08.13.2025

TEACHING.UIC.EDU

CATE

We know that this academic year begins amid growing challenges in higher education. At CATE, we recognize this turbulence and remain committed to creating spaces where teaching and learning can thrive.

This fall, we’re continuing several well-loved programs to support your work. Our Short Courses, Peer Observation Protocol Development program, and the Inclusive Education Scholars Certificate Program remain cornerstones of our strategic goals to foster reflective, evidence-based, and equitable instruction across campus.

We’re also introducing new ways to engage with CATE:

As always, we are open to your feedback and would love to learn more about how CATE can support your work. Reach out to me any time with your thoughts. 

We wish you a strong start to the year and look forward to seeing you at a CATE event this fall.

Warmly,

Lori Mumpower
Executive Director, Center for the Advancement of Teaching Excellence

We are excited to share that CATE has a newly-redesigned, UIC-specific Syllabus Template just in time for the fall semester. The template is designed to work for courses of any modality and features a new look and layout, with recommendations, policies, and suggested language clearly marked, making it easy to add your course information and delete the extra sections. We took care to ensure the suggested language used throughout is written to convey a welcoming tone that helps to create an ethos of inclusion, academic integrity, and community in your class. The template was also developed with Title II digital accessibility guidelines in mind, ensuring that your syllabus is accessible to your students.

We are excited to launch our CATE in the Colleges initiative to better serve instructors across UIC’s campuses. Our team understands that the work of teaching and learning can often look different from college to college, and even among departments in the same college. So, we have assigned each of the colleges a team member to serve as their CATE representative. Identify your college’s CATE representative, and reach out with any teaching-related questions, to schedule a consultation, or to collaborate on developing programming for your department/college. 

Take a look at all of our offerings for Fall 2025 in one convenient location on our website. In addition to our regular offerings of workshops, events, programs, and other resources to support your teaching this semester, we have some new opportunities for you, including two new short courses, a mid-semester feedback opportunity, and a book discussion.

If you haven’t had a chance to check out one of our CATE Short Courses, now is the time. Short courses meet for 50-minute sessions on three consecutive weeks on a teaching and learning topic. They bring together instructors from across our campuses to learn more about evidence-based instructional practices. 

We will be offering three short courses this fall, with two new topics —Revealing the Hidden Curriculum and Teaching Through Relationships — as well as a second offering of Developing Students’ AI Literacies. 

Research across higher education consistently finds that mid-course feedback can produce meaningful, timely improvements in teaching performance, student motivation, student engagement, and end-of-course evaluations. As a way to help instructors capture student feedback mid-semester, CATE is piloting a midterm student survey process.  

Join our pilot program and help us measure the value of midterm feedback on UIC campus.

Interested in transforming your approach to academic integrity and AI? Join like-minded colleagues for CATE’s asynchronous book discussion this fall using Perusall. Participants will explore fresh perspectives and actionable insights for teaching in the age of AI. Register by Friday, August 29!

If you are a new instructor for UIC this fall, you are invited to Ready, Set, Teach! on Tuesday, August 19, from 1:30 - 4:00 pm. This event provides new faculty with three must-attend workshops for a successful first week of class: Inclusive Syllabus, Teaching with AI, and First Day of Class. The event will provide plenty of time for  

participants to build community among their new faculty cohort and to ask important questions about teaching at UIC. Coffee, tea, and refreshments will be served.

Register for the fall 2025 cohort of the Inclusive Education Scholars Certificate Program! Created by CATE and the Office of Equity and Diversity, this professional learning program is designed to help UIC instructors of all levels, including graduate students and postdoctoral scholars, support student success and well-being by building inclusive learning environments. Participants learn about the lived experiences and contextual barriers faced by diverse student groups and adapt inclusive and equity-minded teaching practices for their own classrooms. Learn more about the Inclusive Education Scholars Certificate Program.

In its second year, the POPD program provides departments, units, and programs with the tools and resources to develop a peer teaching observation protocol for instructors. This year-long program provides resources to small workgroups and initiates important conversations with feedback and support from our team. Join us for an information session on August 26 from 2-3pm on Zoom. Workgroups should enroll by Friday, September 12, to participate in this year’s cohort.

This orientation consists of asynchronous videos, TA guides, and workshops, and is designed to introduce new graduate TAs to the role of being a TA at UIC, develop practical teaching skills, and connect them with new and experienced TAs. Workshops are open to new and experienced TAs with many in-person workshops being held the afternoon of Thursday, August 21, with additional workshops throughout the beginning of the semester.

Several courses are offered through the Graduate College this fall that are designed to support new and experienced graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) and instructors in developing their teaching knowledge and skills including GC 591: Introduction to College-Level Teaching for Graduate TAs.

We're offering monthly meetings where graduate student teaching assistants (TAs) can connect with peers, sip warm beverages, and discuss key aspects of teaching. Conversation topics will include navigating teaching at UIC, fostering student engagement and inclusion, supporting your own well-being as a student and instructor, and professional development.