Gen Ed: Jerry Gaff

Jerry G. Gaff is Senior Scholar and Director of the Preparing Future Faculty Program at the Association of American Colleges and Universities, which supports high quality, purposeful, and coherent education at its over 700 member colleges and universities and which serves as the national voice of liberal learning. He articulates a vision of effective education and strong, distinctive institutions and develops strategies to help academic leaders work toward those goals through such activities as demonstration projects, conferences, and publications.

He has directed national projects to strengthen undergraduate general education programs and to develop new models for the graduate preparation of future faculty members. He also is the founding director of the Network for Academic Renewal that assists administrators and faculty members to improve their academic programs in such ways as internationalizing the curriculum, using diversity and technology to aid learning, and developing more quality and coherence in general education curricula. Dr. Gaff received a Bachelor of Arts degree from DePauw University in 1958 and a Ph.D. in psychology from Syracuse University in 1965.

Through his studies, projects, and related professional activities, he contributed to four different efforts to improve undergraduate education. During the 1960s, while a teacher at Raymond College, an experimental college at the University of the Pacific, he started studying experimental colleges. He wrote and compiled The Cluster College (1970), the first systematic analysis and assessment of this new form of college, and he consulted with institutions about creating alternative institutions. During the 1970s Dr. Gaff helped to define the new terms of faculty development to include growth as a teacher and as a member of the academic community with his Toward Faculty Renewal (1975). Through directing the Project on Institutional Renewal Through the Improvement of Teaching, writing, speaking, and consulting, he helped to establish centers for faculty development or teaching excellence at dozens of institutions.

During the 1980s he worked on curriculum issues and assisted scores of institutions to strengthen their core curricula. He published General Education Today (1983), New Life for the College Curriculum (1991), and Strong Foundations: Twelve Principles of Effective General Education Programs (1994). Beginning in 1993, he has directed the Preparing Future Faculty program, which has awarded grants to research universities to develop model programs that prepare graduate students for research, teaching, and service roles in a diversity of colleges and universities. Dr. Gaff has served as a frequent speaker at events such as the Alexander Meiklejohn Lecture at the University of Wisconsin. He served as a consultant to all sorts of colleges and universities; staff for such professional development activities as the Lilly Endowment Workshop on the Liberal Arts; and member of editorial boards such as Innovative Higher Education. He has co-edited the Handbook of the Undergraduate Curriculum: A Comprehensive Guide to Purposes, Structures, Practices, and Change (1997) sponsored by AAC&U.

Jerry Gaff concluded his work on Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) last fall and remains affiliated with AAC&U as a senior scholar. Gaff was the founding director of PFF and worked in collaboration with many others for over a decade on programs to help doctoral students become better prepared teachers. Forty-three research universities have established PFF programs. Gaff's work with AAC&U was also instrumental in launching the general education revival in the 1980s, and resulted in AAC&U's classic report Integrity in the College Curriculum. Gaff also worked as an academic dean at Hamline University and received an honorary degree from Saint Joseph's College.