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Belmont University’s January Teaching Center Symposium
Dec. 30, 2010—Our colleagues down the street at Belmont University are hosting their 5th Annual January Teaching Center Symposium on Monday, January 10th, just before classes start for Vanderbilt. The theme of the event is “Creativity and Invention in Teaching.” The Belmont Teaching Center director, Merrie King, has extended an invitation to interested Vanderbilt faculty and graduate...
Call for Proposals – NSF Ethics Education in Science and Engineering – Due March 14, 2011
Dec. 29, 2010—The National Science Foundation is requesting proposals for the Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) Program. From the call for proposals: The Ethics Education in Science and Engineering (EESE) program aims to deepen the understanding of ethical dilemmas in science and engineering, and provide cutting edge, effective research and educational materials to train the...
Call for Applications – THATCamp Southeast 2011 – Due January 9th
Dec. 27, 2010—THATCamp Southeast is a free “unconference” for anyone working at the intersection of the humanities and technology. (THATCamp = The Humanities and Technology Camp.) It will be held at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, on March 4-6, 2011. We’re currently accepting applications from students, faculty, librarians, technologists, museum professionals, archivists, and anyone else who is...
Teaching about WikiLeaks
Dec. 16, 2010—by Derek Bruff, CFT Assistant Director You’ve probably seen a news story or two about the whistle-blower site WikiLeaks recently (or perhaps a few hundred). Given that the WikiLeaks story is relevant to so many disciplines (political science, computer science, business, journalism, law), it’s not surprising that college and university instructors are including discussion of...
GradSTEP 2011 – Teaching 3D: The Many Dimensions of Teaching
Dec. 1, 2010—Held in January each year, our Graduate Student Teaching Event for Professional Development, better known as GradSTEP, provides workshops and discussions on teaching, learning, and professional development issues across the disciplines. All Vanderbilt graduate and professional students, as well as post-doctoral fellows, are invited to attend. The theme for GradSTEP 2011 is “Teaching 3D: The...
Ideas for Motivating Students
Nov. 30, 2010—By Lily Claiborne, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow In the “Motivating Students” workshop on October 26, 2010, a group of grad students and postdocs discussed what, as teachers, we wished motivated students and what actually motivates them in practice. We established that, while extrinsic motivators (such as grades, parental approval, potential earnings of a career) are...
Disciplinary Thinking and Metacognition – A Conference Report
Nov. 29, 2010—By Derek Bruff, CFT Assistant Director One of the sessions I attended earlier this month at the 2010 POD Network Conference in St. Louis was offered by Matt Kaplan and Deborah Meizlish of the University of Michigan’s Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT). The session was titled “Using Metacognition to Foster Students’ Disciplinary...
Call for Proposals – 2011 International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Conference
Nov. 22, 2010—The 8th annual conference of the International Society of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (ISSOTL) will be held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on October 20-23, 2011. The conference is an opportunity for higher education faculty and staff from around the world to share their scholarship of teaching and learning (SOTL). SOTL involves asking questions about...
CIRTL Coffee Hour, November 18 – Using Your Teaching-as-Research Project to Strengthen Your Professional Life
Nov. 10, 2010—The 2010-2011 Coffee Hour Series provides an opportunity for STEM (science, technology, engineering, & math) graduate students and post docs to get together online and talk about careers and the academic job search. The series will be facilitated by a mix of young faculty who have recently secured positions and more seasoned tenured faculty. The...
Cryptography: Nby Bcmnils uhx Gunb iz Wixym uhx Wcjbylm
Nov. 8, 2010—CFT assistant director Derek Bruff is teaching a new first-year writing seminar this fall. The course is titled “Cryptography: The History and Mathematics of Codes and Code-Breaking.” Topics include: military cryptography, like the efforts of British cryptographers at Bletchley Park during World War II to figure out the German Enigma Machine codes; cryptography in popular...