CFT Proudly Welcomes the 2015 Cohort of Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows!
This year’s Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows are, left to right, Gabriel Briggs (English), Courtney Cook (Nursing), Larisa DeSantis (Earth and Environmental Science), David Diehl (Human and Organizational Development), Anita Disney (Psychology), Ravindra Duddu (Civil and Environmental Engineering), Melissa Glassford (Nursing), Karen Hande (Nursing), David Laird (Leadership, Policy, and Organizations), Abby Parish (Nursing), Anna Richmond (Nursing), Anand Taneja (Religious Studies),
LaTonya Trotter (Sociology).
Research by Robert Boice (Advice for New Faculty, 2000) and others indicates that junior faculty often find teaching the most challenging and time-consuming part of their jobs. This is why the CFT is dedicated to helping all junior faculty become quick starters by offering an array of workshops, working groups, and consultation opportunities, programs that can result in more successful and enjoyable teaching experiences.
Primary among the CFT’s junior faculty programs is the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship, which provides its recipients with a more structured faculty development experience complete with consultations, course design seminar, peer education, and senior faculty mentorship. This program not only helps its fellows develop an understanding of best teaching practices across the disciplines, but also assists them in their professional growth by helping them hone their abilities to balance teaching and research, improve their materials for review, and build a collaborative culture of teaching at Vanderbilt. This year, support from the School of Nursing is allowing the CFT to introduce a discipline-specific cohort of teaching fellows to the JFTF program.
Over the coming months, the CFT newsletter will highlight the work of this year’s Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. Each month two fellows will be featured discussing their teaching philosophies and interests.
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