Patrick B. O’Sullivan, PhD
Director, Center for Teaching, Learning & Technology
Illinois State University
January 2009
McDonald’s has its “golden arches.” Apple Computer has its, well, apple. NBC has its peacock. Adidas has its three stripes. Logos help establish an identity and enhance awareness.
CTLT also has a logo. It’s the “swoosh” that you see on all CTLT publications, staff nametags, and even the window of our building. I like to think that it has helped us to establish our campus identity since CTLT was founded three and a half years ago.
Some recent survey results indicate we’ve been rather successful. According to Matt Fuller, assistant director of the University Assessment Office, a recent survey at ISU found that 94% were aware of CTLT’s professional development programs. I’m proud of that, and perhaps having a recognizable logo has helped.
You may be thinking, “OK, but why a ‘swoosh’?” Actually, there is a reason for it.
Creating a logo was one of my early priorities when I was named director. With my design staff we reviewed dozens of high-tech, abstract corporate examples and considered dozens of ideas. But I wanted something organic that reflected the urgency and scale of the challenges facing faculty.
Designer Kay Stults (now retired) came up with a swoosh in the shape of a perfect California wave. I loved it, of course, having grown up near and on Southern California’s beaches. Designer Shawn Billo, now the head of CTLT’s design unit, used the swoosh to create CTLT’s signature masthead.
So the swoosh represents the wave of challenges crashing over ISU’s educators as well as universities across the country. Challenges come from today’s students, who think differently and hold sometimes surprising expectations about their teachers and their education. They come from the explosion of new instructional technologies and their potential to enhance – or undermine – teaching and learning. They come from new research on instructional effectiveness that upends teaching traditions and assumptions. They come from the evolution of society and the new set of skills and talents that college graduates need to succeed in the 21st Century. Meeting these challenges takes on an added urgency with projections of declining numbers of high school graduates that will intensify competition among colleges for students and their tuition dollars.
If you’ve spent any time in ocean waves, you know that if you’re in the wrong place then you’re bound to get a good drubbing. If, however, you swim out to meet an incoming swell and position yourself properly as you turn to swim with it, you’ll find yourself in an exhilarating ride.
At CTLT, we’re working to help each of you avoid that drubbing and instead learn to ride that oncoming wave. After all, there’s always another wave looming on the horizon, and another after that.
Surf’s up!
