ACTSS Center Convening Brings 90 Participants Together to Advance College Teaching
The Advancing College Teaching for Student Success (ACTSS) National Center convened 90 members of the Better College Teaching Network (BCTN) and the Better College Teaching Coalition from October 6-8 in Washington, DC. The gathering focused on advancing the future of college teaching and student success.
The convening brought together higher education institutions and organizations, including University of Michigan, UC Irvine, The Association for Undergraduate Education at Research Universities, and The American Association of Colleges and Universities, working from different perspectives and experiences, creating an opportunity to learn from one another, identify areas for collaboration, and build a shared strategy for strengthening college teaching.
A significant portion of the convening focused on eight strategic levers for advancing better college teaching: Uplifting Definitions, Working with Disciplines, Redesigning Graduate Education, Improving Reward Structures, Scaling Faculty Development, Improving Working Conditions, Informing Students & Families, and Measures. Participants also discussed the process for moving the work forward, identifying roles, responsibilities, and next steps to collaboratively develop a comprehensive lever strategy and investment case by October 2027.
Throughout the convening, participants engaged in discussions about what it takes to support better teaching at scale, how to share best practices, and how collective action can help advance teaching and learning across higher education. It included time for participants to connect and build relationships to support continued collaboration beyond the convening.
For members of the BCTN, the convening offered an opportunity to share institutional experiences and explore how participating institutions can contribute to and learn from a broader community committed to improving teaching and student success. One example of a practice discussed was the importance of embedding a commitment to better college teaching and evidence-based instructional practices into an institution’s mission and ensuring that this commitment is consistently communicated across the institution. Participants highlighted the role of admissions, recruiting, and advising teams in articulating how effective teaching supports student learning and success, helping prospective students and their families understand this commitment from their earliest interactions with an institution.
Coalition members brought additional perspectives from organizations working across the higher education landscape.They emphasized the importance of translating a shared vision for better college teaching into actionable institutional practices. One recommendation was to identify a small number of near-term priorities across the eight levers for change while clarifying how the remaining levers connect to the broader strategy. This approach could help institutions sustain momentum, coordinate their efforts, and assess progress over time.
Participants also highlighted the potential to use accreditation and existing institutional improvement processes to reinforce teaching excellence as an ongoing institutional priority. By connecting better college teaching to processes institutions already use to evaluate performance and plan for improvement, institutions could make teaching quality a more visible and integral part of their work.
The convening represents an important step in ACTSS’s work to bring institutions and organizations together around a common commitment: making high-quality college teaching a central part of student success and institutional improvement.