Advance Excellence in Teaching

We seek to provide a world class education for all our students that is distinctively Duke – that is, an education that engages students and faculty in intellectual partnerships, focuses on important questions, and takes advantage of the university’s rich resources both inside and outside the classroom. We strongly believe that the greatest advantage of a research university is the ability to connect undergraduate education to faculty and to the processes of inquiry and discovery. We seek to build innovative gateway courses and experiences that capture students’ imaginations and recruit them into disciplines, to provide hands-on research opportunities that build relationships between students and faculty as they investigate questions about which they are mutually passionate. And we seek to help students design for themselves a coherent pathway of study that leads to a piece of “signature work,” whether that be a journal article, a service learning policy paper, or an original musical composition.

Our Goals 

  • Provide a distinctive, world-class undergraduate liberal arts education
  • Align teaching with our research mission
  • Reimagine gateway courses, particularly in the sciences
  • Target excellence in the majors
  • Expand pedagogies of engagement and active, student-centered learning
  • Enhance classrooms and instructional technologies
  • Continue to develop master’s programs