In Figure 1 you can see the total number of activities facilitated by the CAT over the past four years. Although the number of activities last year (536) was lower than the previous two years (973 and 717 respectively), the numbers during those years were inflated by the emergency instructional and organizational support we provided throughout the COVID-19 pandemic. If we use 2018-2019 as a baseline, our activities have increased by 19% and our support meetings have increased by 47%. The latter can be attributed to a marked increase in collaboration on departmental and organizational initiatives. Although it appears our events decreased this year, that reduction was the result of an intentional shift from frequent shorter events to fewer, more intensive programs in 2019. If you remove all pandemic related events from the 2019-2020 data, we facilitated 90 events that year. Figure 2 includes the total number of unique faculty, students, and staff who engaged with us this year. Using the 2018-2019 year as a baseline again, the number of faculty we engaged increased by 58%. It is especially encouraging that we have seen this increase in a year when many peer institutions have seen precipitous drops in engagement with their teaching centers.
We strive to support instructors from each school on the Reynolda campus and at each stage of their careers. As can be seen in Figure 3, over 66% of all full-time, continuing faculty participated in CAT programs in the past year. The highest level of participation was from pre-tenure faculty (81%) and the lowest level of participation was from tenured faculty (61%). Figure 4 reveals that we engaged with over half the full-time, continuing faculty in each of our schools. For comparison, teaching centers at key peer institutions reach between 20% and 30% of their full-time faculty each year.
The CAT advances teaching that aligns with the university’s educational mission, facilitates structural support for teaching, and contributes to knowledge through individual consultations, workshops, reading groups, learning communities, organizational projects, standing meetings, committee work, and scholarly contributions. In Figure 5 you can see the distribution of all activities facilitated by the CAT in the past year. 45% of our activities supported organizational development (green), 38% supported instructional development (blue), 15% contributed to the field (maroon), and 2% supported the scholarship of teaching and learning (gold). Because this distribution does not account for the length or substance of the meetings, the proportions do not reflect the effort dedicated to each area. Nevertheless, it is notable that we facilitate more organizational support meetings than meetings with individual instructors.
In Figure 6 you can see the distribution of participants who engaged with the CAT in the past year. The largest group of participants were faculty. Of the 532 faculty who engaged with our office this year, 42% were tenured, 19% were teaching professionals, 16% were pre-tenure, 12% were visiting, 7% were part-time, and 4% were librarians. We also spent time working with 45 students. Figure 7 reveals that 75% of the faculty who engaged with us were from the Undergraduate College. 66% of all Wake Forest faculty are appointed in the College, so this distribution is not far from what one would expect if we were serving faculty from our various schools at the same rate.