CASTL at UCF

Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

CASTL represents a major initiative of The Carnegie Foundation. Launched in 1998, the program builds on a conception of teaching as scholarly work proposed in the 1990 report, Scholarship Reconsidered, by former Carnegie Foundation President Ernest Boyer, and on the 1997 follow-up publication, Scholarship Assessed, by Charles Glassick, Mary Taylor Huber, and Gene Maeroff.

The CASTL Program seeks to support the development of a scholarship of teaching and learning that: fosters significant, long-lasting learning for all students; enhances the practice and profession of teaching, and; brings to faculty members' work as teachers the recognition and reward afforded to other forms of scholarly work.

Achieving these goals involves significant shifts in thought and practice. For faculty in most settings, teaching is a private act, limited to the teacher and students; it is rarely evaluated by professional peers. "The result," writes Carnegie Foundation President Lee S. Shulman, "is that those who engage in innovative acts of teaching rarely build upon the work of others; nor can others build upon theirs." Thus, CASTL seeks to render teaching public, subject to critical evaluation, and usable by others in both the scholarly and the general community.

Currently, the CASTL Program is working with a wide variety of institutions (campuses, collaborative centers and organizations, scholarly societies, etc.) to broaden the reach and depth of the scholarship of teaching and learning. These efforts are focused on the CASTL Institutional Leadership Program and the CASTL Affiliates Program.