Graduate Workshops

We invite all graduate students and postdocs to attend our highly interactive workshops that integrate the latest research and theory on student learning with the practices of the best teachers. Led by Searle Teaching Center staff and Graduate Teaching Fellows, these sessions help graduate TAs and instructors address key learning problems within and across their disciplines.

Workshops are offered free of charge, and locations vary. Registration is required; space is limited.

Fall 2012 Schedule | Winter 2013 Schedule | Spring 2013 Schedule

FALL 2012

Marketing Your Teaching
THU, 10/4, 5-7PM
Location: Frances Searle Building

Creating an effective teaching philosophy and portfolio is a challenging but increasingly important part of preparing for the job market. In this workshop, we will reflect on how to craft a distinctive teaching statement grounded in your disciplinary practice as well as discuss the components of a teaching portfolio that best communicate your teaching approaches to prospective employers.

Nancy Ruggeri is Associate Director of Graduate Student Development at the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching.


 Grading Assignments and Assigning Grades
THU, 10/18, 12-1:30 PM
Location: Searle Center

Grading assignments and assigning grades are among the most significant challenges that new TAs and teachers face, but these tasks also represent an opportunity to engage with students and extend their critical thinking skills at a pivotal point in the quarter. This workshop is an opportunity for newer and less experienced TAs to get feedback and share ideas on grading strategies with others in a similar position. Moderated by a Searle Graduate Teaching Fellow, the focus of this workshop is more practical than theoretical, and participants are asked to bring guidelines for projects or exams they are currently grading or will soon be assessing in their courses.

Rachel Ricci is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science. She currently teaches Political Theory courses at Loyola University Chicago. In the past she has taught in Northwestern's School of Continuing Studies and served as the Head Teaching Assistant for the Political Science Department. She has been leading workshops for the Searle Center since 2008. 

Talking the Talk: Facilitating Classroom Discussion
THU, 11/1, 12-2 PM
Location: Searle Center

Worried that your students won't talk? Unsure how to make discussion useful? This workshop will provide participants with concrete strategies to deal with the most reticent of classes and to maximize productive student participation in section or class. Over the course of the workshop, we will focus on how to establish a comfortable class atmosphere, promote interaction between students, and encourage critical, active engagement with course material.

Louise Edwards is a Ph.D. candidate in the Interdisicplinary Theatre and Drama program, and has served as a Searle TA Fellow and completed the Teaching Certificate Program. She has taught or TA'd many courses at Northwestern. She is currently of the two Graduate Assistants for the Searle Center.

WINTER 2013

Undergraduate Lab Reports: Grading and Improving Student Learning
 Wed 1/23, 10:30–12 PM
Location: Searle Center 

The structure of undergraduate lab reports can vary tremendously among departments and course-level.  Regardless of specific structure, all lab reports should help students learn to organize, analyze, and present their data, and use this data to draw conclusions and support claims, explain their scientific understanding clearly in words, and reflect on their experimentation.  As TAs, grading lab reports can be laborious, and time constraints make it difficult to provide students with opportunities to learn from and improve on their mistakes.  In this workshop we will explore ways to improve speed and efficiency in grading these reports while providing students with adequate feedback and means of improving their learning in the process. 

Jennifer Hobbs is a fifth year graduate student in the Physics department doing computational and behavioral research on the neuromechanics of the rat whisker system.  She is currently a Graduate Teaching Fellow and Teaching Consultant and has previously served as a Graduate Teaching Mentor (2011-2012) and TA Fellow (2009, 2010, 2011) through the Searle Center.  Jennifer has been a TA for a number of the introductory physics courses (Physics 125-3, Physics 130-1,2,3, Physics 135-2,3) as both a discussion and laboratory TA and was an HHMI Teaching Fellow for the NuViBE program in 2011-2012, helping to redesign the Bio210 sequence.  

Working with Student Writing
 Mon 2/11, 3–5 PM
Location: Graduate Student Commons

In this workshop participants will discuss best practices for working with student writing. The workshop will be co-facilitated with a representative from the University Writing Center. Participants will practice grading and providing feedback on student writing, as well as strategies for using writing as a tool in the classroom. 

Lisa Kelly is a 4th year PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama program.  Her dissertation focuses on the social and political work of British actresses in the 19th century.  She is a graduate assistant at the Searle Center.  At Northwestern she has taught a freshman seminar and an upper level seminar for the theatre department and worked as a teaching assistant for the English department.  She has also taught a variety of theatre and public speaking courses at Virginia Commonwealth University. Desiree Weber is a 4th year in Political Science and is working on what theories of language and linguistic change reveal about how we perceive political action. She is currently a Searle Center Graduate Teaching Fellow and Teaching Consultant and has previously served as a TA Fellow for the New TA Conference. Desiree's previous TA duties have included introductory Political Theory, American Politics and International Relations courses, as well as upper-level courses in US Foreign Policy and Early Modern Political Theory. She has also taught academic debate at various institutes and enjoys getting into lively discussions about all sorts of topics! Elizabeth Lenaghan is the Assistant Director of the Northwestern University Writing Place, and is a former Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Searle Center (Ph.D., Media, Technology, and Society, 2012).

Teaching Tough Texts
 Tues 3/12, 3–5 PM
Location: Kresge 2-500

Have you ever seen your students' initial enthusiasm for a famous book quickly sour when they read the first page? Or perhaps you recall your own bewilderment when you first attempted Dostoevsky or Derrida? This workshop focuses on the classroom strategies you can use to make foreign, historically-remote, or experimental texts intelligible to your students. We will discuss different approaches to unpacking these tough texts and the diversity of ways in which we can encourage our students to engage critically and sensitively with them.

Rachel Ricci is a Ph.D. candidate in Political Science. She currently teaches Political Theory courses at Loyola University Chicago. In the past she has taught in Northwestern's School of Continuing Studies and served as the Head Teaching Assistant for the Political Science Department. She has been leading workshops for the Searle Center since 2008. Jade Werner is a Ph.D. candidate in English. She has won the English Department Outstanding TA award and currently works for the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities as Coordinator of the Undergraduate Affiliates Program. She has been leading workshops for the Searle Center since 2008.

SPRING 2013

Marketing Your Teaching
THU, 4/4, 5-7PM
Location: Graduate Student Commons

Creating an effective teaching philosophy and portfolio is a challenging but increasingly important part of preparing for the job market. In this workshop, we will reflect on how to craft a distinctive teaching statement grounded in your disciplinary practice as well as discuss the components of a teaching portfolio that best communicate your teaching approaches to prospective employers.

Nancy Ruggeri is Associate Director of Graduate Student Development at the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching.

Reflective Teaching
 When: Friday, April 5, 2–4 PM
Location: Searle Center

CTECS receive a great deal of attention in the graduate student teaching community, but they are only one method of evaluating your teaching. In this workshop, we’ll shift the focus to other strategies of evaluation. We’ll demonstrate and discuss a variety of methods, so you can be sure to find one that suits your teaching style. In the process you’ll learn techniques for helping your students generate productive feedback about their experience in your course. These informal evaluations will not only improve your teaching and help you build a professional teaching portfolio, but they help build stronger relationships between you and your students.

Benjamin Chiles is a fifth-year PhD student in the Communication Studies department and a Graduate Teaching Fellow of the Searle Center for Teaching Excellence. Kati Sweaney is a fifth-year Ph.D. candidate in Interdisciplinary Theatre & Drama. Her work examines scientists and educators who use performance to teach non-scientists about the human brain. At Northwestern she has taught theatre practice, history, and theory; humanities; and English.

Diversity, Inclusion, and Communication
TUE 4/16, 1-2:30 pm
Location: Searle Center
 
Social justice is the pursuit of fairness and equity for populations who are--currently and historically-- marginalized, exploited, dis-empowered, or violated based on their social group membership. These manifestations of oppression are the pervasive existence of social inequality woven through social institutions as well as embedded within individual consciousness. The goal of this workshop is to help participants recognize and discuss concepts of power, oppression, and privilege in their everyday lives and the ways in which this shapes the interactions that take place in and around the classroom.
Devin D. Moss, originally from Memphis, TN, is the Director of the LGBT Resource Center. He comes to Northwestern from the University of South Carolina where he served as the coordinator of LGBT Programs and Services. Devin earned a master's degree from New York University in Gender Politics, having completed a thesis titled "The Morehouse Man: Black Male Gender, Sexuality, and Masculinity." Devin also wrote and produced a short documentary entitled: "Queer Male Too-sim: The Discrimination from Within" and taught a Gender Intergroup Dialogue course. Devin studied Higher Education Administration at the University of Kansas and served as the graduate LGBT Resource Center Coordinator. Devin's previous work in student affairs includes working with TRiO programs and career services.

Pedagogy in the Digital Age
Thursday, April 18, 5–7 PM
Location: Kresge 2-380

New technologies are giving us the opportunity to rethink how we teach our classes. This workshop goes beyond PowerPoint and Blackboard to show how various digital tools and platforms can be successfully incorporated in your course. Featuring a panel of humanists from across campus currently working on digital pedagogy and research projects, "Pedagogy in the Digital Age" provides an easy introduction to how blogs, digital tools for annotation, analyzation, and visualization of source materials, and open-source software can promote student participation, help student research, and foster a collaborative, exciting class atmosphere. Our panelists look forward to fielding your questions and hearing about your own experiences using new technologies in your teaching. 

Brian Clites is a doctoral candidate in Religious Studies, where he is exploring technologies that enhance the interactive classroom.  Brian has six years of experience teaching humanities courses, and he was awarded the University of Chicago's highest graduate teaching prize for a writing class he taught there. Jade Werner is a Ph.D. candidate in English. She has won the English Department Outstanding TA award and currently works for the Alice Kaplan Institute for the Humanities as Coordinator of the Undergraduate Affiliates Program. She has been leading workshops for the Searle Center since 2008.

Diversity and Power in the Classroom
Tues 4/30, 12-2 PM
Location: Graduate Student Commons
REGISTER ONLINE HERE

This workshop will explore issues of diversity and power in the classroom. We will examine some of the key literature on the issues of student/teacher inequality as well as diversity and inequalities among students. The workshop will provide practical strategies for creating an inclusive, non-threatening classroom environment.

Lisa Kelly is a 4th year PhD candidate in the Interdisciplinary PhD in Theatre and Drama program.  Her dissertation focuses on the social and political work of British actresses in the 19th century.  She is a graduate assistant at the Searle Center.  At Northwestern she has taught a freshman seminar and an upper level seminar for the theatre department and worked as a teaching assistant for the English department.  She has also taught a variety of theatre and public speaking courses at Virginia Commonwealth University. Tyler Zimmer is a Ph.D candidate in the Department of Philosophy. He has won teaching awards and has completed Graduate Teaching Certificate Program. He is presently a Graduate Teaching Fellow at the Searle Center for the 2012-2013 school year. His dissertation research focuses on social inequality and deliberative democracy.