By Jennifer Hoyt
The Arts & Sciences Graduate Center at William & Mary embraces the opportunity to promote its Spring 2019 pilot project during a noon workshop on February 20. Designed to prepare graduate students for faculty positions following graduation, the student-driven Graduate Teaching Project (GTP) channels the passions and interests of W&M’s teaching assistants and teaching fellows as they explore career choices and develop skills necessary to serve as future educators. Participating graduate students expect to share their experiences with faculty and learning partners as part of a collaborative contribution to teaching and learning.
Sarah Glosson, A&S Graduate Center director, has spent more than two years developing new programs and partnerships at William & Mary, all geared toward bridging the academic learning of graduate students to their professional goals. She believes the path to success will be discovered through student engagement. “We want them to feel more confident and prepared as they step into their different teaching roles on our campus, and we want to help prepare them for possible future careers as faculty,” Glosson explains. “Very early in the planning, I realized that the grad students themselves were best-suited to creating a platform and curating resources that would appeal to and be most helpful to their peers.”
Modeled after William & Mary’s University Teaching Project, a small cohort of graduate students from the Arts & Sciences Graduate Studies & Research launched the GTP through an academic course this spring to explore methods of teaching, specifically how to apply essential tools and techniques in their instructional roles as teaching assistants. The students now prepare to discuss their vision during the upcoming workshop session titled Resources to Support Graduate Students with Teaching Responsibilities: Unveiling and Panel Discussion. As Glosson points out, “The purpose of this workshop is to share the results of their work and to initiate a broader discussion on ways to support graduate students in their teaching.”
Please join the conversation on the GTP while enjoying a free lunch from 11:30am to 1:30pm on February 20 by responding at https://forms.wm.edu/41932. Glosson and graduate students will be eager to share their perspectives in Swem Library’s Ford Classroom as the University Teaching Project’s spring series continues to support the possibilities of teaching and learning within higher education.
RSVP: https://forms.wm.edu/41932