Building your Teaching Portfolio for Promotion, Reappointment, and Tenure
Comprised of information garnered from Vanderbilt chairs, associate deans and past members of The University Promotion and Tenure Review Committee (“PTRC”), this informal online information session will clarify the role of your teaching dossier within the tenure process and delve into its central components. Additionally, this session will offer tips and strategies for assembling your dossier and an opportunity to address your questions and concerns. If you would like to attend, please register here.
Facilitator: Brian DeLevie (Associate Director, CFT)
Date: November 3rd
Time: 10:00-11:00am
Where: Online via Zoom (links will be provided the week before the event)
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Soliciting Mid-Semester Feedback from Students
It’s that time of the semester when you may be wondering whether your course is going all that well and what students are thinking about it. We at the CFT are here to help you collect just this kind of information and support you as you decide what to do with it. There are a couple of ways you can collect information. First, you could sign up for a mid-semester feedback consultation with the CFT staff who would use a small group analysis (SGA) process to gather student thoughts in your absence. This is not unlike a focus group process, which is described further here, and it only takes twenty minutes of class time. Second, you could collect the information via an anonymous survey that you conduct yourself. If you prefer this option, you might benefit from reading a guide on how to do this by former CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow, Robert Marx, “Soliciting and Utilizing Mid-Semester Feedback.” Whichever method you choose, we are happy to help you make sense of the results and what, if anything, you might like to change in your teaching. If you would like to schedule a mid-semester feedback consultation, please call Juliet Traub (615-322-7290) or write to us here.
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HIPS Workshops
The CFT’s High Impact Practices workshop series continues in October and November with the following events (in chronological order). Some are coming up quickly, so please register as soon as you can:
Supporting Religious Belonging in the Classroom
Vanderbilt students of all faith traditions seek belonging in every phase of social and academic life on campus. Educators across the curriculum can play a vital role in supporting this belonging by accommodating students’ religious observances, encouraging and navigating inter-faith dialogue, and developing students’ literacies and critical consciousness of religious traditions. This workshop will be an opportunity to discuss these and other practices with experienced educators, including Chris Donald (University Chaplain and Director of Spiritual and Religious Life), Rachel Heath (Assistant Director of the Carpenter Program in Religion, Gender, and Sexuality), and Adeana McNicholl (Assistant Professor of Religious Studies). If you are interested in attending, please register here.
Facilitator: Joe Bandy (CFT Interim Director)
Date: Fri, October 13th
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Where: Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor
Fostering Belonging and Community in the Classroom
In contemporary higher education settings, classrooms have witnessed a notable surge in diversity. Research posits that cultivating a genuine sense of belonging, as elucidated by Strayhorn (2018), significantly influences student engagement and academic attainment. We invite you to participate in this workshop, where we will delve into evidence-based methodologies and practical approaches to promote a tangible sense of belonging and foster a cohesive classroom community. This endeavor aims to augment student engagement, elevate academic performance, and bolster overall student well-being. If you are interested in attending, please register here.
Facilitator: Ransford Pinto (Assistant Director, CFT)
Date: Wed, October 18th
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm
Where: Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor
Using a Process-Oriented Approach to Student Writing to Deepen Learning and Engagement
Research suggests that providing students repeated opportunities to create, evaluate, and revise various types of writing, especially for authentic audiences, can catalyze deeper forms of learning. Through this workshop, we will discuss research-based strategies for improving student writing and content learning in a variety of disciplinary areas. Participants will either revise an existing writing assignment or outline a writing lesson that applies effective writing pedagogy. We will also consider the affordances and challenges that ChatGPT and other forms of generative AI present to writing pedagogy while exploring examples of writing assignments that integrate generative AI, including some developed by Vanderbilt faculty. If you would like to attend, please register here.
Facilitators: Laura Carter-Stone (Postdoctoral Fellow, CFT) and Marcy Pedzwater (Instructional Designer, ODE)
Date: Thurs, October 26th
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm
Where: Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor
Developing Collaborative Assignments
Research indicates that collaborative assignments and projects can promote meaningful learning by inviting students to address complex problems while engaging the insights and perspectives of others. In this workshop, participants will develop an outline for a collaborative group project or assignment that they plan to deploy in the spring semester. Co-facilitated by Boni Yraguen (PhD, Mechanical Engineering) and Laura Carter-Stone (PhD, Teaching and Learning), participants will explore a broad range of possible formats and methods of assessment for assignments from STEM, Humanities, and Social Sciences-oriented classes. Participants will work in disciplinary peer groups to identify where this type of assignment would fit into their course, craft learning objectives, assessment methods, and other features of their collaborative project or assignment to support student learning. If you are interested in attending, please register here.
Facilitator: Laura Carter-Stone (Postdoctoral Fellow, CFT) & Boni Yraguen (Instructional Consultant, CFT)
Date: Tues, November 7th
Time: 1:00 – 2:00 pm
Where: Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor
Transforming Classroom Conflict into Learning
In these times of political polarization and contentious dialogue throughout our society, it is not uncommon for educators across the curriculum to experience, or at least fear, student conflict in the classroom. Whether it is due to differences sparked by ideology, identity, or simple intellectual disagreement, student conflicts may stray beyond productive debate into highly reactive and harmful interactions. These moments hold the possibility of, at the very least, disrupting classroom cultures of trust necessary for critical learning, and at the very most, leading to traumas for students and faculty. This workshop will focus on strategies that educators may use, both to prevent unproductive conflict, and failing that, to resolve and transform them into developmental experiences for all. To help in this work will be faculty who have extensive research expertise and/or teaching experience in navigating contentious topics, Dana Nelson (Nancy Perot Chair of English and Professor of American Studies), Alan Wiseman (Cornelius Vanderbilt Chair in Political Science and Professor of Law), and Allison Anoll (Assistant Professor of Political Science). If you are interested in attending, please register here.
Facilitator: Joe Bandy (Interim Director, CFT)
Date: Mon, November 13th
Time: 12:00-1:15pm
Where: Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor
Interdisciplinary Teaching
Are you teaching a subject that is inter- or multi-disciplinary and somewhat outside of your comfort zone? Are you team teaching a course with someone from another discipline and adjusting to their discipline’s ways of thinking or “signature pedagogies”? Are you hoping that your students develop a thoroughly multi-disciplinary understanding of a topic, but not sure how you might help them to do so? In this workshop, we will help you to define what interdisciplinarity means to you, and how you might structure it for your teaching context. We also hope to help you respond to these teaching challenges so that you, your teaching partners, and your students can benefit from a more dynamic multidisciplinary form of teaching. If you are interested in attending, please register here.
Facilitator: Elizabeth Meadows (Associate Director, Robert Penn Warren Center) and Joe Bandy (Interim Director, CFT)
Date: Wed, November 15th
Time: 12:00-1:00pm
Where: Center for Teaching Classroom, 1114 19th Ave South, 3rd Floor
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