Bill Cerbin is Professor of Psychology and Assistant to the Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at UW-La Crosse. His responsibilities include university-wide assessment of student learning and faculty development. In addition regular responsibilities in these areas, he has developed and directed several campus projects related to teaching and learning. Currently he directs the Lesson Study Project, www.uwlax.edu/sotl/lsp and coordinates the UWL Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Initiative, www.uwlax.edu/sotl. Formerly, he was director of the Writing in the Major Program, www.uwlax.edu/wimp, and co-director of the UW System Wisconsin Teaching Fellows Program, http://www.uwsa.edu/opid/wtf/index.htm.

He earned a Ph.D. in educational psychology with an emphasis in language and cognition from the University of Chicago and a masters degree in developmental psychology from Columbia University, and has taught undergraduate and graduate courses in the areas of cognitive, developmental, and educational psychology for more than 20 years.

In 1998 he was named a Carnegie Scholar with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. As a Carnegie Scholar he studied the development of student understanding in a problem-based learning psychology class. In 2003 he was selected to be a Lead Scholar with the Carnegie Academy for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning. He has given numerous presentations on lesson study, teaching for understanding, problem-based learning, and course portfolios. He is particularly interested in the use of lesson study to improve teaching and learning, and in development of student understanding as an inherent problem for teaching in higher education.