Message from the Provost

Texas Tech’s Strategic Plan for 2010-2020 has a mission statement that reads in part: As a public research university, Texas Tech advances knowledge through innovative and creative teaching, research, and scholarship.  A core part of our efforts in innovative and creative teaching revolves around the Teaching Academy.  In other words, we count on the Teaching Academy and its members to set the pace for the scholarship of teaching and the development of best practices that serve as inspiration for all who teach at Texas Tech.  Recently, my staff and I brought to the Provost Council (i.e., a body representing all academic leadership at the University) a proposal that the Chair of the Teaching Academy Executive Council be made a permanent member of the Provost Council.  I am pleased that there was a unanimous endorsement of this idea so now the Teaching Academy sits at the most important table of the academic home of the University—influencing positively all that we do to serve Texas Tech students and to help ensure their success as ethical leaders with multicultural and global competencies—characteristics also contained in the mission statement of our new strategic plan.  In short, the Teaching Academy and its members are highly valued contributors to the academic enterprise at Texas Tech.