Learning Partnerships
Learning Partnerships is dedicated to strengthening co-curricular learning for students at Virginia Tech.
Operating from a strengths-based philosophy, the Learning Partnerships team serves as champions for integrating the Aspirations for Student Learning into the culture of co-curricular learning. Learning Partnerships supports the development and coordination of innovative, transformative, hands-on, and experiential initiatives for students.
Learning Partnerships works in collaboration with other Student Affairs units and in conjunction with departments and centers throughout campus to design and facilitate a student-centered and learning-focused approach to co-curricular experiences.
Supported and inspired by Virginia Tech’s Aspirations for Student Learning, Learning Partnerships champions integrating the Aspirations for Student Learning into the culture of co-curricular experiences. Learning Partnerships serves as an incubator for innovative, transformative, hands-on, and experiential initiatives for students by:
- Working in tandem with Virginia Tech educators to establish learning and reflection as foundational components for all student co-curricular experiences.
- Coordinating use of strengths-based philosophy to assist students in discovering their gifts, talents, and capacities, and to help them put their strengths into action as they plan for meaningful careers, develop their character, and pursue living Virginia Tech’s motto, Ut Prosim (That I May Serve).
- Working in partnership with Housing and colleges across campus in the development, launch, and assessment of high-quality living-learning initiatives.
- Providing direction and oversight for two interdisciplinary living-learning communities: Thrive, a community that focuses on students’ strengths to create a one-of-a-kind Virginia Tech experience, and Studio 72, which encourages creative approaches to problem solving, with an emphasis on collaborative art-making in both curricular and co-curricular settings.
- Serving as a source and disseminator of current science and theory about student learning and high-impact pedagogical practices that strengthens educators’ work with students.
- Providing leadership for Virginia Tech’s Aspirations Fellows program, an intensive learning pathway for students especially invested in sustained mentorship in pursuit of the Aspirations for Student Learning.
Matt Ebert, Interim Director for Learning Partnerships, Program Director for Studio 72 Living Learning Community
Andrew Dolbin-MacNab, Interim Associate Director for Learning Partnerships
Dr. Janet Hilder, Assistant Director for Learning Partnerships, Program Director for Thrive Living Learning Community