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.