Commentary Category
Celebration of Learning Spotlight: Reading Between the Lines
Apr. 25, 2018—When the chance to conduct independent research arose, engineering student Allison Witte accepted the opportunity and developed her own project. Entitled Reading Between the Lines: What the News is Really Saying About Water Issues, the project focused on water conservation and how the news conveys information about water quality and issues to the public. The...
Celebration of Learning Spotlight: Existing Quietly, Living Loudly
Apr. 19, 2018—Senior mechanical engineering student Elizabeth Lee is happy to have tapped back into her drawing and arts roots. Throughout college, she claims she stuck more to her science, math, and engineering interests, but now in her senior year, she’s returning to an old pastime: drawing. Elizabeth’s project, Existing Quietly, Living Loudly is a web comic...
Celebration of Learning Spotlight: Mean Sea Level Trends in Regions of the U.S.
Apr. 10, 2018—First-year Human Organization and Development student Marguerite Manning never considered going into environmental policy until now. Marguerite recently presented her poster Mean Sea Level Trends in Regions of the U.S. at the Vanderbilt Celebration of Learning where she developed this project for an Earth and Environmental Science lab course she was taking. In her project,...
Celebration of Learning Spotlight: Using Scalar to Display Vanderbilt University’s Drawings of the Woolworth Building
Apr. 5, 2018—Architectural drawings and history are of interest to many people, but unfolding and examining these documents can be problematic as they’re very delicate, especially if they’re older. However, thanks to Ellen Dement, there may be a way to appreciate and study these drawings without damaging the original document. For Ellen, the project stated as a...
Celebration of Learning Spotlight: Vana Learning
Mar. 27, 2018—When Rob Trone reflected on his own academic journey, he notes some low points throughout. “There was a lack of consistent and actionable feedback provided by my teachers,” he says. However, this reflection didn’t stop there, Rob wanted to do something about it, so he pulled together a team of Vanderbilt students and established the...
How engaging in educational research influenced my teaching
Mar. 5, 2018—by Ryan Bowen, CFT Graduate Assistant When it came to teaching, I used to have intuitive sense about what effective instruction looked like in the classroom. I could walk into a room, deliver a lesson, facilitate an activity, and assess learning in some capacity. If my students met a certain performance standard or quantitative score...
Flipping the Traditional Mentoring Model
Apr. 24, 2017—by Rachel Biel, CFT Undergraduate Intern This past summer I had the opportunity to intern for Spectrum Health—a healthcare system in my hometown, Grand Rapids, MI. For the summer I was assigned to work with Senior Project Manager Rebecca Content, whose project was joint venture with another local hospital to provide primary care and specialty...
How is the current political climate impacting your interactions with your students?
Apr. 3, 2017—A group of about 35 current and former Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows recently met at the Center for Teaching to discuss this question, looking for ways to promote dialog and learning that can help students navigate our highly polarized world. The participants teach classes across the university, within Peabody School of Education, the School of...
First Person Singular
Sep. 17, 2014—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director, cross-posted from Derek’s blog, Agile Learning Your first paper assignment asks you to make an argument drawing largely on your personal experiences and perspectives. Did you have writing assignments in high school that asked you to do this? I asked this question of the students in my first-year writing seminar...
Teaching, Difference, and Power—with Our Language
Sep. 12, 2014—by Nancy Chick, CFT Assistant Director I’ve been thinking about the role of language in the CFT’s theme of “Teaching, Difference, and Power.” During the first semester of my first faculty position, fresh out of graduate school, I spoke the language of my dissertation. Beautiful (to me) multisyllabic terms, an elegant (to me) theoretical framework...