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‘Teaching Difference and Power’

Newly Revised CFT Guide on Creating Accessible Learning Environments

Jul. 19, 2018—Graduate Teaching Fellow, Amie Thurber, along with Assistant Director Joe Bandy, have prepared a newly updated teaching guide for creating inclusive and accessible higher education classrooms. While it is first and foremost designed to help instructors in their efforts to create inclusive equality for disabled students, it has content that will help all students access,...

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“Creating Opportunities out of Difference” Interactive Workshop May 21st

May. 9, 2018—The Office for Inclusive Excellence is offering a professional development workshop, “Creating Opportunities out of Difference”, an interactive workshop featuring PowerPlay Interactive Development from the University of New Hampshire. PowerPlay will employ a unique interactive theater model focused on issues of creating inclusive classrooms and positive student interactions. The Powerplay model involves actor improvisation and...

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Teaching, Difference, and Power: Disability and Learning Meeting March 15th

Mar. 12, 2018—Higher education today is home to an increasingly diverse student population with a wide variety of needs and abilities.  This presents innumerable opportunities to enliven and enhance the intellectual dynamism of our classes and campuses.  To take full advantage of these opportunities, university educators must develop the knowledge and skills of teaching inclusively to diverse...

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Teaching after Charlottesville

Aug. 15, 2017—By Derek Bruff, CFT Director This weekend’s events in Charlottesville, Virginia, saw hateful and bigoted speech turn into deadly violence. As classes at Vanderbilt resume this month, these events will be on the minds of students and faculty returning to campus. They’re certainly on my mind. I think of my visit to the University of...

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Reflections from the Teaching Difference, and Power Symposium: Class Matters

May. 8, 2017—On April 25th, the CFT hosted a Teaching, Difference, and Power symposium focused on the ways teaching and learning can be shaped or challenged by social class.  This was as an event to celebrate and extend discussions that took place over the Fall and Spring of a CFT learning community on social class. About thirty...

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Teaching Difference, and Power Symposium: Class Matters

Apr. 5, 2017—This year, the Center for Teaching hosted a learning community of faculty and graduate students focused on social class, particularly the challenges faced by lower income and first generation students in the classroom, and class-conscious methods of teaching. On April 25th, join the Vanderbilt Center for Teaching for an end-of-year symposium in which we’ll share...

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Teaching Difference, and Power Symposium: Class Matters

Mar. 10, 2017—This event took place on April 25th, 2017. Among the greatest challenges facing higher education is that of creating diverse and democratic campus cultures that seek to confront, rather than replicate, social inequalities. One of the most challenging inequalities to confront is that of social class, since it shapes all of our lives in profound...

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Brown Bag Lunch Series: LGBTQI Inclusivity & Allyship in Learning Spaces: February (2/1, 2/8, 2/15, 2/22)

Jan. 16, 2017—This month-long series of 4 workshops aims to create an active learning community wherein current and future educators can build their capacity to personally enact and support LGBTQI inclusivity & allyship in postsecondary academic contexts. Topics include, but are not limited to, the following: LGBTQI resources on campus and beyond, information on the contemporary LGBTQI...

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Teaching in Response to the Election

Nov. 10, 2016—by Joe Bandy, CFT Assistant Director Before and certainly after Tuesday’s election, there has been much discussion in higher education about the incivilities and conflicts of this electoral season, and the potential impacts they are having on our students, particularly those students who are least represented on our campuses and most vulnerable to trauma.  Many...

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Claiming Your Authority in the Classroom

Sep. 28, 2016—by Cynthia Brame, CFT Assistant Director One of the most persistent questions about college teaching is how to establish authority while being student-centered and giving your students voice. It ranks right up there with—and is related to—questions about how to engage students. For a scholarly perspective, we can turn to a model proposed by Paul...

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