College of Engineering Teaching Fellow

Application window open for Fall 2024 teaching fellow positions

Are you an engineering graduate student? Are you planning on a career that involves teaching? Would you like the chance to have a meaningful teaching experience and design your own seminar course with plenty of support, while getting paid?

Priority deadline February 16th, but applications will continue to be accepted until positions filled. APPLY NOW »

As a COE Teaching Fellow, you will:

  • Teach one to three sections of First-Year Seminar (a maximum of 19 freshmen Exploratory Track and transfer students per class) in a graded seminar that meets once per week in Fall 2024. Each section meets for 50 minutes.
  • Select the topic of the seminar yourself: teach what you love! The shared theme is “fun & informative.” Seminar topics should provide an opportunity for students to gain knowledge of and enthusiasm for engineering. The topic should be of interest and accessible to first-year students. 
  • We've identified some priority themes and welcome your ideas on additional themes
    • Engineering logic
    • Engineering for equitable sustainability
    • Engineering for health and mobility
    • Engineering, artificial intelligence, & machine learning
    • Engineering for racial or social justice
    • Engineering for inclusive design
  • In addition, every First Year Seminar on campus has required components. Information on these requirements is available on-line here. We will help you work these into your classes in effective ways.
  • Please note that in a 50-min class that meets once per week, there’s not a lot of ground that you can cover, so this is not like the work devoted to a full course. In a typical class, you might give a 10 min lecture with two short activities. We encourage instructors to focus on active learning strategies, as one of the University’s goals with this program is to give the students a chance to interact with each other. We’ll help you plan!
  • You will be instructor of record and fully responsible for your own course, but with plenty of friendly support.

Teaching support includes:

  • A required two-day workshop on designing your course, selecting activities, etc. on days to be determined in April and May.
  • A required two-day workshop on class management, leading discussions, writing an attractive course description, etc. Dates to be finalized, in late August or early September.
  • Required weekly one-hour meetings with a group of Teaching Fellows and the Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs, to be scheduled.
  • Teaching resources will be gathered for you 
  • Help in crafting teaching statements suitable for job applications based on your experience

What you get:

  • Approximately $2,000 per section (you may be assigned one, two or three, with identical course content in each section you teach). Students teaching 3 FYS sections will also qualify for a tuition waiver.
  • TFs supporting an RAP section get a $250 bonus per RAP section
  • A set of teaching skills learned and practiced in a supportive environment
  • The chance to develop course materials relevant to your future teaching plans


Contact info and staffing

The COE Teaching Fellows program is sponsored by the Office of the Provost, the College of Engineering, the Graduate School, and the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL). The Teaching Fellows program launched in 2015 when the campus began offering first-year seminars to Exploratory Track freshmen.

The training is coordinated by Prof. Beth Jakob (Biology Department and Associate Dean of the Graduate School), Dr. Denise Pope (Assistant Director for Student Success & Special Projects in the Graduate School), Dr. Johanna Yunker (Associate Director of the Office of Professional Development), and Prof. Mike Knodler (Civil Engineering Associate Dean of the College of Engineering). Beth is a campus co-leader of CIRTL, an organization meant to foster teaching skills in future faculty, so working with first-year seminar instructors is a natural fit.

Our training sessions are offered by a group of faculty and staff experts.

Questions? Please contact Prof. Michael Knodler. CNS should contact Prof. Beth Jakob (ejakob [at] psych [dot] umass [dot] edu (ejakob[at]umass[dot]edu)).

Priority deadline February 16th, but applications will continue to be accepted until positions filled.

APPLY NOW »

CIRTL stands for the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning. It is a national network of 40 research universities that share the goal of preparing graduate students and postdocs to be better teachers. Thus, when the First-Year Seminar program began in 2015, it was natural for CIRTL to be involved.

CIRTL participants across the nation can reach three different levels: CIRTL Associate, CIRTL Practitioner, and CIRTL Scholar. CIRTL Associates become familiar with various principles of good teaching and CIRTL’s three core ideas (teaching-as-research, learning communities, and learning-through-diversity). CIRTL Practitioners also complete an evidence-based teaching project—that is, they apply the skills of research to classroom teaching in order to assess the effectiveness of particular teaching strategies. CIRTL Scholars take their projects to a very high level; some have published their projects in disciplinary teaching journals or presented at national conferences.

All CNS and Engineering Teaching Fellows receive CIRTL Associate status. In addition, many Teaching Fellows take advantage of the control they have of their own First-Year Seminar Classroom to undertake a teaching project. Upon giving a short presentation on their project to the CIRTL community, they receive Practitioner status. A dedicated few go on to be CIRTL Scholars, conducting a more in-depth project and presenting their research off campus.

Teaching Fellows will be introduced in more depth to the CIRTL program at the May training. We encourage Teaching Fellows to take advantage of this program!

Keep an eye on this section for updates and additions.
 

Financial FAQ

I’m a grad student. Can I do this on top of a 20 hour per week TA or RA and get that extra money?

  • We prefer to hire people who do not already have full support. However, you may use this to supplement partial support from other sources, such as a 10-hour TA or RA. In some cases, we may allow an exception so you teach in addition to a 20 hour TA or RA (with support from your advisor and GPD if you are a graduate student). However, international students can never teach more than 20 hours per week.

I’m a postdoc. Can I do this on top of my 40-hour per week postdoc position?

  • No, but you can reduce the number of hours you are paid through your postdoc in exchange for the time for this. This is an excellent way to extend limited grant funds while getting valuable experience.

Other FAQ

I was a Teaching Fellow in a previous year.  Can I apply again?

  • Yes. We are hoping for a mixture of old and new Teaching Fellows. We want to spread this opportunity widely but having a few experienced people as peer mentors is great. There are questions particular to this situation on the application.

I can’t attend one of the training sessions. Can I still be a Teaching Fellow?

  • Sorry. The training sessions are filled with great information and guest speakers, and we can’t recreate them for individuals. See an older schedule here to get a flavor of what we are planning for you!

How many Teaching Fellows will there be?

  • Approximately 15 from Engineering depending on number of sections taught by each.

Testimonials from past College of Natural Sciences Teaching Fellows

“I feel like my teaching portfolio has really been strengthened by the fellowship. My approach as an educator is more focused on student success rather than just teaching the course material.”

“I didn’t realize how unprepared I was to teach until I was a CNS teaching fellow. The good news is, I absolutely feel prepared now! It was great to get hands-on experience with the whole process, from course design to syllabus writing to material prep to making tough calls in gray-ish situations about grades and policies. The most valuable training I’ve gotten at UMass!”

“I would recommend being a teaching fellow, it helped me learn what it’s really like to plan and implement your own syllabus without the high stakes of a first time teaching job.”

“Great hands-on experience, and autonomy”

“This was a really great experience and opportunity to spread your enthusiasm for a topic in a very laid back setting to students who may not have even known that topic existed.”

“This was an excellent way to try out instructing your own course, which is a far different experience from TA-ing a course someone else designed.”

“I highly recommend being a teaching fellow. For me, the most useful part of the entire experience were the teaching workshops. Being mandatory, these workshops forced me to take the time to learn more about teaching strategies and how to become a better teacher. Getting the teaching experience was useful as well (actually doing the teaching), but I think the mandatory workshops, and getting feedback on my teaching during the weekly meetings, were the most helpful for me. Overall, the experience helped me to better understand how I could improve as a teacher.”

“It is much more satisfying that just being a TA. Getting to develop and try out your own content really give you experience that I’m not sure you could get anywhere else on campus.”

“Imagine this fellowship as a rough draft to your academic career, you will learn, revise, get good and bad feedback, rewrite, and have a polished package for when you enter the field of higher education.”

“This experience gave me a far more realistic sense of what designing and managing a course looks like than TAing ever did. This program is a must for any graduate student considering a career that involves teaching. I will feel far more confident stepping into a classroom as an instructor in the future as I have already done a semester with training wheels on as a teaching fellow!”

“Great experience. The training has been useful for all my other teaching and facilitation work. I’ve already gotten to talk about designing my own course in job interviews!”

“This is a unique opportunity to plan and execute your own course, teach in a small-class setting, and work with peers through difficult teaching situations. While it is a lot of work, you learn much in the process – the training especially was very valuable!”

“Relive the youthful passion for your area of research by teaching entry-level information to those who may share your interest. Enrich your graduate experience by impacting those who may need your mentorship most!”