FLTC director to step down from position

After 12 years as director of the Pew Faculty Teaching and Learning Center, Catherine Frerichs will step down from that position in August.

Christine Rener will take over as FTLC director in August, when Frerichs begins a phased retirement. Rener is director of faculty development and associate professor of chemistry at Carthage College in Kenosha, Wisconsin.

Frerichs was the first full-time FTLC director. The center had two part-time directors when it first opened in the late 1990s. Under Frerichs it has matured, she said, from an original focus on individual teaching to "recognizing that a lot of policies and programs affect the way faculty teach and students learn."

The FTLC now awards grants three times a year to faculty members; the February round of grants saw a record of $160,000 requested. Among the center's many programs and resources, staff members host regular programming for part-time faculty and a yearlong seminar for new tenure-track faculty.

The center is housed within the College of Interdisciplinary Studies. Wendy Wenner, COIS dean, said, "Teaching is, in part, so spiritual, and Catherine has that sense of spirituality at her core. That has helped make her an excellent director and made her program so strong."

Frerichs, who started working at Grand Valley in 1997, said she is particularly proud of the work accomplished by the Claiming a Liberal Education Initiative. In cooperation with the Dean of Students office, the goals of the CLE are to align student and faculty expectations of a liberal education.

"Both faculty members' and students' attitude towards teaching and learning has become more sophisticated," Frerichs said. She added that during student focus groups conducted in February, comments received about learning at a liberal education institution were positive and encouraging.

Frerichs will continue teaching in Grand Valley's writing department. She also plans to promote her new book, due out in the fall, about her perspective as the daughter of two parents who spent 40 years working as missionaries in what is now Papua New Guinea.