Bird to Lead OWU Teaching, Learning and Innovation Center

DELAWARE, Ohio – Following a nationwide search, Ohio Wesleyan University has hired Barbara Bird as the inaugural director of its newly created Teaching, Learning, and Innovation Center. The center expands OWU’s initiatives to enhance student academic success and shows the priority placed on teaching excellence, innovation and faculty development.

Since 2017, Bird has served as dean of faculty development and director of the Bedi Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence at Taylor University, a liberal arts institution in Upland, Ind. She has 23 years of college teaching and leadership experience.

In the newly endowed position, Bird will oversee the strategic design, implementation and continuing work of teaching effectiveness, engaged learning and curricular innovation at Ohio Wesleyan.

A series of new student-success programs at OWU – including special programs for first-generation students, new academic advising and tutoring initiatives, and a complete overhaul of the academic program – have led to a seven percentage point rise in retention of students from their first to second year, according to the university.

At Taylor, Bird also served as a professor of English and was director of Taylor’s Writing Center for 16 years. She earned a Ph.D. in composition and rhetoric and a master of arts in English from Ball State University, and B.A. in English from Taylor University.

Copyright 2024 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.