Innovative Program Prepares Graduate Students to Teach at the College/University Level

A GIFT Teaching Fellow leads
a class at Tufts.

Doctoral programs across the United States typically focus on the research and dissertation work of their students. What is often ignored are best teaching practices, a serious oversight considering that many Ph.D. students enter academia after they graduate. Therefore, for many recent graduates, the first year of college/university teaching can be difficult as they grapple with everything from developing a syllabus to engaging their students.

Recognizing the importance of educating future professors, the Tufts Graduate School of Arts and Sciences launched the Graduate Institute For Teaching (GIFT) in 2007. A collaborative effort involving the university-wide Center for the Enhancement of Learning and Teaching (CELT) and the Tufts Summer School, the program is open to all Tufts Arts, Sciences, and Engineering graduate students, as well as post doctoral fellows from the other professional schools at Tufts. Each institute session kicks-off with a series of summer workshops. These workshops focus on areas such as syllabus and course design, lesson planning, teaching with technology, and teacher-student relationships, and are meant to give participants a strong foundation in teaching pedagogy.

"The summer workshops were extremely valuable," says Hugh Long, a drama graduate student. "It was a chance to meet with my fellow GIFT members, and although we came from diverse disciplines, we shared an experience that will last throughout our careers. Each day we came into contact with new ideas, thoughts, and methods that only expanded our abilities to teach."

Following the workshops, graduate students in the GIFT program co-teach a Tufts course with a faculty mentor during the fall semester. In this role, they design and deliver at least two teaching sessions and work closely with their mentor to improve their classroom presentation.

The GIFT workshops provide students with a strong foundation in teaching pedagogy.

"My faculty mentor gave me immediate feedback on my teaching," says Caprice Gray, a mechanical engineering graduate student. "He let me be very involved in every aspect of the class from designing the syllabus to grading exams and determining final grades, which was the most difficult part of the process."

To learn more about the Graduate Institute For Teaching, go to http://gs.as.tufts.edu/GIFT

Student teaching photo by Melody Ko.