Services for Departments, Programs, and Schools
The Center for Teaching works directly with departments, programs, schools, and other units as part of our mission-driven programs and services that aim to
- Provide opportunities to develop and refine foundational teaching skills through workshops, seminars, and individual consultations;
- Consult with educators as they adopt and evaluate new teaching practices as part of their continuing professional development;
- Foster campus conversations on teaching and learning that are informed by national and international higher education developments, as well as local issues and priorities; and
- Identify, share, and advocate for research-based practices in university teaching and the resources that support them.
We welcome the opportunity to consult or collaborate with deans, department chairs,* center directors, curriculum committees, course heads, and any others at Vanderbilt involved with teaching and learning design, implementation, assessment, evaluation, and research. See below for some examples.
Teaching | Learning | Curriculum | Professional Development
Teaching
- Designing and implementing ways to evaluate teaching effectiveness
- Facilitating peer observation within a department or program
- Making sense of student course evaluation data
- Exploring and implementing research on particular pedagogies relevant to a department or program (e.g., team-based learning, service learning, alternatives to the humanities essay)
- Reflecting on and adopting discipline-specific teaching practices (“signature pedagogies“)
- Setting up teaching award systems and incentives
- Designing and conducting workshops as needed
Learning
- Designing for and assessing student learning in individual courses, curricular sequences, or larger programs
- Facilitating research on student learning in a course, department, or program
- Rethinking the effectiveness of learning spaces
- Designing and conducting workshops as needed
Curriculum
- Serving on a department’s Committee on Undergraduate Studies
- Developing or revising curriculum
- (Re)designing a major/minor
- Developing pedagogy courses for graduate programs
- Facilitating collaborative development and/or assessment of specific topics, skills, or lessons
- Creating and linking a department’s or school’s teaching objectives to course design, assignments, and teaching practices for individual instructors
- Designing and conducting workshops as needed
Professional Development
- Creating plans for teaching improvement (confidential one-on-one consultations, small group analysis feedback from students, teaching observations)
- Recruiting, hiring, and orienting new faculty
- Mentoring junior faculty on their teaching
- Fostering the professional development of graduate students as future faculty
- Improving mentoring for undergraduate, graduate, and professional students and postdocs, as advising is a form of teaching
- Designing and conducting workshops as needed
Our Staff page will also point you to the CFT liaison for your department, program, or unit. For more information or to schedule a conversation, call the Center for Teaching at 322-7290.
* Also see see our Resources for Department Chairs.