Meet CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow Jessica Riviere
Over the next few weeks, we will introduce the CFT’s 2012-13 Graduate Teaching Fellows* individually to highlight their areas of expertise, interests, and specific CFT activities.
Jessica Riviere is a Ph.D. student in German Literature and is writing a dissertation on late 18th– and early 19th-century women writers. Jessica has taught first- and second-year German language classes and has TA’d for a German course on fairy tales and two different European Studies courses. While she has just begun her year as a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the CFT, she has a strong history with our programs and services. She designed and facilitated the orientation session for foreign language TAs when she was a Teaching Affiliate for TAO 2008, served on the CFT Advisory Board in 2010-11, and earned a Teaching Certificate at the CFT this spring.
Jessica is a creative and energetic teacher with a notably reflective pedagogy, carefully considering the perspectives of learners—whether they’re new TAs in her TAO session, students in her own courses, or clients in CFT consultations during her office hours this year. Her interest in environmentalism and ways of connecting student learning to the world outside the classroom will inform her work with CFT Assistant Director Joe Bandy on the Cumberland Project, a sustainability program on campus. She’ll also be helping CFT Director Derek Bruff with an ongoing research project on students’ use of technology, connecting to her interest in what she describes as the “thoughtful application of technology in the classroom.”
In addition to these projects, Jessica will be updating the CFT’s database of teaching-related grant opportunities and sharing them through CFT materials, as well as facilitating a variety of CFT activities. This fall, she will be leading the final two sections of the CFT’s former Teaching Certificate Program’s third cycle in which participants develop a SoTL project. She will also be contributing to the CFT blog series “Teaching Outside the Classroom.” In the spring, she will work with her fellow GTFs in planning GradSTEP (a day-long January event offering several workshops and discussions on teaching, learning, and professional development across the disciplines), as well as subsequent workshops and other projects that emerge throughout the year.
* GTFs provide a variety of services for Vanderbilt’s graduate, post doc and professional students, including one-on-one consultations on teaching issues and professional development, syllabus and course design, interpreting and responding to student evaluations, writing teaching statements, and engaging techniques such as discussion leading, lecturing, and using technology in the classroom.They also create and facilitate Teaching Assistant Orientation, Teaching Workshops, and the annual Graduate Student Teaching Event for Professional Development (GradSTEP) conference. In addition, they support the Certificate in College Teaching and various CFT initiatives.
To schedule an appointment with Jessica or any other GTF, please call 322-7290.
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