News Category
Microbiome Venture Fund Seeking Proposals
Jul. 27, 2021—Vanderbilt faculty, staff, and students can now apply for the Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative Venture Fund, which supports microbiome scholarship spanning research, education, outreach, art, ethics, law and policy development, among others. The Vanderbilt Microbiome Initiative Venture Fund is an opportunity for all Vanderbilt faculty, staff, trainees and students to apply for pilot funding of a project...
CFT Proudly Welcomes the New Cohort of Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows
Jul. 22, 2021—L to R: Michael Byrne (Medicine), Maria Sayil Camacho (Leadership, Policy and Organizations), Elizabeth Cizmar (Theatre), Thomas Clements (Biological Sciences), Romina Del Bosque (Biomedical Engineering), Janelle Delle (Nursing), Seok Bae Jang (Asian Studies), Melinda Johnson (Nursing), Antonia Kaczkurkin (Psychology), Hannah Kestner (Nursing),Colleen Moss (Nursing), Piran Kidambi (Biomolecular Engineering), Autumn Kujawa (Psychology and Human Development), Michelle...
The CFT Thanks Our Graduate Teaching Fellows!
Jun. 23, 2021—L to R: Abena Boakyewa-Ansah (History), Amanda Brockman (Sociology), Leah Roberts (Human & Organizational Development), and Mohammad Meerzaei (Religion) We want to thank our 2020-2021 Graduate Teaching Fellows for their leadership, commitment to teaching values, and completing their 12 months fellowship. As we faced an unprecedented year with new teaching challenges, our incredible Fellows created various resources and...
Learning Community Focusing on the Needs of LGBTQI+ Students
Jun. 18, 2021—This year, the CFT and the KC Potter Center for LGBTQI Life hosted a learning community on ways faculty can better support the needs of LGBTQI+ students. Over twenty participants met throughout the year to explore LGBTQI+ student’s experiences inside and outside the classroom, to discuss scholarly literature on strategies for inclusion, and techniques of...
Learning Community on Teaching and Race
Jun. 17, 2021—In 2020-21, the CFT hosted a learning community dedicated to understanding the many challenges and opportunities of teaching issues of race, and supporting students of all racial identities and backgrounds. In five events throughout the year, dozens of participants from across the disciplines engaged in a variety of conversations about the challenges of teaching race...
CFT Concludes Latest Online Course Design Institute
Jun. 16, 2021—To help faculty prepare for teaching this Summer, we offered an Online Course Design Institute (OCDI). The institute was a revised and updated version of the institute that the Center for Teaching offered in summer 2020 to more than 500 participants. Participants worked in three cohorts led by CFT Senior Staff Members Cynthia Brame, Julaine...
Learning Assistant Pilot Program
Jun. 15, 2021—Learning assistants (LAs) are undergraduate students who are guided by a faculty member to work with small groups of students to promote active learning in a course. The use of LAs has been found to be associated with increased sense of belonging and to increase inclusion, particularly in large courses. LAs were piloted in BSCI...
Promoting Persistence in STEM Learning Community
Jun. 10, 2021— STEM disciplines have long been concerned with disparities between underrepresented and well-represented student groups and the associated “pipeline” problem, where underrepresented students are more likely to switch away from STEM majors. A group of about eighteen faculty from eight departments met throughout 2020-2021 to explore approaches to increasing equity and inclusion in their courses...
Excellence in Podcasting Competition
May. 12, 2021—Have any of your students produced excellent work in audio form this year? Maybe you included a podcasting assignment in your course, or you let students choose their medium for a creative assignment and one of them made an audio documentary. Or maybe you’re a student who tried your hand at academic podcasting recently. The Excellence...
Two new internal funding programs to support classroom excellence announced
May. 10, 2021—The Office of the Provost announces an additional two new internal funding programs, the Educational Advancement Fund and the Course Improvement Grant program, designed to support excellence in the classroom through continued pedagogical advancement and long-term educational transformation. These provost-sponsored internal funding programs are managed by the Office of Faculty Affairs in collaboration with the Center for Teaching...