Fall 2005 Workshops

Throughout the school year, the Center organizes workshops facilitated by CFT senior staff, Graduate Teaching Fellows, University administrators and faculty, graduate students, post-doctoral fellows, and invited guests.

• The Teaching Workshop features practical, applied sessions on basic teaching practice in a variety of disciplines. While Vanderbilt instructors of all levels are welcome, most sessions are designed for those with little teaching experience.

• Conversations on Teaching are occasional, informal, and topical. Sessions typically begin with a panel offering brief remarks, followed by open discussion with workshop participants.

Working Groups are small cohorts who commit to meet regularly to discuss either a specific teaching practice or a more conceptual set of issues.

Related Programs are relevant workshops, conferences and other events being offered by other organizations around campus.

SEPTEMBER

9/8 — Teaching in the American Classroom
12-1 pm; Sarratt 116
Facilitators: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director of the CFT
Faculty and graduate student teaching assistants from different parts of the world often find much that is unexpected when they teach in an American classroom. In this Conversation on Teaching, several international faculty members and graduate students will share their experiences teaching in Vanderbilt classrooms, describing cultural and linguistic differences they have faced as well as strategies for overcoming these differences. Attendees will have the chance to discuss their experiences as teachers in American classrooms and ask questions of the panelists and other attendees. (Conversation on Teaching)

9/13 — Discussion Leading
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Susan Crisafulli, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow; Allison Pingree, Director of the CFT
Effective discussions can provoke profound learning, yet they also are particularly challenging to create and sustain. This workshop will use a discussion format to explore questions such as:

• How can I get a good discussion going, and keep it going?
• What can I do if a discussion falls apart?
• How can silence be productive?
• What can I do with students who dominate, or withdraw from, discussion?
• Should I grade discussion participation, and if so, how?
• How can I assess my own effectiveness as a discussion leader?(Teaching Workshop)
  

9/14 — A Conversation about Teaching, Writing, and the Classroom
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director of the CFT; Amy-Hodges Hamilton, Director of the Writing Studio

Where does writing fit into your classroom? How can you develop undergraduate students' understanding that writing is an intellectual process? This conversation will explore ways to weave writing pedagogy into the classroom and provide suggestions for using writing as a tool for learning. This conversation is for all faculty and graduate students interested in the correlation between teaching, writing, and learning. (Conversation on Teaching)

9/22 — Teaching Laboratory Classes
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director of the CFT
Laboratory classes are an important part of most science courses at Vanderbilt in providing an opportunity for students to explore material from the lecture in a "hands-on" way. Leading a lab session has particular challenges and opportunities that differ from those in a classroom setting. In a format combining presentation and small-group activities, workshop facilitators will focus on a wide range of lab teaching issues, including: ways to improve student learning in the lab, ways to improve the problem solving and troubleshooting skills of your students, assessing student work, and a discussion of best practices for running a successful lab. For faculty, post-docs and graduate students who are looking to make the most out of teaching and learning in the laboratory. We intend this workshop to be interactive, so bring along your problems and ideas. (Teaching Workshop)

9/28 — Teaching Statements
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Susan Crisafulli, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow
Whether you have been teaching for ten years or ten weeks, it is no easy task to express your philosophy about teaching in an eloquent and persuasive way.  With this challenge in mind, this workshop will help you identify your core teaching values and use those values as a guide to determine the form you want your statement to take.  We will examine such questions as: What exactly is a teaching philosophy statement?  What purpose does it serve, and what does it look like?  What characteristics are common to all teaching statements?  How can I articulate my teaching philosophy in an effective way? (Teaching Workshop)

OCTOBER

10/3 — F2P2 Orientation
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun Hall 109
For any graduate student, professional student or post-doc interested in a career in academia and wanting to learn more about the Center for Teaching's F2P2 program.

10/4 — Grading at Vanderbilt
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Casey Leonetti, CFT Teaching Affiliate, graduate student in Dept. of Mathematics; Patricia Armstrong, Assistant Director of the CFT
Grading can be a source of stress for instructors. How do you know if you're being fair in your assessment of student work? What do you do when a student questions a grade? How will you find the time to read all of those student essays or grade those problem sets? In a format combining presentation and small-group activities, the workshop facilitators will focus on a wide range of grading issues including: establishing grading criteria and rubrics, providing written feedback to students, making grading more time efficient, and talking to students about grades. For faculty and graduate students who would like to make grading less stressful! (Teaching Workshop)

10/12 — Teaching Portfolio
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Susan Crisafulli, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow; Derek Bruff, Assistant Director of the CFT
Teaching portfolios are becoming a common requirement in academic job applications.  What is the place of the portfolio in the job market today and how can you use one to highlight the strengths of your application?  What exactly should you put in a teaching portfolio and how should you go about constructing one? In this workshop, we will describe the components and construction of an effective teaching portfolio, analyze as a group several sample portfolios, and give you a chance to ask questions about your own portfolio -- whether you're on the job market now or expect to be in the future. (Teaching Workshop)

10/19 — One-on-One Interactions with Students
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Kat Baker, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow
Is it appropriate for TAs to socialize with students? Should TAs help students with personal problems? How much time must TAs devote to tutoring individual students? How to manage office hours? These issues and others will be discussed as this session focuses on TAs' one-to-one interactions with students. (Teaching Workshop)

NOVEMBER

11/2— Classroom Assessment Techniques (CATS)
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Jeffery Sheehan, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow
Classroom assessment techniques offer instructors a tool for gauging students' understanding (or misunderstanding) of specific concepts and content on an ongoing basis.  In this introductory workshop we will introduce a variety of classroom assessment techniques and discuss their incorporation in effective and efficient teaching. (Teaching Workshop)

11/3 — Teaching Graduate Students (faculty only)
12:10-1:30 pm; Sarratt 189 (lunch provided)
Facilitator: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director of the CFT

Of the over 4,000 doctoral students surveyed by the Survey on Doctoral Education and Career Preparation, 28% stated that their doctoral coursework did not give them a broad foundation of knowledge in their respective fields and 30% stated that it did not lay a good foundation for doing independent research.

What should be the goals of graduate student coursework? And what can faculty do to create significant and relevant learning experiences for their graduate students through graduate-level courses? We’ll explore these questions in this faculty-only, cross-disciplinary Conversation on Teaching. The session will feature remarks from a small panel of faculty members on these questions as well as time for open discussion among attendees on the subject of teaching graduate students.

This particular session will focus on graduate student coursework. Look for a sequel to this session offered by the Center for Teaching in the upcoming spring semester focusing on mentoring and advising graduate students. (Conversation on Teaching)

11/3 — F2P2 and Teaching Certificate Informational Meeting
4:10-5:30 pm; Wilson Hall 126
This is the final academic year to earn an F2P2 Teaching Certificate.  This meeting is for those who have already completed most of the F2P2 requirements and have questions about how to complete what remains this year.  Also for those who are unsure about whether to complete the old program this year, or switch to the new Teaching Certificate program.  For more information, please see the list of frequently Asked Questions about Changes to F2P2 and the Teaching Certificate program:  http://www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/programs/graduate_student/f2p2_tc_faq.htm. You do not need to register for this meeting.

11/8 — Presenting Data and Information, Lessons from Edward Tufte
12:10-1:30 pm; Sarratt 189 (lunch provided)
Facilitators: Jeff Johnston, Assistant Director of the CFT

"When principles of design replicate principles of thought, the act of arranging information becomes an act of insight." -- Edward Tufte

Last winter the Center for Teaching invited 9 Vanderbilt faculty members to attend a 1-day seminar by Edward Tufte on presenting data and information. Tufte, an emeritus professor at Yale, is a world-renowned expert on the visual presentation of complex statistical and scientific data.  His writing includes The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information , Visual Explanations and The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint. Join us for a conversation with some of the Vanderbilt faculty who attended the seminar and have been exploring how Tufte's ideas can be applied to their teaching and research. (Conversation on Teaching)

11/14 - Classroom Response Systems
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Derek Bruff, Assistant Director of the CFT
A classroom response system (sometimes called a "personal response system" or "audience response system") is a set of hardware and software that allows a teacher to pose a multiple-choice question to his or her students, students to submit their individual answers to the question electronically, and the teacher to quickly analyze student responses. This Teaching Workshop will feature an overview and demonstration of such systems, reasons why a teacher might use them, classroom activities that take advantage of such systems, and obstacles and challenges to their use.

Look for a sequel to this workshop in the spring featuring a panel of Vanderbilt faculty members sharing their experiences using classroom response systems. Also, see our Teaching Guide on classroom response systems. (Teaching Workshop)

11/16 — The Students We Teach
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Richard Iannelli, Vanderbilt Institutional Research Group (VIRG) and Kat Baker, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow
How well do you know the Vanderbilt undergraduates that you teach? Come to this innovative workshop and find out! This session will feature a Pop-Quiz with questions such as “True or False: A majority of Vanderbilt freshmen agree with this statement, ‘The activities of a married woman are best confined to the home,’ ” and “Which of the following political orientations was endorsed by the greatest percentage of incoming freshmen?” Richard Iannelli, of Vanderbilt’s Institutional Research Group (VIRG), will give you the correct answers to these and other interesting questions. In addition, Kat Baker, Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Center for Teaching, will provide a profile of cognitive development in undergraduates based on the renowned research of educational theorist William Perry. (Conversation on Teaching)

Working Groups

For Faculty:

Course Design Working Group
What do you want your students to learn, and how do you really know if they have? Our course design groups involve a small number of faculty (typically 4 per group) who are designing a new course or rethinking an existing course. In these groups, faculty meet four times during the semester for structured discussions as each participant (re)designs a course.

For Graduate Students, Professional Students, and Post-Doctoral Students:

Course Design Working Group
Graduate students and post-docs are invited to join this semester-long working group in order to design a new course or revise the structure of an existing course. Whether you are creating a course for your teaching portfolio, or to teach in the near future, this working group will help you create a syllabus, determine learning goals for your course, select teaching strategies to meet those goals, and decide on assessment techniques. Led by a Graduate Teaching Fellow, the group will help each other achieve course designs by addressing each other's particular needs and issues. Occasionally, we will have a faculty guest to answer questions from the perspective of his or her teaching experience. We will meet around four times during the semester, for about two hours per meeting, and we require a commitment to attend all sessions from participants. Scheduling will be determined according to group members' needs. Reading and other preparation will be required outside of session time.

Professional Development Working Group
This working group guides graduate students, professional students, and postdocs in their preparation for the academic job market.  In collaboration with the Career Center and students' home departments, we will learn about teaching portfolios, teaching philosophy statements, cover letters, curriculum vitae, and the interview process.  Participants will gain an understanding of the purpose of each element and will begin conceptualizing and developing their materials within the working group meetings.  Group size will be kept small.

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Working Group
The literature addressing teaching, like that of any other academic discipline, is often best encountered in a community of scholarship. The Center for Teaching's working group on the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning offers graduate students an opportunity to engage classic and contemporary texts in an interdisciplinary cohort. Meeting 4-5 times per semester, this group will discuss these texts in a seminar format. While all graduate students are welcome, this working group is intended to serve the needs of students with some teaching experience.

Related Programs

9/14 — CV/Resume Writing for Graduate Students
4:30-6:00 pm; Student Life Center, Career Center Conference Room
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center
Students will learn how to develop and write CVs and resumes and how to target job materials to specific industries, both academic and non-academic. An introduction to cover letter writing will also be covered.

9/20 — Motherhood in the Academy
4:10-5:30 pm; Buttrick Hall, Rm 202
Facilitated by the Women's Center
In this session we will explore the realities of being a mother and a member of the academe (graduate student, lecturer, professor). We will also look at things to keep in mind while looking for employment at an institution of higher education, such as the school's policy on maternity leave, etc. (Women in Academe Series)

10/6 — Interviewing for Academic Jobs: The Search Committee Perspective
4:30-6:00 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center
Anticipating what to expect from the interview process can go a long way toward helping you succeed in the interview.  While interviews may vary across fields and industries, there are some core aspects of any interview that can be mastered.  Come and learn from faculty members what to expect and how to prepare for the academic interview.

10/6 — Mistakes to Avoid in Graduate School
4:10–5:30 pm; Buttrick Hall, Rm 206
Facilitated by the Women's Center
Drawing on their own personal experiences, advanced graduate students offer their words of wisdom about what NOT to do, as well as tidbits about how to succeed in grad school. (Women in Academe Series)

10/20 — The Non-Academic Job Search: Translating the Graduate Experience
4:30–6:00 pm; Student Life Center, Meeting Rooms 1 & 2
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center
This program is for graduate students who are interested in exploring careers outside of academia.  Attend this program to learn how to transfer your skills to the "real world", how to recast yourself for non-academic jobs, and how to combat stereotypes about academics and the university environment.

10/20 —What Does "Research" Mean to You? Exploring the
Underpinnings of your Research Paradigm
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Darcy Freedman, MPH, Doctoral Student in the Community Research and Action Program, Department of Human and Organizational Development and Sarah VanHooser
This interactive session is designed to help graduate students uncover some of their views about research and the creation of knowledge. The differences between researcher-driven and participant-driven approaches to knowledge generation will be
discussed.

10/6 — Interviewing for Academic Jobs: The Search Committee Perspective
4:30-6:00 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center
Anticipating what to expect from the interview process can go a long way toward helping you succeed in the interview. While interviews may vary across fields and industries, there are some core aspects of any interview that can be mastered. Come and learn from faculty members what to expect and how to prepare for the academic interview.

10/6 — Mistakes to Avoid in Graduate School
4:10–5:30 pm; Buttrick Hall, Rm 206
Facilitated by the Women's Center
Drawing on their own personal experiences, advanced graduate students offer their words of wisdom about what NOT to do, as well as tidbits about how to succeed in grad school. (Women in Academe Series)

10/20 — The Non-Academic Job Search: Translating the Graduate Experience
4:30–6:00 pm; Student Life Center, Meeting Rooms 1 & 2
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center
This program is for graduate students who are interested in exploring careers outside of academia. Attend this program to learn how to transfer your skills to the "real world", how to recast yourself for non-academic jobs, and how to combat stereotypes about academics and the university environment.

10/27 —Reader-Response Discussions in the Humanities
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Isabel Asensio-Sierra, CFT Graduate Teaching Affiliate
During discussion sections, instructors often find difficult to balance the weight of the assigned reading with the brevity of class time to discuss the readings and fully involve the students. One aspect that makes this more difficult is that students do not generally engage in the interpretative activity that reading entails, and often read passively and simply to complete the assignment. This workshop aims to identify the various reasons students struggle with reading assignments, how to use the reader-response discussion technique to improve student's reading skills, and effectively surface the vital core of each assigned reading in such short blocks of time.

11/2--Teaching and Conducting Community-based Participatory Research: An Interdisciplinary Colloquium events:
This colloquium series, which is sponsored by many colleges, departments, and programs at Vanderbilt, was developed to provide needed information and motivational inspiration for us to pursue community-based participatory research endeavors. Three individuals with extensive experience teaching and conducting community-based participatory research - Sarena Siefer, Shakeh Kaftarian, and Patricia Maguire - were invited to take part in this colloquium series. The content of each session will vary; however, each speaker will attempt to address the following questions during her presentations:

• What is community-based participatory research and why is it important?
• How do you conduct community-based participatory research?
• How do you fund community-based participatory research?
• How do you train students to conduct community-based participatory research?

11/3 — How to Pick a Mentor
4:10–5:30 pm; Featheringill 110
Facilitated by the Women's Center and the Career Center
In this panel we will look at the method used in selecting a mentor that will be effective in your journey through graduate school and beyond.
(Women in Academe Series)

11/8 — Writing Grants: Effective Search and Writing
4:30–6:00 pm; Student Life Center, Meeting Rooms 1 & 2
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center

11/15 —Teaching Through Effective Mentoring
4:10-5:30 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitators: Melissa Maginnis, PhD candidate in Microbiology and Immunology and Pranav Danthi, Postdoctoral Research, Pediatrics
In academia many faculty, post-doctoral fellows and senior graduate students are often expected to mentor individuals at many levels of training and education. In the academic setting, this can include educational support, professional growth and personal relationships. This workshop will help define goals for effective mentorship and help formulate various strategies to achieve a fulfilling relationship for both the mentor and mentee. Faculty, post-doctoral fellows and graduate students are invited to take part in this exciting workshop where we will discuss the role of mentor and mentee, strategies to deal with various situations that may arise, and analyze sample scenarios as a group.

11/17 — Beating Stress
4:30-6:00 pm; Calhoun 117
Facilitator: Stephanie Gamse, Psychological and Counseling Center
Stress needn't lead to distress. This session will focus on understanding the causes, deleterious physiological and emotional effects, as well as the benefits of stress (yes, there are those), followed by an interactive, experiential exploration of strategies for stress management.

11/29 - Women, Writing, and the Classroom
4 p.m., Furman 109
Sponsored by the Writing Studio and Women's and Gender Studies
How do you balance authority and collaboration in the writing-intensive classroom? Please join a group of women teacher-scholars--Laura Carpenter, Susan Crisafulli, Kathleen Eamon, Dana Nelson, and Diane Perpich--as they discuss these issues and address your questions.
This event is open to anyone, specifically those interested in ways to balance authority and collaboration.
Please e-mail further questions to writing.studio@vanderbilt.edu.

12/6 - The Master's Degree: A Critical Transition in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) Doctoral Education
12 p.m., Peabody Library Fireside Reading Room
Sponsored by the College of Arts & Science and the Learning Sciences Institute (LSI)
The LSI welcomes Sheila Edwards Lange, doctoral candidate in educational leadership & policy studies and associate director for research at the University of Washington's Center for Workforce Development. Lange will speak at 12 p.m. in the Peabody Library Fireside Reading Room. A reception will follow.
For more information, visit the LSI's Visiting Scholars Speakers Series page.

12/8 — Mock Academic Interviews
9:00–3:00 pm; Student Life Center, Career Center Interview Rooms
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center

12/9 — Mock Academic Interviews
1:00–3:00 pm; Student Life Center, Career Center Interview Rooms
Facilitated by the Vanderbilt Career Center

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