General Information
Staff Profile
Director, Center for Teaching and Learning
Michele Marincovich received her A.B. with great distinction in Political Science from Stanford University in 1968 (having been elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1967), her M.A. in History from Georgetown University in 1972, and her Ph.D. in History from Georgetown in 1977. In that latter year, she joined the Center for Teaching and Learning as assistant director, simultaneously serving as assistant director of another faculty development effort, the Lilly Program for Faculty Renewal. In 1980 she was promoted to director of the Center for Teaching and Learning and associate director of the Program for Faculty Renewal. She held both titles until 1984 when growth in the Center's activities made her its full-time director.
From the beginning, she has combined management of the Center with a spectrum of responsibilities including one-on-one teaching consultation with faculty and TAs, organization of workshops and lecture series, consultation with departments and Schools, classroom observation, videofeedback, small group teaching evaluation, the writing of handbooks and other publications on teaching, and the production of instructional videotapes. She estimates that she has worked with at least four hundred faculty at Stanford and several hundred lecturers and teaching assistants.
In addition to her direction of the Center, from 1982 to 1988 she was a lecturer in the Department of Linguistics, teaching a course on how to teach. From 1989 to 1991 she served as Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Studies for Academic Services, concentrating on programs that contributed to students' academic success. From 1998 to 2001 she was an Assistant Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education; in 2002 she was promoted to Associate Vice Provost. Her work at Stanford has been recognized with the distinguished Lloyd W. Dinkelspiel Award for Outstanding Service to Undergraduate Education (1988).
She has also been active off campus, serving as executive director of the chief faculty development professional organization in the country, the POD Network, from 1983-84 and as a member of its Core Committee from 1981-85. As a member of the American Educational Research Association, she was vice-chair for Division J in 1989-1990, a member of the Wilbert J. McKeachie Prize selection committee for the Faculty Evaluation and Development SIG from 1992-95 and chair of the selection committee from 1996 to 1997. In 1994-96, she served as the coordinator for Stanford's participation in the American Association for Higher Education Peer Review of Teaching Project, a national effort to pilot new forms of peer involvement in the evaluation of teaching. She is a frequent presenter at POD, AERA, and AAHE and on other campuses in this country and abroad (Canada, England, the Netherlands, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) on such topics as the improvement of teaching at research universities, TA training, the design and evaluation of faculty development programs, teaching evaluation approaches, and the role of disciplinary differences in higher education. She has published and consulted extensively on these topics as well.
Her major publications include Disciplinary Differences in Teaching and Learning: Implications for Practice (with Dr. Nira Hativa), Volume 64 in the Jossey-Bass New Directions for Teaching and Learning Series (1995) and The Professional Development of Graduate Teaching Assistants (with Jack Prostko and Fred Stout), Bolton, MA: Anker Publishing Co., 1998. She is currently authoring an essay on the role of disciplinary differences in postsecondary teaching for the POD Teaching Excellence essay series that will appear in spring 2005. For a list of her other publications and professional presentations, please link to her c.v.
Other Interesting Facts
In both her undergraduate and graduate studies, she concentrated on the history and politics of modern China. In spring 2005,
she will be traveling to China for the fifth time as a lecturer for the Stanford Alumni Association Travel/Study Program.