
Sherrerd Center for Teaching & Learning
The Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning was founded in 2009 through a generous bequest from the family of Kathleen Compton Sherrerd ’54 and John J. F. Sherrerd, longtime supporters of excellence in teaching at Smith College. The center enables the academic success of all Smith students through faculty development efforts that support teaching and learning at the college.
Announcements
We are pleased to announce that Patty DiBartolo will serve as the Interim Director of the Sherrerd Center for Teaching and Learning for the academic year 2023-24. Caroline Melly will return to the role of director in academic year 2024-25 after a year-long sabbatical.
Our Team
Administration/Leadership
Patty DiBartolo
Director of the Sherrerd Center
Caroline L. Wall '27 Professor of Psychology
Sherry Wingfield
Sherrerd Center Coordinator
Goals of the Center
Based on the understanding that teaching is always a work in progress and always improvable, the Sherrerd Center strives to:
- Create opportunities for faculty to engage in a continuous discourse about student learning
- Support new faculty as they develop into excellent teachers
- Disseminate knowledge of the craft of teaching to support ongoing faculty professional development
- Provide opportunities for faculty to learn from one another by sharing innovative teaching practices and strategies for improving student learning
- Build synergy between faculty development efforts and student academic support services (e.g. Jacobson Center, Educational Technology Services, Spinelli Center, Disability Services, Libraries, etc.)
- Enable the academic success of students from diverse backgrounds by promoting best practices for inclusive teaching, investigating achievement gaps in student learning, and supporting strategies for overcoming such gaps
- Enhance Smith’s efforts towards creating a culture of purposeful inquiry among students
- Ensure that consideration of teaching and learning inform campus decision making
- Improve measures of teaching performance so that they provide information useful to the teachers themselves and can serve as reasonable indicators of teaching performance for the purposes of re-appointment, tenure, and promotion
- Support the scholarship of teaching and learning among faculty from diverse disciplines
Contact Sherrerd Center for Teaching & Learning
Bass Hall 416 & Seelye Hall B8
Smith College
Northampton, MA 01063
Phone: 413-585-3562 Email: sherrerdcenter@smith.edu