In June, due to budget cuts, the College decided to discontinue the Center for Innovative Pedagogy (CIP). Located in Edwards House since 2018, the CIP served many purposes on campus, with a primary goal of supporting faculty and fostering community through book clubs, writing groups and faculty presentations.

After attending a professional retreat in 2010, Kenyon faculty members expressed interest in creating a space for conversations about teaching and learning. As a result, the CIP was established in 2011, originally located in the basement of the former Olin and Chalmers Library. The CIP staff aimed to help faculty learn about effective teaching practices and facilitate conversations about classroom challenges. 

“It was to be a social structure where faculty members would share information and talk to one another, and then also to be a resource of staff and budget that would allow faculty members to bring ideas and say, ‘Can you help me think this through?’” Associate Director at the Office for Sponsored Faculty Projects Joe Murphy said in an interview with the Collegian. Murphy served as the director of the CIP throughout its existence. When the center was disbanded, he was offered a new position as assistant director in the Office of Sponsored Faculty Programs (OSFP), which assists faculty members in pursuing grants. Another staff member, Instructional Designer Alex Alderman, had his position transferred to Chalmers Library over the summer. Through Chalmers, he continues to host workshops on course design and provides faculty support in learning to use new management systems and technologies.

After the shutdown, the CIP staff published a final impact report outlining the center’s accomplishments over the last 14 years on Kenyon’s campus. “From listening sessions to book clubs, to workshops and guest speakers, to individual consultations and collaborations, the most well-loved aspect of the CIP was our ability to care for faculty needs and to both hear and respond to the critical teaching concerns of the moment,” the report stated.

“The closing, as it was communicated to me, was entirely about a hole in the College’s budget,” Murphy said. The CIP was established with a large grant that enabled hiring new staff and funding events such as book clubs and guest speakers. According to Murphy, “Those were things that we were able to do, partly through the grant money, and partly because the economic times were better.” Following the axing of the CIP, the fate of Edwards House became unknown. However, Murphy clarified that “it is still available to faculty members as a meeting space; there’s a learning community on science and nature writing that’s still meeting here.” 

When asked about the CIP closure, Provost Jeff Bowman explained that although shuttering it was a difficult decision, Kenyon’s budget couldn’t allow for its continuation. “The CIP team had a long history of supporting faculty members in reflecting upon and improving their pedagogical practice. Kenyon, like many other colleges, is in a challenging budgetary environment. We have to be looking everywhere we can to reduce costs,” he wrote in an email to the Collegian. “Although we lost some valuable resources with the closure of the CIP, we have tried to continue some of the CIP’s work by folding it into other offices, including the library, the OSFP and the Provost’s Office.” 

Murphy takes pride in the CIP’s accomplishments over the past decade and a half. He hopes that the CIP’s work does not end with the center’s closure, but rather that Kenyon students can carry on what they’ve learned from their professors. “My true dream is that somewhere out there, either right now or in two or four or six years, there’s some Kenyon student who’s going to go into education in some way, and they’re going to do something in the classroom, and they’re going to remember that they’re doing it because one of their Kenyon professors did it. We planted seeds that are going to flower all over the place,” Murphy said.