Irma Meijerman appointed as vice-president Europe of the ISSOTL

From July 1 2022, Irma Meijerman has been appointed as vice-president Europe of the International Society of Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL).

Irma Meijerman is Senior Fellow at the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning (CAT) and associate professor at the department of Pharmaceutical sciences. As CAT, we are very proud of the honorable appointment of Irma as vice-president Europe of ISSOTL.

The CAT offers lecturers SoTL Grants from within the Educational Scholarship pillar, which can support them in researching their own teaching. With the Utrecht Roadmap for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (UR-SoTL), lecturers are supported in designing their SoTL project step-by-step.

The main aim of SoTL is to enhance the learning of students. By using a SoTL approach, teachers are encouraged to improve their own classroom teaching practice in a systematical manner, evaluate the effect of their teaching on student learning, and ultimately share their experiences so that others may reflect on their findings. Because SoTL results are shared, SoTL contributes to our knowledge about teaching and learning within a discipline. SoTL is a research-informed approach in which (disciplinary) educational knowledge is used to optimize one’s own teaching.

Irma is highly involved in increasing awareness of the importance and benefits of SoTL and in supporting teachers that want to get engaged with SoTL at Utrecht University. As a Senior Fellow of the Centre for Academic Teaching and Learning, Irma has been involved in initiating several initiatives for SoTL such as the yearly Utrecht SoTL-conference, a special interest group (SIG) on SoTL, and the SoTL-grants provided by CAT. Together with Lindy Wijsman and Femke Kirschner she wrote the Utrecht Roadmap for Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (UR-SoTL) a very helpful, free available, tool for everyone who wants to develop themselves as a teacher and optimize their own teaching practice. Within the faculty of science, she has developed a course on improving your teaching according to the principles of SoTL and she guides a group of teachers of the department of Pharmaceutical Sciences with their SoTL-work. Recently, she was awarded a big grant from the Utrecht Education Incentive Fund for the project ‘Get started and keep going with SoTL!’.  The aim of this three-year project is to structurally integrate SoTL within the UU by appointing SoTL-advocates and establish faculty-based learning communities on SoTL within every faculty.

Her appointment as vice-president Europe of the ISSOTL will provide her with new opportunities to continue her own work as a SoTL-ambassador, and encourage SoTL at universities in the Netherlands and abroad. Her ultimately aim is to achieve a culture in which SoTL is more and more the standard, recognized, way of improving and innovating teaching and learning within Higher Education.