Greetings, Friends, 

I know we just got through the time switch of “Fall Back,” but your Stearns Center colleagues are already thinking forward to how we can put a little more spring in your step with upcoming opportunities, once you have a little more breathing room.  

See below for information (or check our Events Calendar) about our Curriculum and Teaching Leadership Funds, our Winter Writing Retreat, and January’s Course ReDesign Academy. We of course aim to support growth in teaching and learning—but you tell us again and again how much you value the conversations with colleagues that these inspire. 

If you need a little extra community right now, check out our new workshop on building student self-awareness or our AI Pedagogies Mini-Course, or tune in to our new podcast episodes some dark evening while you’re getting supper ready. Whether you join us on campus, via Zoom, or through your headphones, we hope we can bring a little extra daylight into your autumn projects.  

E Shelley Reid, Ph.D. 

Executive Director

We are thrilled to offer faculty funding opportunities for teaching-related extended projects in Spring and Summer 2026!

We invite teams from all departments, programs, colleges, and schools at George Mason University, including full-time and part-time faculty, to submit a proposal for our Curriculum and Teaching Leadership Funds (CTL Funds): Extended Projects. We solicit proposals from teams of faculty involved in a high-impact teaching and learning project. Faculty may not apply for multiple Stearns Center funding opportunities in the same academic term. 

Course ReDesign Academy (CRA) will be mostly online in January--with Zoom meetings January 8-9, 2026--to support your final adjustments for a spring course or your advance planning for summer or fall. Accepted participants receive a stipend to support significant course development. Find more information on our CRA webpage and find our link to submit your application before December 12 on the "Upcoming Course Redesign Academies" sub-webpage. 

On November 10 from 9:30am-10:30am, Dr. Rachel Yoho will facilitate a workshop designed to support your teaching around helping students develop their self-awareness. This workshop includes the concepts of positionality and intersectionality broadly. Additionally, this workshop counts towards the AIEM-Teach Level 2 credential.

From November 11 to December 9, the Introduction to AI Inspired Pedagogies mini-course will run for faculty who are interested in updating their assignments in the age of Generative AI for the spring. Registration will be limited to the first 40 participants - only 5 spots remain!

Join a workshop on November 14 from 10-11am offered through a partnership between the Graduate Office and the Stearns Center! This workshop focuses on the application of grading rubrics and how to handle grading questions from students. This workshop counts toward the SkillCraft Level 1 Essentials Credential and is open to all graduate students.

Last month, we published Ep. 25: Preparing for and Facilitating Difficult Conversations and Situations in Teaching. In our second Hear From Your Host episode, Dr. Rachel Yoho, the regular host of the podcast, becomes the guest as Producer Kelly Chandler guest hosts.

We also published Ep. 26: Writing Across the Curriculum. Drs. Tom Polk and Joan Hwang join Dr. Yoho to explore what WAC is, how it has developed, and its current initiatives and impacts. 

Look forward to November 12 when we will publish our second episode with Mason Korea where we will discuss experiences with teaching socially pressing issues!

Mason Online is pleased to introduce their revised Online Quality Checklists. These are practical, evidence-based tools to support excellence in online teaching and learning. Use them to design, evaluate, and enhance your courses with proven standards and best practices that elevate online instruction and student engagement.

The Office of Access, Compliance, and Community is pleased to announce their upcoming schedule for ASPIRE workshops. These workshops build on core concepts of teamwork, belonging, and effective leadership that help create strong, connected, and resilient communities. Workshops are currently being offered on Nov. 10, Dec. 3, and Dec. 8. Register below with MasonLEAPS.

The Office of Undergraduate Education is calling for proposals for Summer Team Impact Project Grants (STIP) for Summer 2026. These projects support multidisciplinary summer teams of undergraduate students, graduate students, and faculty and staff members, who explore a faculty-driven central theme, research question, or community-identified problem. Deadline Nov. 21.

Faculty Affairs & Development and Writing Across the Curriculum (WAC) are hosting their Faculty Writing Retreat on January 7 & 8, 2026 from 8am-3:30pm. This event offers an active approach to uninterrupted writing time, a chance to learn from our panelists, and a supportive and collegial community of peers to boost your writing productivity. Offered both in-person and online.