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CLLC One of Only 12 from Across U.S. and Canada to Receive Learning Center Grant

August 24, 2015

CLLC One of Only 12 from Across U.S. and Canada to Receive Learning Center Grant

CLLC Wins Steelcase Learning Center Grant

CENTER FOR LANGUAGES, LITERATURES AND CULTURES ONE OF ONLY 12 FROM ACROSS U.S. AND CANADA TO RECEIVE LEARNING CENTER GRANT

The Center for Languages, Literatures and Cultures (CLLC) is one of only 12 college and university recipients across the U.S. and Canada selected to receive a 2015 Active Learning Center grant from Steelcase Education. The $50,000 grant will allow CLLC to establish a Steelcase Active Learning Center (ALC) as an integral part of the World Media and Culture Center at CLLC.

Steelcase Education, founded in 1912, awards Active Learning Center grants to schools and colleges to transform their physical classroom space to advance learning in new and important ways. CLLC was chosen because of its special enthusiasm for active learning and a commitment to advancing the ways we understand and support it through teaching, technology and the built environment.

“The group that we want to impact the most is our students,” said Diane Birckbichler, CLLC director. “Configuration of space is everything in the teaching of foreign languages and cultures. In the new ALC environment, our students will be actively engaged and energetic while moving freely between the different modes to collaborate with other students and enjoy their experience to the fullest.”

The Steelcase ALC is a blended learning model that can be readily transformed into three modes: lecture, group and discussion. The classroom arrangements and the easily movable classroom furniture created by Steelcase provide the flexibility, mobility and creativity that allow instructors to transform the classroom and students to more fully engage, collaborate and create. 

“We are confident that the blended learning model in the Steelcase ALC will inspire our instructors to think more carefully and creatively about how they organize their classes and their lessons and how the transformations of space that the blended learning model provides can support and enhance the learning environment,” Birckbichler said. “With the Steelcase grant, CLLC will become a model for what a truly transformative classroom looks like.”

LOTH Columbus, a 2015 Steelcase Certified Gold Level Dealer, will be working with CLLC to create the new learning environment. CLLC staff members who will be responsible for the Active Learning Center are: Diane W. Birckbichler, director; Rebecca Bias, assistant director, CLLC; and Sujan Manandhar, distance learning and technology manager.

A grand opening event to showcase the new learning center will be held in September 2015.

For more information about the CLLC and the Steelcase ACL grant, contact CLLC director Diane Birckbichler.