The Center for Teaching’s Graduate Teaching Fellows program is a year-long paid opportunity that allows participants to develop their teaching skills in a cross-disciplinary learning community led by center staff. The program facilitates preparation for diverse career opportunities including faculty and staff roles in higher education (read how participation in the Graduate Teaching Fellows program helped previous fellows Melanie King, Ranthony Edmonds, and Austin Holland to springboard their careers). 

With support from peers and center staff, each fellow will create a set of goals and an action plan for future employment aligned with their interests. Fellows will deepen their knowledge of the scholarship of teaching and learning, leading to the creation of a campus-wide interactive workshop or other pedagogical projects on a topic of their choice. Twice-monthly meetings provide opportunities to reflect on personal professional development and teaching practice. Each fellow will also develop a teaching portfolio designed to meet their own needs. 

Fellows receive $750 for successful completion of each semester of the program, totaling $1,500 to recognize their contributions to the campus priority of excellence in teaching and learning. 

With support from the UI Graduate College, the Center for Teaching is delighted to expand the program from four to six Graduate Teaching Fellows in academic year 2024-25. Two fellows will focus on projects specific to the center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL), a national coalition of 45 research universities which uses graduate education as the leverage point to develop faculty committed to implementing and advancing effective teaching practices for diverse student audiences. One CIRTL fellow will advance the assessment of teaching support programming on campus in collaboration with a strategic plan committee on graduate student teaching support. The other CIRTL fellow will engage in a form of teaching as research; whether through conducting a study in a class they are teaching or as a co-investigator and co-author with a SoTL Scholar faculty with guidance from the Center for Teaching.

The other four spaces in the program will have open-ended project topics. Past fellow projects have included teaching workshops for campus, articles on pedagogical topics for both popular and scholarly audiences, and online resources for teaching support. 

Applications are available now and we encourage all interested graduate students to apply. The deadline to apply is Friday, April 19.