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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.