| |
The CTE-Lilly Graduate Teaching Fellows Program
Sponsored by
The Graduate School
At the University of Maryland undergraduate students are often taught by graduate students. Over their tenure as graduate teaching assistants (GTAs), graduate students develop insights into how to best enhance teaching and student learning at the University of Maryland. This fellowship provides an opportunity to document and share these insights and build upon this knowledge to enhance teaching and learning. The CTE-Lilly Graduate Fellowship is a venue to develop and sustain a cross-disciplinary learning community of graduate students as future faculty. It productively focuses on undergraduate teaching and learning. The CTE-Lilly Graduate Fellowship program is modeled after the very successful CTE-Lilly Fellowship program for faculty, which has been in place for nearly 20 years.
The 2008-09 pilot fellowship year was a remarkable success. The first cohort of fellows engaged in scholarly exchanges on the place of sustainability in the disciplines, initiated a comprehensive research project on UM programs that address sustainability and sustainability programs at other campuses, including our peer institutions, created a sustainability guide for the Maryland community, and presented their work at the first summer institute on sustainability. The guide, Applying Today’s Learning to Achieve Sustainability Tomorrow (@TLAST) is available via http://cte.umd.edu/programs/graduate/lillygraduate/@last.
Program Description
CTE-Lilly Graduate Fellows will commit to take part in regular meetings over the course of the one-year program. Meetings will be held for two hours and occur at least six times per semester. During the meetings fellows will discuss teaching and learning across campus and disciplines, engage selected foundational readings, and form an active community of practice focused on university teaching and student learning issues (e.g., pedagogy, assessment, student intellectual development).
As a community the cohort will develop a concrete teaching and learning project of their choice directed at helping improve the professional development of the fellows, as well as enhancing undergraduate teaching and student learning at UM. CTE senior staff and the CTE graduate program coordinator will assist the fellows with teaching and learning resources to make the project as successful as possible. The CTE-Lilly Graduate Fellow Program will improve campus teaching and student learning by facilitating sustainable cross-disciplinary partnerships between graduate students.
CTE expects CTE-Lilly Graduate Fellows to document the development, facilitation, and assessment of their teaching and learning project.
Upon completion of the year-long program and upon implementation of the Lilly Graduate Fellow Project, Graduate Fellows will each receive a stipend of $1,000.
Over the course of the CTE-Lilly Graduate Fellow Program, participants will be encouraged to compete for one of four teaching conference grants ($500 each) to attend and present at a conference on teaching and learning of their choice. Conference grants will be allocated based on the quality of conference participation, as well as the quality of the grant application. CTE expects that conference participants will hone their pedagogical backgrounds and insights in panels and conversations with faculty from diverse institutions.
Outcomes
The fellowships will improve the pedagogical sophistication of graduate students at the University, whose teaching contributes to their professional dossiers. As a community of practice, fellows will engage with each other as a scholarly cohort that will improve their understanding of effective teaching, curricular decision-making, institutional needs, and interdisciplinary efforts to improve undergraduate teaching and learning. Over the fellowship year, the cohort will develop and execute a project that directly enhances undergraduate education at the University of Maryland. Upon completing the year-long fellowship participants will be better able to meet the academic demands of the colleges and universities whose faculties they will join and thus will have increased likelihood of career success.
Eligibility and Application Process
Senior graduate students who have completed their required coursework, passed their qualifying exams and have taught undergraduates at UM for at least a year may apply to be a CTE -Lilly Graduate Fellow. The application consists of an online form summarizing qualifications, a letter describing their teaching experience and articulating their interest in being a fellow and a letter of support from an advisor or other appropriate UM faculty member. Participants will be selected by CTE staff and a faculty panel of CTE-Lilly Fellows. They will be selected on the basis of previous involvement with teaching and learning and the promise of their application narratives.
Application for the 2010-2011 year will be accepted starting late summer 2010. Please check back.
|
