As we navigate these challenging times, it is important to identify opportunities to support teaching and learning excellence with greater transparency and collaboration.
The Teaching and Learning Commons will be restructuring in Fall 2025 to better serve the needs of our campus within the current budgetary environment. The goal of the Commons remains steadfast: to promote outstanding teaching and learning throughout the entire Triton community. This restructuring is designed to strengthen services to departments and their instructors, while continuing to deliver services to students in support of their academic achievement.
In the new structure, the multifaceted academic needs of students – including supplemental instruction, content tutoring, and writing support – will be organized under the umbrella of academic achievement services and will be located in Geisel Library. To ensure that students retain ample opportunities to make appointments and receive the peer-to-peer support they need, the restructuring will also simplify platforms through which students can request services and will improve how and where the support is delivered. The new, more unified structure will also allow us to enhance training for our student employees and to improve collaboration with colleges, academic units, and instructors. Carolyn Sandoval, Senior Director of Instruction and Pedagogy, will lead the student services staff through this transition as we work to identify a permanent director for academic achievement services.
The Commons' experiential learning services will be forming new partnerships with the Triton Transfer Hub to help more transfer students find their way to these exciting opportunities early in their time at UC San Diego. These partnerships will be further enhanced in 2026 when both groups move together to a new central campus location that will provide easy access for all entering and continuing students.
The Commons will continue to offer extensive services for faculty and graduate students, including workshops, learning communities, and consultations around teaching, writing pedagogy, AI literacy, and other topics. Our new Director of Assessment and Educational Research, Shannon Milligan, will further strengthen our strong partnerships with the Division of Undergraduate Education through the Assessment Learning Community and other campus program review and assessment efforts. After a successful pilot of a New Faculty Academy in collaboration with the Center for Faculty Diversity and Inclusion, we will be expanding this program to give new faculty colleagues the best start to their careers. Finally, Digital Learning has moved under the direct purview of Educational Innovation, so the integration of digital and multimedia resources into online and hybrid learning environments can be more closely tied to the educational innovation happening across UC San Diego. This should yield stronger and more unified support for course development and departmental initiatives.
We are committed to ensuring the work of the Commons and its staff continues to benefit our instructors and students in tangible, measurable ways. For questions about this transition, please contact David Song-Ruiter via email at druiter@ucsd.edu.
Thank you for your understanding as we navigate this transition. The ongoing support of the UC San Diego teaching and learning community is very appreciated.
