Biography
Elizabeth Dickens joined the Center for Teaching Excellence in 2016. She directs the CTE’s Curriculum (Re)Design program, working with UVA departments, programs, and schools as they design or redesign curricula for their degree programs. Both within and beyond the Curriculum (Re)Design program, she supports faculty leading complex departmental change projects, and she collaborates across the university on department-based initiatives related to teaching and learning. She also directs the Teaching as a Graduate Student workshop, which helps to orient and welcome new graduate teaching assistants to the UVA teaching community. This interest in graduate students’ pedagogical development extends to her recent teaching: an interdisciplinary, graduate-level course on Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.
Elizabeth’s research focuses on department-level educational development, curriculum development, complexity, and the study of educational development as a field, with her work appearing in journals including the International Journal for Academic Development and To Improve the Academy. She is active in national and international educational development communities and recently became a founding co-chair of the POD Network’s Special Interest Group on Department-Level Educational Development. Recently, she has begun training as an ICF-certified coach with the goal of bringing coaching and coaching modalities more fully into her educational development work.
Prior to coming to UVA, Elizabeth worked on national-level curricular initiatives at the American Association of Colleges and Universities (AAC&U) and before that was Assistant Professor of English at Briercrest College. She earned her B.A. (English) from Asbury University, her M.A. (English) from Fordham University, and her Ph.D. (English with a Book History and Print Culture certificate) from the University of Toronto.
