Proposal for a Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning

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Joshua Eyler

Center for Teaching Excellence [email protected]

Proposal for a Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning Justification

An important aspect of the Center for Teaching Excellence’s mission is to provide resources both for graduate students who are currently TAs or instructors of record at Rice, as well as for

graduate students and postdoctoral scholars who wish to build academic careers in which teaching will play a significant role. As a part of these efforts, we inherited the TEACH workshop series from the Office of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies two years ago. In 2013-14, we had 313 attendees across 8 TEACH workshops. The numbers alone point to the level of interest among our graduate students and postdocs for professional development with respect to teaching, but—more than that—the feedback that we received from these attendees time after time was that they wanted more formal opportunities to study teaching.

We are proposing a Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning that will provide participants with a combination of formal pedagogical training, practical experience, and mentoring that will prepare them to be effective college teachers. Because the certificate will be accredited by SACS and, thus, will appear on their transcripts, graduate students and postdocs who complete the program will also have a valuable credential to add to their CVs.

Currently, some departments have pedagogy seminars on the books, whereas many others do not. We do not envision this certificate program competing with departmental pedagogy courses, but instead providing a complement to these disciplinary offerings, because we will be addressing the broad landscape of pedagogical techniques and research. By the same token, students in departments that do not have such courses can benefit from a close study of best practices in teaching and learning.

Such programs are not new in higher education and, indeed, many of our peer institutions have comparable offerings, including the following:

Harvard’s Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning—Teaching Certificate Program http://bokcenter.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k1985&tabgroupid=icb.tabgroup168691 Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching—Certificate in College Teaching

http://cft.vanderbilt.edu/programs/certificate-in-college-teaching/ Yale’s Teaching Center—Certificate of College Teaching Preparation

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Requirements

The following courses are required for the Certificate. All of this information comes from the listing in the General Announcements:

UNIV 500-PRINCIPLES OF EFFECTIVE COLLEGE TEACHING Credits: 3

Grade Mode: Standard Letter

This course provides an overview of essential, research-based methods used by college instructors to enhance the quality of student learning. Topics will include course and syllabus design, student engagement, classroom management, and more. This course will culminate with the development of a syllabus and a statement of teaching philosophy. College: Dean of Undergraduates

Department: University Courses

UNIV 501-RESEARCH ON TEACHING AND LEARNING Credits: 3

This course explores scholarship on teaching and learning in detail with special attention to the breadth of approaches and methodologies. The culminating project will be a literature review in an area of interest.

College: Dean of Undergraduates Department: University Courses

UNIV 502-PRACTICUM IN COLLEGE TEACHING Credits: 3

This practicum allows students to design and deliver teaching demonstrations and to receive feedback on their work. The course will also focus on the place of teaching in the broader landscapes of higher education and the academic job market.

Pre-requisities: UNIV 500 AND UNIV 501 UNIV 599-TEACHING PORTFOLIO Credits: 2

This independent study serves as a capstone to the UNIV sequence on teaching and learning. Students will meet individually with the instructor to plan and complete a teaching portfolio.

Pre-requisities: UNIV 500 AND UNIV 501

As you can see, UNIV 500 and 501 are prerequisites for 502 and 599. We believe this is

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first two courses in the sequence.

The total number of hours required is 11. Instead of creating a Certificate comprised of 12 credits, we have opted for the 9+ credit model, because it makes the most sense for the nature of this program. In order to fulfill the guidelines for the establishment of graduate certificates, UNIV 599 will have a mentoring/shadowing component that the students must complete along with their teaching portfolio. This model will make the program more feasible for those graduate students and postdocs who are balancing the demands of their teaching and their research.

Participating Faculty Elizabeth Barre, Ph.D.

Assistant Director, Center for Teaching Excellence [email protected]

Joshua Eyler, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Teaching Excellence Adjunct Associate Professor of Humanities [email protected]

Robin Paige, Ph.D.

Members of Steering Committee

John Hutchinson, Dean of Undergraduates [email protected]

Brian Gibson, Associate Dean of Undergraduates [email protected]

An Appointee of the Dean of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies Lisa Balabanlilar, Associate Professor of History*

Faculty Fellow of the CTE [email protected]

Mike Gustin, Professor of Biochemistry & Cell Biology* Faculty Fellow of the CTE

[email protected]

Ric Stoll, Professor of Political Science* Faculty Fellow of the CTE

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Elizabeth Barre, Ph.D.

Joshua Eyler, Ph.D.

Director, Center for Teaching Excellence Adjunct Associate Professor of Humanities [email protected]

Robin Paige, Ph.D.

*Because CTE Faculty Fellows serve 3-year terms, new Fellows will rotate onto the Steering Committee as others move off of it.

Procedures and Qualifications for Admission

Any Rice graduate student or postdoctoral scholar in good standing can be admitted to the program.

Student Learning Outcomes and Curriculum Map See attached.

Assessment Plan

Assessment of this program will take place at two levels. For individual courses, we will be designing surveys using Qualtrix to complement the university’s standard course evaluations. These surveys will collect quantitative and qualitative data that will allow us to maximize the effectiveness of each course. The survey for UNIV 599 will include questions designed to obtain feedback about the program as a whole.

At the program level, we will use the teaching portfolios produced in UNIV 599 for assessment. A team made up of our instructors and members of the steering committee will use a specialized rubric to analyze how well these capstone projects align with our student learning outcomes. Language for the General Announcements

REQUIREMENTS FOR GRADUATE CERTIFICATE IN TEACHING AND LEARNING The graduate certificate program in teaching and learning is intended to provide participants with a combination of formal pedagogical training, practical experience, and mentoring that will prepare them to be effective college teachers. The program is open to any Rice graduate student or postdoctoral scholar in good standing.

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For the graduate certificate in teaching and learning, candidates must complete the following four courses:

UNIV 500: Principles of Effective College Teaching UNIV 501: Research in Teaching and Learning UNIV 502: Practicum in College Teaching UNIV 599: Teaching Portfolio

All of these courses carry three hours of credit, with the exception of UNIV 599, which carries only two. In sum, the program is comprised of eleven credit hours. All courses will be offered every year.