The walls are barren; there are no stacks of paperwork surrounding the white iMac G4 on her desk; no bulletin boards overwhelmed by snapshots or Post-It notes. Physically, the decor reveals that Ellen Sutter hasn't resided in her new office in Wellman 17 too long. But talk to her for a few minutes and you realize that, philosophically, the Teaching Resources Center has resided in the heart and mind of the 20-year campus faculty member and adviser for years.

• long-time pomology professor, Sutter is the first non-interim-status director the center has had in four years. She officially assumed the director's post this summer, but has long considered classroom instruction the most rewarding component of her work - as well as the most important mission of the university.

"I've always truly enjoyed teaching and advising and working with students - more so as time goes by. So, when the opportunity came to get more involved in enhancing undergraduate education, it was pretty exciting."

The center's learning and technology experts administer dozens of special services, programs, workshops, and grants and fellowships, and Sutter is already making plans for more.

There are videotaping services instructors can utilize to review their in-class effectiveness and mid-quarter reviews instructors can request to get unbiased specific feedback from students. And there are test-scoring services, programs to orient new faculty, and workshops on everything from how to handle a large class to getting students to speak up in small-group settings.

Her office fields up to 20 new calls a day from faculty members and teaching assistants - many of whom, these days, are seeking advice on how to integrate technological aids, such as the Internet or PowerPoint presentations, into their lessons, Sutter said.

In addition, faculty queries about the freshman seminars program - also coordinated by the Teaching Resources Center - are increasingly keeping her office busy. A record 58 seminars are planned this academic year, and the deadline for spring quarter proposals is still a few months away.

"The seminars offer freshmen a chance to meet in a different format. They also help students see that faculty are human beings. And the topics are so diverse - that's neat."

Upcoming seminars will tackle themes including the evolution of opera, the right to die, determinants of life span, Elvis, physics in the 20th century, and screenwriting basics.

Despite the breadth of assistance currently offered by the center, Sutter still sees the possibility, and need, for more. And she hopes to build collaborations throughout campus.

One of those collaborations, she said, would be with Mediaworks, which also provides campus faculty with technology support. "I want to use both resources to get a different culture of courses going," she said, classes that stray somewhat from the current norm in both content and structure.

"We want to see if we can get make learning more experiential. To get more students figuring out how to learn the material and critically evaluate it as opposed to being spoon-fed material and just repeating it on tests."

The future also could include putting more coursework on the Web. So, instead of lecturing to the entire class three times a week, a professor might have the class come in one-third at a time for smaller-group discussions.

She also would like to develop programs with the new School of Education. "They tend to be K-12 focused," Sutter said. "But there's no reason we couldn't get more involved in collaborating on programs that would apply to post-secondary learning."

In addition, Sutter is looking to perhaps augment the weeklong Summer Institute on Technology in Teaching course with "Mini-SITTs" that faculty members could complete in a couple days and take throughout the year.

Sutter also would simply like to make the center more visible and to continue to get feedback from professors on what services they would like to have available to them.

Meanwhile, she looks forward to resuming her undergraduate courses in plant tissue and propagation next quarter - not only because she truly enjoys teaching, but also because she truly loves learning from students.

"I often use my students as sounding boards on thoughts I have about teaching. They tend to be very honest," Sutter said. "They're my most valuable resource."

You're an expert in fruit-bearing plants. What's your favorite fruit?

Cherries - not because of what they taste like, but because they look so beautiful hanging on the tree.

What's your favorite campus spot?

• like the row of crab apple trees between King Hall and the arboretum. When they're in bloom, they just make a canopy of color.

What's your personal philosophy?

People should come before all the rest. They're more important than the job, the research, the classes and they're more important than policies and procedures. It's not to say that you break the rules, but you have to consider the human being. People think I'm a softy, but it works - students make it who otherwise wouldn't.

What's your guilty pleasure?

TV's "CSI". I like the blend of suspense and science. Whether it's fictional or not, they get you to believe science is really important.

Read any good books lately?

• Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley. It showed how people get stuck in ways of looking at a situation from only one perspective. And I'm a pushover for human interest stories, about ordinary people who overcome the odds to make it. I find that very inspiring.

You have been an adviser for many years. What's the best advice you ever received?

My father taught me by example not to ever judge people as a group but to always take each person one by one and to give people the benefit of the doubt.

What's something people don't know about you?

• think people know I garden, but I don't think they know the extent of my interest in it, especially rock gardening. My yard is filled with different types of gardens and a pond. It's time-consuming, but very relaxing.