Corly Petersen Brooke, the dynamic professor who teaches the popular human sexuality course on campus, has taken on yet another challenging task.

She has been named the new director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Iowa State.

Brooke has been a professor of human development and family studies for 21 years at ISU and is involved with undergraduate teaching.

“The position for director opened when Steve Richardson, the former director, left to take a position as assistant provost in Bowling Green [State University],” Brooke said. “Because I dedicated my career to teaching at the university level, I decided to apply for the position.”

The main function of the teaching center is to enhance the teaching development of the faculty, Brooke said.

“The number one goal of the strategic plan of the university is to strengthen and focus on the delivery of undergraduate teaching,” she said.

Brooke said she has planned several ways to improve the delivery of undergraduate teaching.

“I want to work more closely with student affairs and work toward receiving external grants to study how we can further enhance teaching development at ISU,” she said.

In addition, Brooke said there are learning communities being developed in the residence halls and curriculum initiatives by the faculty with whom they are collaborating.

The second major goal is to build stronger bridges with student learners, Brooke said.

“The center is certainly tied to the students,” Brooke said. “They are the consumers and recipients of what comes out of this effort. Maybe there will even be a student on the board, which will enable us to open up channels of communication with students.”

Brooke said as director she would also like to increase recognition of outstanding teachers at ISU.

“I want to assist the faculty in how to better represent their teaching accomplishments,” she said. “At a university with very strong research emphasis, we need more recognition of our teachers who are doing outstanding jobs in the classrooms as well.”

Brooke has many hopes and plans for the Center for Teaching Excellence, and she said it won’t be easy accomplishing them.

But the strong-willed professor who has written an editorial for the Wall Street Journal and appeared on shows such as “CBS This Morning,” isn’t phased.

“I am very busy, and it will be a challenge,” Brooke said laughingly about how she manages to juggle everything at once.

“But I feel extremely optimistic about my goals for the center and making progress,” she said. “And I’ve always been a busy professional, so we will see what happens.”