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The Learning and Teaching Commons at the Washington Center

Evergreen State College | Olympia, WA

Mission Statement

The Learning & Teaching Commons at The Evergreen State College promotes a generative culture of interdisciplinary teaching and learning that is student-centered, equity-minded, inquiry-oriented, and committed to access and excellence. We aim to promote better classroom experiences that lead to increased student learning and retention.  The Commons is conceived as an institutional space where faculty can cultivate practices and develop tools that will give all students the chance to excel and to meet the Six Expectations of an Evergreen graduate.

Principles of Evergreen’s Learning and Teaching Commons @ The Washington Center

Learning-centered, equity-minded, inquiry-oriented, committed to access and excellence

Conceptual Framework for Evergreen’s Learning and Teaching Commons @ The Washington Center

1. We are an interdisciplinary public liberal arts college serving a diverse student body across several locations. We are committed to team teaching, and we have defined a broad set of teaching and learning commitments through the Five Foci that characterize our curriculum and pedagogical practices. The Six Expectations outline what we expect our students to achieve.
2. We will take an assets-based approach to meet students where they are and to maximize their engagement in our distinctive institutional mission.
3. We will deepen our understanding of the experiences students bring to the classroom as well as their successes and barriers to success through disaggregated data—NSSE data, retention data, Evergreen surveys, focus groups, and other quantitative and qualitative data sources – and use the data to inform the Learning and Teaching Commons focus.
4. We will embrace the principles of adult learning in designing faculty development opportunities, which include committing resources to convening sustained inquiry-based faculty conversations about teaching and learning over time.
5. We will commit to ongoing teaching and learning about equity pedagogies and curricular innovations.
6. We will bring national conversations about liberal arts education—for example, curricular reform, high-impact practices and signature pedagogies—into campus conversations about teaching and learning, as well as contribute to those conversations.
7. Faculty development through the Learning and Teaching Commons operates in service to students’ learning, and to their development of senses of belonging, engagement, and achievement in meeting the Six Expectations