The National Institute for Technology in Liberal Education (NITLE) has the stated mission of "catalyzing innovative teaching in order to enrich and advance liberal education in the digital age." The initiative provides programs and services that promote inter-institutional collaboration and innovative uses of technology at small, undergraduate-centered, residential colleges and universities.
NITLE delivers its programs and services to participating institutions from its headquarters at Southwestern University [1], a private liberal arts college in Georgetown, Texas. NITLE also maintains offices in Ann Arbor, Michigan and its small staff is distributed across seven states. The organization provides programs and services related to teaching, curriculum development, instructional technology, learning management systems, digital repositories, and communication/collaboration technologies.
NITLE was established in September, 2001, through a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The original charge of this grant-funded initiative was to stimulate collaboration between selected liberal arts colleges and to act as a catalyst for the effective integration of emerging and newer digital technologies into teaching, learning, scholarship, and information management at those colleges.
In January, 2006, NITLE reorganized under Ithaka, bringing together and merging with three other Mellon-funded instructional technology initiatives: the Center for Educational Technology at Middlebury College, the Associated Colleges of the South Technology Center, and the Midwest Instructional Technology Center (associated with the Great Lakes Colleges Association and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest). The reorganization merged NITLE and the three regional technology centers into a unified, national initiative for providing instructional technology programs for providers of liberal education in the United States. The reformed organization continues to receive grant support from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
In May, 2009, NITLE partnered with and moved its headquarters to Southwestern University. In the same month, W. Joseph (Joey) King, a Southwestern graduate who holds a Ph.D. in human-computer interaction from the University of Washington, was named the new executive director of NITLE.