In response to national concerns a decade ago, driven by research that showed that higher education was making little impact on students development of broad competencies and critical thinking, the provost and president of Purdue University, a research university, instituted a program whose goals were to build on the accumulated knowledge on effective teaching to facilitate student learning, improve outcomes, and change the institutional culture around teaching and learning objectives to which many institutions aspire, but which few consistently attain, or attain at scale.