Are you missing accountability and support for your academic writing? OPD is launching a "Virtual Coffee Shop," an online space to regularly connect with others about their writing. We'll have space to set weekly goals, do pomodoros together, connect in small stage-based groups, and share fun stuff. This community is open to UMass graduate students and post docs working on any part of writing and research. After you preregister for the “Virtual Coffee Shop,” you will be emailed all of the information.

We invite all graduate students and postdocs to participate in the inaugural Teaching Academy, a robust professional development opportunity focused on teaching! During multiple workshops over a three-week period, we will promote creativity, collaboration, inclusivity, and reflective practices that support effective teaching and learning, especially in an online environment. We are excited to be partnering with OPD, CIRTL@UMass, CTL, and more for these workshops!

The power of the 2020 Black Lives Matter movement has invited us to confront the complex ways that racial oppression and other intersecting systems of power continue to kill, exploit, and marginalize Black lives across the world. Yet any conversation about racial equity in our society cannot be divorced from a history of colonialism. Central to the history of colonialism is the role of schooling as an essential arm for colonizing forces to root their own ideologies, histories, and ways-of-being into the oppressed. Much of this logic remains embedded in American education in the service of perpetuating racial and economic inequities. In this workshop, Dr. Jamila Lyiscott will draw on her own research and practice in social justice education to introduce anti-colonial approaches to instruction for all participants. Part of the Teaching Academy!