Forty-eight graduate students and postdoctoral teaching fellows from the colleges of Natural Sciences, Engineering, and the School of Public Health and Health Sciences have completed their multi-day training workshop to prepare them as instructors of record for their own First-Year Seminars for the fall 2023 semester.

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This intensive workshop, organized by the Graduate School, covers everything from the big picture of how to design an effective and inclusive course, to the details of moment-to-moment classroom management and how to connect undergraduates to resources they need.  The program will continue throughout the semester as teaching fellows meet with peers and mentors every week in order to share successes and strategies and collaboratively troubleshoot any problems that may arise.

“This is a really impactful program, because it gives grad students and postdocs the opportunity to develop their own class on a topic they’re excited about, and the thousands of first-year students who take these seminars benefit from engaged and dedicated instructors and a wide variety of topics to choose from,” says Denise Pope, Graduate School assistant director of student success and program coordinator.

In August and throughout September, the Teaching Academy offers a wide range of teaching topics through a postdoctoral and student-led series of workshops. While the Graduate School offers teaching workshops throughout the year, the Teaching Fellows Program and the Teaching Academy allow grad students and postdocs to take a deeper dive into pedagogy at the start of the academic year. Experienced graduate student and postdoctoral instructors propose and develop their own workshops based on their teaching expertise and interests.

“There's something for both the first-time TA and experienced instructors who want to hone their skills, and it’s really valuable to learn these skills from their peers. Often the topics are really timely—pedagogical concerns that grad students have right now—such as trauma-savvy pedagogy and supporting neurodivergent students,” said the academy's organizer, Johanna Yunker, who is also associate director of the Graduate School's Office of Professional Development.

Yunker added, “It’s also a great professional development opportunity for the presenters. They receive individual mentoring as they prepare their workshop and the opportunity to add a workshop for one’s peers to their resume is gold. Some former presenters have presented their workshops at other universities and still others are now working in faculty development and teaching support roles.”