Nancy Ruggeri, Assoc. Director Searle Center for Advancing Learning & Teaching Rob Linsenmeier, Professor Depts. Biomedical Engineering, Neurobiology, Opthamology

 Mentored Discussions of Teaching  STEM track for Searle Teaching Certificate Program  Teaching Colloquium Series

 Build a learning community of faculty, grad students, and postdocs  Provide low-barrier entry point to CIRTL and Searle Center programs  Provide opportunity for grad students and postdocs to increase awareness of pedagogical options and other issues in teaching.  Subsidiary goal (shhh – do not tell faculty): Identify faculty to mentor TAR projects and engage in other activities in the future.

 February: Recruit faculty as mentors (contacted those who had been involved with Searle Center)  Early March: Offer program to all STEM and SBE grad students and postdocs.  Late March: Match students/postdocs with faculty teaching in spring quarter; send students/postdocs a one pager about observations.  Early April: Faculty send information about class to their mentees  Early April: Lunch for participating faculty to discuss program  April-May: students/postdocs observe a few classes (2-5) in mentor’s course  May: students meet with mentor to discuss observations  June: Wrap up discussion with faculty mentors  June 19 (yesterday!): wrap up discussion with students & postdocs

 Lots of interest  16 faculty, 23 postdocs, 35 graduate students!  Matched 9 faculty with 24 grads/postdocs (1- 3 per faculty)

 Faculty were enthusiastic about experience  Some provided more structure than others for their mentees.  All are willing to participate again.  Many students met with mentor not only in a final discussion (as planned), but often after each class that they had observed

 Challenges with matching due to:  Limit to number of mentees faculty willing to take on  Lack of appropriate course (e.g. no chemistry profs available)  Scheduling conflicts course vs. student availability

 We encountered challenges with participation  About 7 of the 23 students/postdocs dropped out of the program. ▪ Imperfect match of course to student interest?  Lack of clear expectations?  Chicago campus-Evanston campus travel time

What we learned:  Our learning community is underway!  Faculty participation required with zero arm twisting  Grad student/postdoc demand is quite high  Benefits for both mentors and mentees  Need to provide more structure to program  Some students and postdocs wanted more grounding in pedagogy  Will add an introductory meeting with participants  Encourage students to have one mentor, but to observe variety of classroom styles  Despite low effort for participants, logistics took considerable time effort for organizers.

 Provide STEM-focused literature and discussions for graduate students and postdocs  program 24 STEM grads (65 total)  program 24 STEM grads, 6 postdocs (67 total)

 Year-long program for graduate students and postdocs across disciplines  Outcomes: a course design project, teaching philosophy, and teaching portfolio

 Attend six seminars on course design, assessment, methods, student backgrounds, evaluation, and portfolio development  Small discipline-specific group meetings led by graduate mentor  Attend two Searle workshops

 Workshops led by Graduate Teaching Fellows  Audience is primarily graduate students and postdocs in the Searle Teaching Certificate Program