Author
The Mindful PhD: Looking into the Fire
Apr. 4, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director In preparation for a talk next week, I was sitting on my floor next to my bookshelves, surrounded by open volumes of literature. (This is the literary scholar’s version of a kid surrounded by unwrapped presents.) I got sidetracked as I revisited one of my favorite passages in one of...
The Mindful PhD: Revisiting Boice
Mar. 21, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I’ve been preparing a one-week summer workshop in humanities pedagogy for a few post-docs starting their positions this fall. My partner in this development is one of our Graduate Teaching Fellows, Jessica Riviere, who just dotted her i’s and crossed her t’s for graduating (or “walking”) in May. The confluence of...
TAing to Thousands: A Graduate Student MOOC Panel
Mar. 19, 2014—What is it like to serve as a teaching assistant in a course with thousands of students? On February 24, 2014, the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning, Center for Teaching, Graduate School, and Jean & Alexander Heard Library co-sponsored a panel of graduate students (and one undergraduate student) who have served as Teaching Assistants for...
Setting Expectations and Resolving Conflict in Graduate Education
Mar. 18, 2014—Professors Rique Campa and Judith Stoddart, Michigan State University, will lead an interactive session for faculty, teaching an interest-based approach to setting expectations and resolving conflicts among graduate students and faculty. The discussion will focus on ways to identify common interests that can help construct mutually satisfying options. This will be a “train the trainer”...
The Mindful PhD: The Continual Unfolding of Our Work
Mar. 14, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director This week was an especially stressful time of the semester. Some of you are looking forward to spring break, but Vanderbilt’s was at the very beginning of March. The week after break–or, as we often call it, “break”–is hard for instructors and students alike. We see the home stretch in...
The Mindful PhD: About Time
Mar. 7, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director This work of mindfulness–in essence, focusing awareness on the present moment–has me noticing more clearly how I experience time. Despite the best efforts of clocks and schedules, time is a subjective, varying, and malleable phenomenon. In October’s “Stories of the Slow Professor,” I wrote about it from the perspective of how...
The Mindful PhD: Busy-Shaming
Feb. 28, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director My Women & Gender Studies class talked about “slut shaming” recently, and I’ve since been thinking about another kind of shaming that worries me–and that I want to be careful to avoid. The flurry of popular media discussions of mindfulness (and other topics) have been accompanied by concerns about how...
The Mindful PhD: Opening Our Eyes
Feb. 21, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director In the rhythm of academia, right as we began this semester, we also selected our courses for next year. I decided to revisit my course on monsters. Soon after, a friend gave me a book of original Grimm’s fairy tales–a gruesome treasure! I didn’t expect to stumble onto mindfulness while...
The Mindful PhD: Daydream Believer
Feb. 14, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I’ve previously written about the specific kind of meditation that leads to “Inspiration, Creativity, & New Ideas,” but I want to return to this issue. Creativity is a necessary skill in all disciplines, yet it’s among the most difficult to teach. The research on mindfulness offers a few different strategies....
Students as Producers of Disciplinary Habits
Feb. 14, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director The CFT’s recent Teaching Visit hosted by Phil Ackerman-Lieberman illustrated our 2013-14 theme of Students as Producers in a way that’s different from our previous examples. These other instances typically focus on specific course assignments that engage students in actively creating something, often directing their work toward authentic audiences...