In recent years there has been a concerted effort, across many disciplines, to systematically improve teaching in higher education. Most university faculty strive to be effective teachers. However, there is a segment of this population who are interested in moving a step further; they conduct systematic inquiry in the classroom to ascertain how well their students are learning and how effectively they are teaching. They make their findings public to fellow faculty members and to colleagues in the discipline. This process has been present in the American Meteorology Society via the Symposium on Education for at least the past fourteen years. Many examples of such research have been presented at recent annual meetings, Symposium on Education-University Initiatives.

The formal recognition of this process is termed the “Scholarship of Teaching and Learning” (SoTL). SoTL was first coined in 1990 and has since developed into the method by which teaching is valued as a scholarly activity. By the late 1990s, the Carnegie Foundation and the Pew Charitable Trusts recognized the importance of SoTL and funded the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL). CASTL promotes the development of scholarship of teaching and learning in the academe. The initiative has “begun to stimulate a change of academic culture” that some would argue is long overdue. SoTL can be thought of as a bridge between teaching and research with focus on the enhancement of student learning. It involves creation and dissemination of original research that makes a useful contribution to knowledge and practice of other teachers.

Too often research of classroom practices is not valued as highly as research based in discipline-specific areas. The atmospheric sciences community has been struggling with this for some time now. One concern has been how to attract more interest and participation in the Symposium on Education at the annual meeting. This presentation will provide an overview of SoTL and the role that SoTL can play in promoting classroom research as a scholarly activity to our colleagues in the AMS.