Tamar Bernfeld joined the Center for Teaching in spring 2023 as an assistant director. Tamar’s work focuses on efforts related to the 2022–2027 campus strategic plan priority of advancing excellence in teaching and learning, particularly educational development work related to gateway course instruction as part of the P3-funded project, “Excellence in Teaching and Learning: Developing a Set of Effective Strategies for Course and Curriculum Innovation.”  As part of a collaborative team, Tamar helped to design and launch both the TA mentors program, which supports teaching assistants, particularly in STEM courses, as well as a pilot program that leverages undergraduate Students as Partners (SaP) to apply principles of universal design in learning (UDL) to increase engagement and equity in teaching and learning at Iowa. At the University of Iowa, Tamar is a member of the First Gen Task Force , the Accessibility Support Interest Group, and the Teaching with Writing Obermann working group.

Tamar’s work has appeared in the Journal of College Reading and Learning and in the edited volume, Confronting Anti-Semitism on College Campuses and she speaks frequently  on language ideology in education and writing pedagogy. Her research focuses on the experiences of graduate writers and how best to support them in their work. Her professional interests include providing writing support across disciplines; curriculum development; working with monolingual students, staff, and faculty to create equitable educational spaces for multilingual students; exploring how AI tools such as Chat GPT can be used as an instructional ally, and collaborating with gateway courses across departments to support and encourage teaching practices that maximize student learning.

Prior to joining the Center for Teaching, Tamar worked as a writing consultant and coordinator of the Writing Resource in the College of Education at Iowa for five years. She previously has worked as an instructor of English to speakers of other languages, a curriculum coordinator, a teaching supervisor, and a writing consultant at Pitt. Tamar has also taught ESL and composition courses at Duquesne University, Iowa, and Kirkwood Community College.

In addition to her work at the Center for Teaching, Tamar currently teaches in the Department of Rhetoric.