by Jeff Havens

Teaching. It’s an activity that takes place every day on Vanderbilt’s campus, from the traditional classroom to the hospital room to the football field. A law professor trains his or her students to litigate; a medical doctor teaches an intern a life-saving skill; a baseball coach impresses on his team how to make the perfect play. In the academic world, much emphasis is placed on knowledge. But what is knowledge without the ability to effectively communicate it? What is teaching without learning?

Vanderbilt’s Center for Teaching, located in Calhoun Hall, which has been fostering the links between good teaching and good learning since 1986, understands this challenge. In addition to workshops and consultation services, the CFT offers a Teaching Certificate program designed to help graduate and professional students and post-doctoral fellows focus on student learning and thus develop into top-quality teachers in their chosen fields.

Allison Pingree, the center’s director, explained that the certificate program reflects recent trends in American higher education that have focused on graduate student professional development, particularly as teachers. Among them are a documented disconnect between what doctoral students learn in their graduate programs and the roles they are expected to play as faculty members, broadening definitions of “scholarship” that have expanded beyond traditional research (the “scholarship of discovery”) into pedagogical inquiry (the “scholarship of teaching and learning”), and the growing trend among universities to value teaching experience and ability, in tandem with research capacity, in the faculty they recruit.

“Looking at these developments several years ago, we asked ourselves, ‘What are we doing at Vanderbilt to prepare the future faculty?’” Pingree said.

One response was to establish, in partnership with the Graduate School, the Future Faculty Preparation Program (F2P2), a broad professional development program. Since 2000-01, more than 300 graduate, professional and post-doctoral participants from across Vanderbilt have joined the program; nearly a dozen will graduate from it this spring.

However, the success of F2P2 also posed new challenges. “Writing a CV, preparing job talks, dealing with stress – these were all important topics for graduate students, but they fell outside the Center for Teaching’s core mission,” Pingree said.

So the CFT worked with the Graduate School, the Career Center, deans’ offices and other units on campus to create a larger web of support. The Graduate Student Professional and Personal Development Collaborative sponsors events and resources through regular meetings and a Web site (www.vanderbilt.edu/gradschool/gsppd/index.html). In addition, the CFT changed the F2P2 program into an online resource (www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/programs/graduate_student/f2p2.htm).

These efforts allowed the CFT to create a more cohesive program focusing specifically on teaching and learning. The program begins with an online application, teaching statement and intake interview. It also provides access to an electronic portfolio, which allows students to collect their work throughout the process, reflect upon their own teaching and have something tangible to show to prospective employers.

The program’s central framework was drafted by Derek Bruff, the newest of the CFT’s three assistant directors, himself a Vanderbilt Ph.D. graduate (Mathematics, ’03). The program includes three cycles: “Building a Teaching Foundation,” “Putting Pedagogical Theory into Practice” and “The Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.” Each cycle consists of three phases – inquiry, experimentation and reflection – and builds incrementally on what precedes it.

“We prompt each person to identify what elements of their teaching practice, and of their students’ learning, they’d like to address,” Pingree said. “They try it out, analyze it and see how well it worked. Teaching is often privatized, but we can learn a great deal by making it public – by bringing to bear on it the same processes of peer review and discussion that nurture our research.”

Five months since its launch, 20 graduate students and post-doctoral fellows from various schools in the university have joined the program. So far, participants have been extremely happy with the results.

“Any graduate student who is serious about teaching should consider participating in the program,” said Lyndi Hewitt, a fifth-year sociology Ph.D. student. “It’s a very effective way to promote self-reflection, to integrate one’s teaching and research goals, and also to set oneself apart on the job market as a candidate who strives for excellence in the classroom.”

Brandon Lute, currently in his fourth year in the neuroscience Ph.D. program, agrees. “It’s very difficult for biomedical researchers to get teaching experience, so the CFT provides a unique opportunity,” he said. “Teaching is about providing an environment where students are able to learn, and I think the CFT helps teachers identify and create that environment.”

Envisioning the program’s impact, Pingree said, “Participants will become better scholars in the fullest sense of the word: integrated in their teaching and research and able to use their training in inquiry, investigation and analysis to translate and open up their fields of study for students. The university will benefit as well. Participants will be more effective in their current instructional responsibilities, more competitive as job candidates and more successful in new faculty roles.”

For more information, visit www.vanderbilt.edu/cft/programs/graduate_student/tc.htm.

Posted 04/10/06