Skip to main content

‘Social Sciences’

Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow Spotlight: David Diehl

Mar. 23, 2016—Each month, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month,David Diehl, Human and Organizational Development, talks about his teaching philosophy and interests. I teach in Peabody College’s Department of Human and Organizational Development, instructing undergraduates who are preparing for roles in various types of organizations and graduate students primarily interested...

Read more


A Conversation on Flipped Classrooms

Apr. 22, 2015—by Derek Bruff, CFT Director On March 7th, the CFT and the Vanderbilt Institute for Digital Learning (VIDL) hosted the second in a series of Conversations on Digital Pedagogy. These conversations are meant to provide members of the Vanderbilt teaching community opportunities to learn from each other as they explore creative and effective uses of...

Read more


How do you teach novice scientists to be thoughtful, critical researchers?

Apr. 10, 2014—By Cynthia Brame   I recently had two experiences that spoke to this issue. First, I ran into my colleague Carl Johnson in the BioSci department at Vanderbilt. He said that he was finishing up getting ready to present at journal club, and that he needed to go take another look at the paper “to...

Read more


Students as Producers in Social Science Courses

Apr. 7, 2014—by Julie Lapidot, CFT Student Assistant The following is a summary of a conversation on teaching the CFT hosted earlier this semester, part of our “Students as Producers” theme year. For more ideas on helping students become not only consumers of knowledge, but producers and creators, come to our Celebration of Learning on April 21st....

Read more


How to (Re)frame Your Teaching for Non-academic Jobs

Feb. 12, 2014—By Andrew Greer, Graduate Teaching Fellow  Attention fellow graduate students: Eventually we will seek employment outside of our programs. If you’re like me, your search is in full force. With the majority of academic applications behind me, I’ve switched my strategy to applying for non-academic jobs. This switch not only requires transforming my CV into...

Read more


SoTL Spotlight: Reflections from a SoTL Project

Nov. 20, 2013—by Andrew Greer, CFT Graduate Teaching Fellow Learning happens (or doesn’t), and the processes often remain hidden. Teachers tend to modify their teaching with trial and error, and base these modifications on assumptions about the problems with student learning. However, instead of being guided by hunches, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) researchers strive to...

Read more


From a Student’s View: Solving a Campus Navigation Challenge

Oct. 22, 2013—by Julie Lapidot, CFT Student Assistant Today’s post is part of our “Students as Producers” theme year, as well as our irregular “From a Student’s View” blog series. Allanah Jackson is a Peabody sophomore who had the opportunity last spring to be a “producer” in her Human and Organizational Development (HOD) 1100 class, taught by...

Read more


From a Student’s View: Group Work

Nov. 28, 2012—This is a guest post by Erin Baldwin, Vanderbilt Class of 2014, College of Arts and Sciences. The post is part of our ongoing “From a Student’s View” blog series. We occasionally feature guest posts here on the blog as part of our efforts to cultivate dialogue about teaching and learning among Vanderbilt faculty, students,...

Read more


Episode 31 – Student Learning on Display: Eliciting Positive Emotions Using Film

May. 31, 2012—In an effort to better understand student learning, particularly deep learning, as it occurs at Vanderbilt, the CFT is producing a special series of podcasts highlighting student projects across a variety of disciplines. In this episode we join CFT Director Derek Bruff as he reports on-location from the “Psychology Day” poster session where psychology honors...

Read more


Junior Faculty Teaching Fellow Spotlight:Evelyn Patterson

Mar. 6, 2012—Each month, the CFT Newsletter highlights the work of our Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows. This month, Evelyn Patterson, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology, talks about her teaching philosophy and interests: My research uses two subfields of sociology, demography and criminology, to undertake an essential task, the demography of incarceration.  I investigate fundamental issues...

Read more