In 2025, Academic Affairs made significant investments to enhance teaching and learning. We considered the pros and cons of current providers and competitors; discussed with deans, chairs, program directors and Faculty Senate; sent surveys to obtain feedback; and negotiated contracts with merchants.
Here is an update on AA initiatives.
And the new Learning Management System is…
We will continue with an updated version of D2L Brightspace with a seven-year contract. As we looked closely at D2L’s current and new functions, compared it to Canvas, asked faculty and students to participate in demos and sandboxes, we found many positives:
- This decision requires no migration or additional work on anyone’s part.
- D2L developed several functions as a direct response to our feedback and requests, which tells me the company is interested in listening and working with us to provide solutions.
- Solutions that they provided include easier site navigation, and a syllabus module that provides data on syllabus usage and automatically populates the course calendar tool.
- Additional features include Accessibility+, Lumi AI, and more.
Yes, you may have to learn a few new ways to do things, but it is not a complete overhaul into a new system.
Here is a link to the timeline and training opportunities.
Enhancing Faculty Career and Professional Development
We replaced Faculty180 with Watermark Faculty Success, which eliminates manual tasks for annual reports, course evaluations, service contributions and more with a system that tracks and manage faculty accomplishments and provides better information for everyone.
Easier, better advising for all with Stellic – 100% participation in Fall 2026
By Fall 2026, all faculty and professional advisors are expected to fully utilize Stellic, which launched in 2023. We will host training throughout Spring 2026 to make sure everyone knows how to utilize Stellic for notes, calendaring and reporting. You and your students deserve this enhanced advising experience.
Extend your research reach with SciVal
Find collaborators, demonstrate your impact for promotion and funding applications, and discover cross-disciplinary areas of research via the extensive research analytics platform, SciVal. Here is an overview and guide for setting up an account: SciVal Lib Guide
High-performance AI computing on campus
Announced Tuesday, I know you have a lot of questions about TCU AI2. This is an institutional technology with many opportunities. For Academic Affairs, we will start the new year with conversations, workshops, webinars, and other venues for ideas and suggestions for utilizing this powerful tool for operations, student and faculty projects, research, teaching, learning and more. In the meantime, you can find resources, updates and guidelines here.
That’s it for now, with more to come in 2026. While 2025 has been a busy and sometimes difficult year, it has also been a productive year as evidenced by the student achievements that will be on display during our December commencement. I hope you will take some time over the winter break to watch the Alamo Bowl (Go Frogs!), spend precious time with your loved ones, reflect and meditate on life’s blessings, and pray for one another, our students and the greater TCU community. It’s been my pleasure and privilege to serve alongside you.