Greetings, Friends, 

We hope this final newsletter of 2025 finds you freshly fueled by holiday pie and/or naps, and ready to finish all those fall semester projects! Your Stearns Center crew wants to encourage you to accept Good Enough as entirely good enough, even for all of our favorite overachievers out there.  

And we hope you can look ahead a bit: Maybe this is the year you give yourself the gift of starting on (or finishing!) one of Stearns Center’s Professional Development certificates (general CPD, Inclusive Teaching, or Mason Core Certification), any of which you can kick off with an early 2026 workshop. Every CPD workshop or event is designed to feed directly to your teaching and to connect you to other faculty in the George Mason community. So as you scroll down or check our Events Calendar, we hope you’ll find the perfect gift for Spring-Semester-You! 

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. 

Join educators from across Virginia for a day of insight, innovation, and collaboration on January 20, 2026 at our statewide symposium on generative AI in higher education. Featuring a keynote, interactive sessions, and hands-on workshops, this event will help you make informed, ethical choices about using AI in your courses. Leave with adaptable strategies, practical tools, and new connections to colleagues shaping the future of learning.

This event is organized by UVA's Center for Teaching Excellence, UVA's McIntire School of Commerce, George Mason's Stearns Center for Teaching and Learning, and JMU's Center for Faculty Innovation, with support from the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia (SCHEV). When you register, proceed to the Log In button (top-right corner) and Register for a New Account. 

The Stearns Center is hiring for a Faculty Associate position for Spring 2026. The Faculty Associate will work to support the STEM education specialist with resource development and program facilitation to support STEM faculty. Applications are due January 5th. Notifications will be sent by January 16th.

In this self-paced, 10-hour asynchronous mini course beginning January 8, 2026, you will learn how to create a syllabus that aligns your learning goals with your assignments, organizes course content to maximize student learning, and makes use of SyllaBright, George Mason’s course design assistant. 

Are you new to teaching a WI course or want a refresher on some of the basics? This workshop on January 14 will focus on writing-intensive course design and help faculty prepare for the semester ahead. Join WAC staff to learn more about the new learning outcomes and begin drafting your WI course materials.

Interested in exploring alternative grading in a supportive and collaborative space? Join a Learning Community! This spring, we will read Grading for Growth, participate in a design workshop, and get feedback on our re-designed grading systems. Participants who fully participate in the learning community will be eligible for up to $100 in gift cards!

This spring semester, consider enrolling in the AI Mini Course: Introduction to AI-Enhanced Teaching Practices (formerly called Intermediate AI Inspired Pedagogies) starting on January 28, 2026. This revamped course will introduce you to working with AI tools and have you thinking about how AI impacts best teaching practices. No prerequisites required! Registration will be limited to the first 40 participants.

Last month, we published Ep. 27: Teaching Overlapping, Socially Pressing Issues. In our second episode with faculty from Mason Korea, our host, Dr. Rachel Yoho, has a conversation with Drs. Lynnette Leonard and Dakota McCarty about how they navigate teaching politically charged or potentially distressing topics in the classroom. 

Yesterday, we published our final episode of Season 3, Ep. 28: Dynamic Faculty Transforming Education. Join the fun as Dr. Yoho speaks with Drs. Esther Park, Iulia Fratila, Allison Miner, and Yanika Kowitlawakul from CPH about how they got started as new faculty members, their efforts to transform their teaching and students’ learning, and engagement with professional development.

Look forward to January 14 when we will publish our first episode of Season 4! 🎉

In this workshop on February 4, you will learn about elements of effective teaching, including engagement, multiple modalities, inclusive teaching and assignment design. You will also learn how to set achievable teaching goals and measure them. All teaching experience levels, modalities, and disciplines are invited. If you are interested in earning a CPD and/or Mason Core Instructor credential, this workshop is required.

The David J. King Teaching Award is given annually to a faculty member who has made significant, long-term contributions (over the course of 20 years or more) to the overall educational excellence of the university. Read more on our website; nominate a colleague via email to stearns@gmu.edu by February 11, 2026.

Coming in 2026!

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.

Register for the Adjunct Faculty Success Workshop, on Saturday, January 10th. This workshop is designed for both incoming and returning adjuncts and is designed to meet the unique needs and challenges that adjunct faculty face. Sessions will include introductions to important policies, Canvas sessions, and sessions to enhance teaching skills for online and in-person classes.

Interested in enhancing your mentorship?The Graduate Division, in partnership with ORIA, offers an 8-hour professional development workshop based on the Entering Mentoring Curriculum from the Center for the Improvement of Mentored Experiences in Research (CIMER). Our CIMER-trained faculty and staff guide faculty mentors of all disciplines through modules designed to enhance mentorship strategies. Faculty can join on their own and/or bring their graduate or undergraduate mentees too. Questions? Email Dr. Alyssa Bivins, Senior Professional Development Coordinator, at abivins2@gmu.edu to learn more.

Register for the Faculty Writing Retreat, on January 7 & 8, 2026. 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.