Biography
Dr. C. Edward Watson is the Associate Vice President for Quality, Advocacy, and LEAP Initiatives for the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U). There, he leads the association’s national and state-level advocacy and policy efforts to advance quality in undergraduate student learning. He also guides AAC&U’s agenda, grounded in the LEAP Initiative, to advance educational quality initiatives within institutions, state systems, and state-based consortia. He also serves as the leader for the LEAP States initiative.
Prior to joining AAC&U in the summer of 2017, Dr. Watson was the Director of the Center for Teaching and Learning at the University of Georgia (UGA) where he led university efforts associated with faculty development, TA development, student learning outcomes assessment, learning technologies, media production services, classroom support and learning spaces, and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He also taught a range of courses on College Teaching, Student Learning, and Course Design. He continues to serve as a Fellow in the Institute of Higher Education at UGA.
Dr. Watson has 20 years of experience in faculty and instructional development and is the founding Executive Editor of the International Journal of ePortfolio, the Executive Editor of the International Journal of Teaching and Learning in Higher Education and is on the board of directors for the International Society for Exploring Teaching and Learning; the Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidenced-based Learning; and the Reacting to the Past Consortium. He is also the author of two new books, Teaching Naked Techniques: A Practical Guide to Designing Better Classes (Jossey-Bass) and Playing to Learn with Reacting to the Past - Research on High Impact, Active Learning Practices (Palgrave MacMillan), both published in 2017.
A sought after speaker on teaching and learning, Dr. Watson has been an invited keynote speaker at conferences by the Association of American Colleges and Universities (AAC&U), the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, the Evidence-based Teaching and Learning Lilly Conference, the Conference on Higher Education Pedagogy, the American Political Science Association, the American Accounting Association, the Virginia Assessment Group, and many others. He was also recently quoted in the New York Times, CNN, the Chronicle of Higher Education, NPR, Campus Technology, EdSurge, and University Business Magazine regarding teaching and learning issues and trends in higher education.