Maryellen Weimer teaches beginning students introductory communication courses full-time at Penn State Berks, where she is a professor of teaching and learning. In 2005, Weimer received the Milton S. Eisenhower Award for Distinguished Teaching, one of Penn State’s university-wide teaching awards.
Weimer received a Ph.D. in speech communication in 1981 from Penn State. Spending most of her career at Penn State, Weimer has held several different positions at the university. For ten years she directed the university’s Instructional Development Program. She also served as a senior research associate in Penn State’s Center for the Study of Higher Education, where she was an associate director of the National Center on Postsecondary Teaching, Learning, and Assessment, a U.S. Department of Education Research and Development Center funded for five years.
Over the past twenty years, Weimer has consulted with more than 275 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada as well as overseas on a variety of instructional issues. She regularly keynotes national conferences and regional meetings.
Since 1987, Weimer has edited Teaching Professor, a monthly newsletter on college teaching. She has authored or edited nine books, including one on faculty development, one on teaching for new faculty, and an anthology edited with Robert Menges, Teaching on Solid Ground: Using Scholarship to Improve Practice (Jossey-Bass, 1995). Her most recent Jossey-Bass book, Learner-Centered Teaching: Five Key Changes to Practice, was published in 2002.