Leadership
UCITE Director
Matthew Garrett, PhD, professor of music education and coordinator of undergraduate studies in music education, joined the faculty at Case Western Reserve University in 2009. Garrett has been involved with UCITE leadership since 2016, having served as faculty facilitator for the Learning Fellows program, and as interim director of the center. As director, Garrett continues to draw upon his background in education and learning pedagogy with more than 20 years of classroom teaching experience to help faculty members and students explore the art and science of teaching.
Garrett's research interests include LGBTQ issues in music education and the development and utilization of critical thinking skills in music classrooms. He published Honoring Trans and Gender-Expansive Students in Music Education (Oxford University Press) with co-author Joshua Palkki in 2021. Garrett's scholarship has also been published in national and international music education journals. He has been interviewed regarding his work on developing critical thinking skills for articles in the national music education journal Teaching Music. His strategies for incorporating critical thinking strategies in choral music rehearsal environments were published as part of a hybrid print/online music text series from Hal Leonard and McGraw Hill Education, Voices in Concert.
Garrett has been nominated twice for the Carl F. Wittke Award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching. He has spoken on the CWRU Power of Diversity Lecture Series and on the Social Justice Institute Research Lunch Series. In 2016, Garrett was honored with a CWRU Prism Award for outstanding contributions to the campus LGBTQ community.
Originally from South Carolina, Garrett earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in music education from Florida State University. Before joining the CWRU faculty, he was a music educator in Central Florida and Southeast Massachusetts public schools at the middle and high school levels for more than 10 years. He continues to work with students and teachers in public schools across the country, as a clinician and guest conductor. You can contact him at mgarrett@case.edu.
UCITE Assistant Director
Jennifer Hadingham, PhD joins the CWRU community in 2020 with over 20 years of experience in faculty educational development.
Hadingham began her career at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg Center for Learning, Teaching and Development in South Africa. In 2011, she became the Assistant Director of the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Rochester, New York. At Rochester, Hadingham expanded faculty development offerings to include teaching and mentoring training, graduate teaching assistant training, and undergraduate peer-led team learning classes.
Hadingham leads the UCITE Learning Fellows, Assessment Learning Community, and Teaching Assistant Training programs. You can contact her at jennifer.hadingham@case.edu.
Faculty Advancement Assistant Director
Matt Smith, MM, joins UCITE and the Office of Faculty Development after more than a decade in the School of Graduate Studies here at CWRU. Most recently, Matt served as the project director for the Northern Ohio AGEP Alliance (NOA-AGEP), a consortium of universities funded by the National Science Foundation's Alliances for Graduate Education and the Professoriate program to develop, implement, study, and institutionalize a model to improve underrepresented minority student participation, preparation, and success in STEM graduate education, and to prepare them for entry into the professoriate. Matt currently sits on the Sustained Dialogue Executive Committee and the Diversity Leadership Council, and he has previously served on the board of the Women Staff Leadership Development Institute, on the steering committee of the LGBT Center, and as chair of the Staff Advisory Council. Matt is a certified executive coach and has worked in this capacity with faculty, administrators, postdocs, and graduate students at universities across northern Ohio.
In addition to his role at CWRU, Matt is a third-year PhD student in higher education administration at Kent State University. His research focuses on how white supremacy and toxic masculinity manifest in the systems and structures impacting faculty career pathways. Matt received a master’s degree in saxophone performance from Northwestern University, where he studied with Dr. Frederick L. Hemke. As an affiliate professor of saxophone at Western Washington University, Matt taught woodwind pedagogy, saxophone and new music performance while also directing and conducting the Composers of Western ensembles. You can contact him at mrs160@case.edu.
Faculty Advancement Department Assistant
Adrienne (or simply, Ageh) joins UCITE and the Faculty Advancement Team after graduating from Case Western Reserve University with a PhD in Music Education in 2022. In addition to her role as the Faculty Advancement Department Assistant, Ageh explores the intersection between music engagement, community-level adversity, and the experience of trauma. Primarily a community-based music educator, Ageh has designed music education opportunities in homeless shelters, alternative to incarceration programs, and hospital-based violence intervention programs. Her recent work in the Cleveland community and research frames active music-making as a tool for violence prevention through trauma-informed, asset-informed, and anti-oppressive teaching.
Ageh is proud to continue her work in community advocacy by connecting CWRU community members, students, and faculty members to the many resources available to them through UCITE and the Office of Faculty Development, under the banner of Faculty Advancement. Feel free to contact Ageh directly at adrienne.bedell@case.edu.
Foundations
Case Western Reserve's University Center for Innovation in Teaching and Education (UCITE) was founded in 1994 by James Zull (1939-2019), Professor Emeritus of Biology, with the support of the Faculty Senate, and with major gifts from former CWRU President T.Keith Glennan, Evan and Eric Nord, and S. Sterling McMillan. Zull noted that the initial goal of UCITE was to support and catalyze faculty activities which lead to innovative teaching and educational programs. Underlying this goal was the concept of the "teacher-scholar," a premise that continues to this day. Teacher-Scholars are expected to be creative contributors to their disciplines and to the teaching of that discipline. As leading scholars in their fields, Zull felt that CWRU faculty are positioned to develop leading educational programs and to utilize and contribute to the development of the most effective ways to teach their various disciplines. He suggested that the desire to be a member of an academic community presumes an underlying commitment to the objectives of improving teaching and learning.
Zull codified thinking and learning as products of a biological process in his seminal text, The Art of Changing the Brain (2002). Strengthening or changing biological process requires time and effort on the part of teacher and student. Former UCITE Director, Mano Singham, characterized Zull’s perspective: [Jim] said that we should focus less on teaching and more on learning (i.e., we should pay less attention to what the teacher says and more on what students are doing because that is what influences their neural connections and determines what they learn). Our teaching efforts should be directed towards creating the conditions that make students want to put in that effort in productive ways. Zull's contributions to the Science of Teaching and Learning literature continue to serve as foundational resources for teaching and learning centers: The Art of Changing the Brain and From Brain to Mind (2011).
Mano Singham, PhD, Director Emeritus of UCITE and retired adjunct associate professor of Physics, is a theoretical nuclear physicist and the author of four books: Quest for Truth: Scientific Progress and Religious Beliefs (2000), The Achievement Gap in US education: Canaries in the Mine (2005), God vs. Darwin: The War Between Creationism and Evolution in the Classroom (2009), and The Great Paradox of Science: Why Its Conclusions Can Be Relied Upon Even Though They Cannot Be Proven (2019).
You can contact him via email at mano.singham@case.edu. His personal blog deals with science, history and philosophy of science, religion, politics, the media, education, learning, books, and films.
Sarah de Swart, PhD, is the former Interim Director of UCITE and a former Director of the Office of Faculty Development. She is an organizational and communications consultant, certified executive coach, team facilitator and professional voice and speech coach with more than 20 years experience in the areas of personal and professional development. A graduate of Harvard University with a bachelor’s degree cum laude in History and Literature, de Swart holds a Master’s degree in Theater Arts and Ph.D. in Organizational Behavior from Case Western Reserve University. She is also a professional actress who performs on local and national radio and television commercials and training videos.