Update on Centers for Teaching Excellence
Participants during the joint planning meeting on Dec. 10
In support to An-Najah National University and Bethlehem University in their efforts to draft and finalize their work plans for Centers for Teaching Excellence work plans, PFDP hosted two missions from the two US partner universities, Northwestern University and Portland State for a period of ten days from the fifth to the fourteenth of December, 2010. The objective of the two missions was to work in partnership with local universities to draft their perspective centers' work plans for the coming 18 months.
The Northwestern team worked for five days with An-Najah's team and Portland State University also had five working days with Bethlehem University. Both teams’ agenda included meetings with deans, faculty, and students to identify priorities and discuss areas of work for their Center for Teaching Excellence. A key feature of discussions included ways to establish these centers. During the trip, the US and Palestinian universities held extensive working sessions designed to produce detailed outlines of activities for each center. On Friday December 10th, Northwestern and An-Najah teams presented the outcomes of their work to the Bethlehem team, their PSU partner team, USAID, and PFDP senior officers. PSU and Bethlehem teams did the same on December 14th. All four partner teams will continue their collaboration to finalize plans and budgets by late January 2011 so that implementation can start as early as February 2011.
Two main activities that will be added to both centers plans include a jointly planned and organized National Conference that will be held jointly by Bethlehem and An-Najah Universities at the end of the project (May-June 2012). The second component is planning and conducting an extensive summative evaluation for the two centers, which is currently being developed and drafted jointly in cooperation with both US universities.
Both US partner universities are working on finalizing their work plans in coordination with their local partners. It is also worth mentioning that PFDP is awaiting finalization of work plans and budgets and the clearing of the vetting process so as to have the contracts signed with local universities and for actual implementation to start.
Relevant to the CTE component, PFDP Senior staff paid visits to the other four local universities submitted proposals for establishing Centers for Teaching Excellence on their campuses: Birzeit, Hebron, PPU, and PTU-K universities. During these visits, PFDP staff discussed the respective proposals and shared comments on areas of support that PFDP could consider providing in support of some priority areas that were outlined in their proposals. PFDP senior staff is following up on this with local universities.
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