Case Study: Institutional Cultures and SoTL Leadership

This case study on institutional cultures and SoTL leadership starts with my personal journey, as my experiences have shaped and inspired my leadership roles. I will discuss our vision and the practical steps taken to foster SoTL. By focusing on competency development, support, grants, visibility, and recognition, we aim to build a strong institutional SoTL culture at Utrecht University.

Journey Toward Educational Scholarship and Leadership

My path to becoming an educational scholar began as a disciplinary researcher in biomedical sciences at the University Medical Center in Utrecht. After earning my PhD, I shifted my focus entirely to education, teaching abroad in Peru, and later taking on multiple roles in teaching, innovation, and policy at Utrecht University. I developed and coordinated master’s programs, led the medical skills lab, and served as the education director for Clinical Health Sciences. Over time, I gained practical and theoretical insights into teaching and learning in health professions education, but often found that existing educational research didn’t fully address my specific practice questions.

This gap led me to investigate my educational practices, aimed at bridging the research-practice divide in healthcare. As my leadership roles expanded, including the position as director of the Center for Academic Teaching and Learning of Utrecht University, my research also broadened to include faculty development. Alongside the research-practice gap in health care, the research-practice gap in higher education – which SoTL seeks to bridge- also became a central theme of my work. I see my educational leadership and scholarship as mutually reinforcing, and this is the vision I have aimed to instill across the institution in my role as Vice-Rector for Teaching and Learning.

Institutional context and building infrastructure to foster Educational Scholarship

In 2016, I was tasked with developing a Center for Academic Teaching and Learning (CAT) at Utrecht University. As a leading research university, Utrecht has long invested in teaching and learning, dating back to the 1990s when education often took a backseat to research. To counter this, the university introduced several initiatives, including the University Teaching Qualification (UTQ) in 1995 and an educational leadership program in 2000, both aimed at improving teaching quality and career prospects for educators. These initiatives were complemented by support for educational innovation and a broad range of teacher development offerings, laying a strong foundation for a culture that values education. Today, our teacher development offerings range from very beginner (‘Start to teach’) to highly advanced (‘Senior Fellow Programme’).

In establishing CAT, we not only consolidated and extended existing support for teacher development and educational innovation, but also introduced a third area of support: Educational Scholarship. Through this third pillar, we aim to enhance evidence-informed teaching and learning across the university. We launched initiatives such as the SoTL roadmap and e-module (see also the case study of Irma Meijerman in the Introduction), SoTL grants, a Teacher Scholars Programme, and an annual SoTL conference.

Beyond CAT’s support, we successfully advocated for Higher Education Research to be recognized as one of the university’s eight ‘Focus Areas’. I currently chair this Focus Area, which secures funding for SoTL for eight years and, more importantly, provides institutional recognition.

Impact and Broader Vision

Our vision is to improve teaching and learning by inspiring and empowering university teachers and the wider teaching community. The CAT’s three pillars—Teacher Development, Educational Innovation, and Educational Scholarship—are synergistic, as can be illustrated by the Senior Fellow Program. This program supports senior academics in pursuing education-focused full professorships by integrating personal development, innovation leadership, and scholarly investigation (Bovenschen & Kluijtmans 2019, Crone, et al. 2023). It promotes evidence-informed education while fostering education-centered academic careers.

While the Centre for Teaching and Learning plays a key role in inspiring and facilitating SoTL, this nurturing can potentially land on barren ground when institutional culture -both at department and institutional level – does not foster and support educational scholarship As Vice-rector for Teaching and Learning from 2019 until 2025, my main mission has been to improve the recognition of teaching -including SoTL- both in formal structures and informal culture. This mission is reflected in the university’s Recognition and Rewards Vision (TRIPLE 2021), which promotes diverse and dynamic academic careers that prioritize quality over quantity and supports education-focused career paths. I strive to transform institutional culture through continuous communication and ambassadorship, exemplified by the book I co-authored ‘The University in Transition’ (Kummeling, et al. 2024).

Teach as you preach: Evidence-Informed Leadership in SoTL

Effective SoTL leadership must be rooted in evidence. Institutional leaders should model the culture they wish to cultivate. Throughout my career, I have sought to integrate educational leadership with scholarship, from classroom teaching to university policy. An example of the latter is a review on university teacher expertise development conducted by a CAT PhD fellow (van Dijk et al 2020), whose findings informed CAT’s teacher development portfolio and contributed to national and international discussions on educational careers. Another study on the expertise development of educational leaders indicates that leadership and scholarship are mutually strengthening (Van Dijk, et al. 2024). This brings the case study full circle: to foster SoTL at institutional level, we should address institutional culture by facilitating competency development, providing support opportunities, valuing SoTL, and modeling evidence-informed leadership practices.

References

Bovenschen N., & Kluijtmans M. (2019). Behind the Paper – Senior fellow program at Utrecht University enhances educational innovation, scholarship, and teacher development. Bioengineering & Biotechnology. https://communities.springernature.com/posts/senior-fellow-program-at-utrecht-university-enhances-educational-innovation-scholarship-and-teacher-development?badge_id=nature-biotechnology

Crone V., Prins F., Bovenschen N., Lutz C., Meijerman I., Schutjens V., Smagt van der M., Wijngaarts V., Kluijtmans M (2023)  Strengthening educational leadership through a professional development programme in conjunction with a teaching-focused full professor career track: reflections of participants. International Journal for Academic Development, 29(1): 1-13. https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2023.2207309

Kummeling H., Miedema F., Kluijtmans M (2024). The University in Transition. Published by Utrecht University. https://uu.trialanderror.org/projects/the-university-in-transition

TRIPLE. Utrecht University Recognition and Rewards Vision, 2021, https://www.uu.nl/sites/default/files/UU-Recognition-and-Rewards-Vision.pdf\

Van Dijk E., van Tartwijk J., van der Schaaf M.F., Kluijtmans M (2020) What makes an expert university teacher? A systematic review and synthesis of frameworks for teacher expertise in higher education. Education Research Review 31 (100365), 1-16. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.edurev.2020.100365

Van Dijk E., Tartwijk J., van der Schaaf M., Kluijtmans M (2024) Academics’ expertise development in teacher tasks: A multiple case study. International Journal for Academic Development  30(4): 489-505. doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2024.2329594