• Richard McCarty, Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs
• Dennis Hall, Vice Provost for Research and Dean of the Graduate School
• John Sloop, Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences
• Emily Nacol, Political Science, Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow
• Jessica Riviere, German, Teaching Certificate Recipient

We’ll celebrate 2011-2012 highlights and achievements of the Vanderbilt teaching community including:

• Participants in the CFT’s Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows program
• Recipients of the Teaching Certificate program
• Graduate Teaching Fellows
• Teaching Affiliates
• Panelists featured at this year’s CFT events
• Teaching as Research Fellows
• CFT Advisory Board
• CFT’s campus partners
• Faculty who have received awards for their teaching accomplishments

4:00-4:30
Reception & Posters

4:30-5:00
Welcome by Richard McCarty

Acknowledgments by Derek Bruff

Featured Speakers

Awarding Teaching Certificates by Dennis Hall

5:00-5:30
Reception & Posters

John Sloop

Senior Associate Dean, College of Arts and Sciences

Emily Nacol

Political Science, Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow

As a featured speaker at the Celebration of Teaching she will share her experiences in the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows Program: Being a Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow this academic year has been extremely helpful and enjoyable for me.  Most of all, the fellowship has helped me regularly set aside time to sit with other junior faculty, CFT staff, and senior faculty to reflect on my teaching philosophy and practices.  These conversations across academic disciplines are fun and useful, and I’m struck by how much we have in common as teachers, even though our research diverges quite dramatically.  Classroom visits, consultations with the great CFT staff, and syllabus workshops with staff and peers have improved my teaching in the short-term, most certainly.  I always walk out of these gatherings with new approaches or strategies that I can try right away in my classroom, and these small changes have yielded serious improvements for my students and me.  But, I’ve also been able to think long-term about how I might transform my current repertoire of classes by incorporating experiential or service-learning components, group work, and new kinds of source materials.  Finally, the support from my peers and Joe Bandy in our syllabus workshop helped me design a new graduate seminar and develop more confidence as a teacher of a core course in political theory, my discipline.  My experiences as a JFTF have improved my teaching in tangible ways this year, and I am walking out with a store of new ideas to try in years to come.

Learn more about the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows.

Jessica Riviere

German, Teaching Certificate Graduate

As a featured speaker at the Celebration of Teaching she will share her experiences in the Teaching Certificate Program: Jessica began her teaching certificate her first year teaching at Vanderbilt, but made the most progress towards completion in the last year and a half. A common theme through her projects has been effective integration of cultural knowledge into the language classroom. Her cycle three project centered on a survey measuring student perceptions of learning goals in the intermediate classroom. Completing the teaching certificate has helped her develop the skills of a reflective teacher who systematically tries to improve how much her students learn.

Learn more about the Teaching Certificate Program.