BSCI’s Leathem Co-teaching TLP Certification Workshops

The workshops are part of the Teaching and Learning Practitioner (TLP) Certification Program offered by the American Council of Construction Education (ACCE).

The mission of the TLP program is to provide construction educators and industry professionals with the opportunity to improve their teaching practices and curricula while gaining a credential that can be recognized industry wide. The program provides a teaching certification that can help show construction education institutions the holder has achieved a minimum level of knowledge in teaching.

Leathem has 11 years of industry experience in construction management within the commercial/industrial sector of the Chicago, Illinois, building market and five years as an assistant professor in the Building Construction Science program at Mississippi State University. A member of the faculty at Auburn’s McWhorter School of Building Science since 2017, he was also recently elected as the second Vice President of the Associated Schools of Construction after serving as its International Proceedings Editor for five years.

Leathem and Dr. Tony Lamanna, an associate professor at Arizona State, first organized a two-day workshop on the fundamentals of teaching in 2019. Leathem said the workshop was a brainchild the two conceived when they met at their first ACCE meeting back in 2013. The course was designed to help train educators lacking formal training in teaching and learning.

They saw it as suitable for both individuals transitioning to academia from previous roles in the construction management industry as well as new faculty just finishing graduate work. The workshop’s success and popularity eventually led to its evolution into a formalized ACCE certificate program.

“When the opportunity arose to develop these workshops I jumped at it,” Leathem said. “When I started in academia, coming straight out of industry, I quickly realized I knew a lot about construction, but very little about how to teach it well. Now, helping develop better teachers aligns perfectly with my passion for research in elevating the student learning experience.”