Teaching Development Opportunities for Grad Students

Hadear Hassan

I wanted to share a few teaching development opportunities that I have come across as a grad student. I often come across a few other students that love teaching but have never heard of these opportunities. I believe A&M does a great job with professional development programs, but not everyone knows where to find those. So, here’s a few of the ones I attended and really enjoyed.

1) This one is quite popular, and I believe most grad students have heard about it: Academy of Future Faculty (AFF). This is a one-year program where you have to attend 8 seminars (you can attend more but 8 is the requirement). The seminars are very informative and quite fun. The elective seminars range from topics such as mental health, inclusion, small groups, universal design and so much more. I personally really enjoyed those elective seminars and learned so much from them. There are a few other requirements, among those are document submissions and a class observation. It’s a great program if you are interested in teaching and you also receive an Academy for Future Faculty Fellow Certificate. 

2) MOOC Local Learning Communities: These are typically 8-week courses (you meet once a week for an hour). The way they work is that you register for an edX course online and complete the requirements to earn a certificate, but you also get to attend online zoom meetings weekly with peers that are also doing the same course. So, you get to discuss what you learn in that course with other people. This is always such a great
opportunity to meet and discuss teaching strategies with people outside of your major. You get to learn from different perspectives, and you get experience with discussing teaching practices. I have attended two of those, one with A&M and one with The University of Arizona. That’s the other great thing about MOOC, if your university is not offering your desired courses, they can match you with a learning community from
another university. Here is the link for the MOOC courses that A&M offers: https://cirtl.tamu.edu/TAMU-Programs/MOOC-Local-Learning-Community. Also, keep a look out for emails, that’s how I found out about some of their opportunities. There is this course that isn’t offered by A&M but they usually match you with another university If you are interested on learning more about inclusive teaching: https://www.inclusivestemteaching.org/. You also get completion certificates or CIRTL Associate Certificates from those courses.

3) CIRTL offers a range of other teaching programs that you should definitely look into if you’re interested in applying new teaching strategies in a classroom. I haven’t had the opportunity to join any of them yet, but they are worth a look. Some of those you can get a stipend from as well.
a)    Teaching as Research Fellow  https://cirtl.tamu.edu/TAMU-Programs/Teaching-as-Research-Fellows
b)    College Classroom Teaching Course https://cirtl.tamu.edu/TAMU-Programs/College-Classroom-Teaching Course
c)    Graduate Teaching Consultant Program: https://cirtl.tamu.edu/TAMU-Programs/Graduate-Teaching Consultant-Program

4) The Graduate Mentoring Academy is a program that aims to improve and teach graduate mentoring experiences at A&M. You have to attend a few sessions (I believe it’s either 6 or 7), and during these sessions there are facilitators, but they encourage and create discussions with your peers. Here is the link for more information on the program and timings of their sessions. https://gradconnect.tamu.edu/portal/GMA_Fall2021?tab=home