Center for Teaching & Learning

The center’s mission is to:

• Promote the value and practice of excellent teaching both in and out of the classroom to facilitate student learning and growth;
• Serve as an on-campus resource that provides professional development opportunities to promote teaching and learning;
• Provide opportunities for faculty to reflect on their work, share and learn from the experiences and expertise of their colleagues;
• Encourage faculty collaboration to enhance and refine their teaching;
• Promote active engagement and innovation in teaching and learning; and
• Act as a hub for knowledge of effective, evidence-based practices as well as a conduit to bring faculty together.

2024-2025 Center for Teaching and Learning Director: Jessica Hammack, Head of Research and Instruction, Beneficial-Hodson Library and Learning Commons. See the below bio for more information on our director.

Advisory Committee Members

• April Boulton, Associate Professor of Biology, Associate Provost, Dean of the Graduate School
• Cathy Breneman, Assistant Professor of Social Work
• Ashley Coen, Assistant Professor of Education
• Sangeeta Gupta, Assistant Professor of Psychology
• Bridget Humphries, Director of Accessibility Services
• Beth Kiester, Associate Professor of Sociology
• Jessica McManus, Assistant Professor of Psychology
• Heather Mitchell-Buck, Associate Professor of English, Coordinator of Digital Learning
• Nicole Pulichene, Libman Professor of Humanities
• Adelmar Ramirez, Visiting Assistant Professor of Spanish
• Kathryn Ryberg, Research & Instruction Librarian
• Sandra Thomas-Lalmansingh, Assistant Professor of Nursing
• Kristen Tzoc, Assistant Professor of Sociology
• Jeff Welsh, Director of Instructional Technology in the IT division
• Kelly Esposito, CTL Graduate Assistant

Interested in joining the advisory committee? Please read the Advisory Committee Responsibilities and email the CTL Director!

Upcoming CTL Events for Faculty & Staff

For information on upcoming events, please see our newsletter!

To access previous event recordings, materials, and additional resources, go to the CTL site on Blackboard!

CTL Monthly Newsletter

The CTL Newsletter is distributed mid-month Aug-April. Past issues listed below & uploaded to the CTL BlackBoard page.

Jessica Hammack, 2024-2025 CTL Director Click to Open

Jessica Hammack is the Head of Research and Instruction at the Beneficial-Hodson Library at Hood College. In that role, she coordinates information literacy instruction and research support across the curriculum, liaises to eight academic departments, supports the First Year Research & Instruction TA, and teaches course-connected and co-curricular workshops on topics related to information literacy, media literacy, research, academic integrity, and more.

In addition to 200+ information literacy instruction sessions, Jessica has taught a First Year Seminar on conspiracy theories and misinformation at Hood, as well as a variety of writing courses at other institutions, including introductory college writing, technical writing, and introductory, intermediate, and advanced undergraduate creative writing workshops. Before Hood, she was the Assistant Director of the Jiménez-Porter Writers’ House, a living-learning community for undergraduate creative writers at the University of Maryland, where she taught classes on writing in community and co-organized Writers Here and Now, a campus-wide speaker series.

Jessica is the co-chair of the 2024 Hood Votes Committee, co-advisor to the Feminist Student Union, and a 2022 recipient of the Dr. Henry P. and Page Laughlin Administrative Achievement Award. She has a bachelor’s degree in English and Writing from Hiram College, a Master of Fine Arts in poetry from the University of Florida, and a Master of Library and Information Science from the University of Maryland.