can excel.

CRLT carries out this mission through:

Support for Teaching

Serving all members of the teaching community, CRLT offers consultations on pedagogical and curricular issues, along with a range of grants programs to fund instructional innovation. CRLT also presents orientations and seminars for campuswide audiences, as well as workshops and retreats tailored to the needs of academic units.

Foundational Course Initiative

With an investment of $5 million dollars over 5 years from the President’s Academic Excellence Fund, the Foundational Course Initiative (FCI) aims to create a 21st-century model of teaching at scale. FCI focuses on large enrollment courses that introduce students to a major or discipline. CRLT’s FCI consultants establish multi-year partnerships with intergenerational course teams made up of faculty, staff, GSIs, and undergraduate students.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

CRLT advances a teaching culture that attends to diversity and fosters positive learning climates for students and instructors of all backgrounds and social identities. CRLT highlights inclusive teaching in our programs and consultations, and we offer customized workshops and resources on diversity-related topics for faculty, graduate students, and departments.

Players Theatre Program

CRLT Players sessions use theatre to seed reflection about issues that negatively impact inclusive climate and to spark dialogue about strategies for addressing them. The Players perform for faculty, graduate students, and administrators. Their repertoire focuses on both classroom and institutional climate.

Digital Education

Through consultations, workshops, and web resources, we help instructors select and integrate into their teaching the technologies that best meet their goals for student learning. We collaborate with other offices to assess the value of emerging technologies for teaching and learning and to disseminate effective practices for teaching with technology.

Assessment and Research

CRLT focuses on projects that generate evidence useful to faculty and administrators for improving courses or curricula. Services range from consultations about effective methods to large-scale projects that involve data collection, analysis, and facilitation of faculty discussions about results.