We are pleased to share our 2019-20 annual report, which showcases highlights from the year, including how we helped facilitate the transition to remote teaching, examples of courses we supported, and stories of students who have taken part in our programming. Especially given the challenges of the past year, we are proud of the strength of our community, and that we worked with more faculty and graduate students than ever before.

View our annual report.

We are heartbroken to share that our beloved faculty director, Robert Lue, passed away on Wednesday, November 11. Rob was appointed as the inaugural Richard L. Menschel Faculty Director of the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning in 2013. He had a vision for a teaching and learning center that would attract and energize faculty, graduate students and undergraduates; that would spark excitement and creativity about what could happen in the classroom; and that would build an intergenerational community around teaching. During the seven years of his tenure, Rob transformed the Bok...

Bok Center staff played an active role in last Friday’s annual Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) conference on Championing Equitable Instruction and Inclusive Classrooms, a topic at the core of our work with instructors at all stages. In addition to our many staff who attended the conference as participants, two Bok staff members led breakout sessions. Pamela Pollock, Director of Professional Development, co-facilitated a breakout session on...

We are pleased to share that we have contributed a chapter to The Routledge International Handbook of Student-Centered Learning and Teaching in Higher Education!  Edited by Sabine Hoidn and Manja Klemenčič, Lecturer on Sociology, the Routledge Handbook provides a comprehensive examination of student-centered learning. Tamara Brenner,...

Rob Lue, the Bok Center’s Faculty Director, was among several faculty members featured in the Gazette in a story highlighting the ways faculty are innovating and adapting their courses for the transition to remote teaching.... Read more about Innovation in the Transition to Remote Teaching

On May 9, the Bok Center hosted our 3rd annual Showcase, celebrating innovative teaching from the past academic year. Visitors from across the Harvard community and beyond explored over 20 booths highlighting many of the diverse courses and programs created by Bok Center staff, student fellows, and faculty partners.... Read more about Bok Showcase 2019: Innovative Teaching in the Spotlight

Harvard Magazine recently published a comprehensive summary of the Bok Center’s Harvard Summit on Excellence in Higher Education. Held on April 4-5, the Summit brought together deans, provosts, and faculty from universities across the country to discuss whether - and how well - liberal arts colleges and universities are serving the public good....

The GSAS Harvard Horizons program was featured in the Crimson this week following the Symposium on April 10. The Bok Center supports the mentoring component of the program, which is designed to promote interdisciplinary sharing of PhD students’ big ideas and to teach students how to communicate their research to a non-specialist audience. Congratulations to this year's scholars on an outstanding performance!

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The Harvard Ed Portal, which is celebrating ten years of community partnership between Harvard and Boston, shared the work of K-12 students and their mentors at a community reception on December 2.  Susan Johnson, the Bok Center’s Assistant Director for Socially Engaged Learning, works with a cohort of 20-25 undergraduate mentors each semester, helping them to create age-specific curricula and develop as educators.  

Read more about the Ed Portal mentoring program and the community reception - attended by President Larry Bacow - in this Crimson article.

The Bok Center was delighted to join in the celebration at the inauguration events for Harvard’s 29th president, Lawrence S. Bacow, on Friday, October 5. We enjoyed speaking about our work at the Bok Center with visitors from across the campus and around the world.... Read more about Welcome, President Bacow!

We are excited to share our annual report from the 2017-18 academic year!  Check out highlights of our activities over the past year, and read stories of our collaborations with faculty and students.

At the May 5 kick-off event for the Bok Center’s 40th anniversary celebration, former Harvard president Derek Bok recalled his first speech to the faculty, in 1971 when his term began, which he devoted to the subject of teaching.  Afterward Bok spoke to his friend the eminent physicist Gerald Holton, “and I asked him, Gerry, how did it go?  And he said, well, 80 percent of the faculty have given up on you.”

... Read more about Bok 40th