Diversity Resources Revised to Infuse New Content and Improve Accessibility
In response to recommendations from instructors, the CIRTL Diversity Team has honed its collection of print and online resources to meet the needs of the academic community. The resources are now improved in both their accessibility and their coverage of diversity issues. Read more...

Video Workshop Gives Tips for Mastering Faculty Job Interviews

In a joint video conference on Feb. 20, CIRTL Network partners Rique Campa and Eileen Callahan showed graduate students at Michigan State University and the University of Wisconsin-Madison how to stand out from the crowd during crucial steps of the faculty hiring process - the application and the interview. The workshop was called "Securing Academic Positions: Planning, Preparation and Interviewing for Success." Read more...

Ask a CIRTL Graduate Student!

Q: What was the most valuable thing you learned from participating in the FAST Program?
Subbu Kumarappan, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Agricultural, Food, and Resource Economics at Michigan State University: The MSU-FAST fellowship program provided me with an overall understanding of teaching and learning. I appreciated the discussions and research projects that explored... interactive learning, mentor relationships, and course design. Through my research project on technology use in economics, I was able to frame the teaching and learning issues in a research context; I have assembled a broader resource base of technology- and active learning-related materials for my own classroom teaching, which I am very excited about.

News from the Field

CONFERENCE

2008 Lilly Teaching and Learning Conference -

The educational world is in a state of flux due to globalization, the evolution of the Internet, and rapid environmental change. The 8th Annual Lilly Teaching and Learning Conference will prepare educators for these new realities. The conference, "Millennial Learning: Teaching in the 21st Century," will emphasize active learning, teaching well with technology, developing cultural competency, and sustainability. Two pre-conference workshops will cover overcoming apathy in the classroom and using integrated course design to create learning. The conference will be held on Sept. 18-21 in Traverse City, Michigan. Registration is now open for the event. For more information, please visit the conference Web site.

PUBLICATION

Facing the Truth (Chronicle login required) -

When science graduate students apply for faculty jobs at teaching-intensive colleges, they may be in for a rude awakening. In the May 12 edition of Chronicle Careers, James Lang explains why he recently told a group of graduate students that previous teaching experience is required at liberal arts colleges. Since faculty at teaching-intensive colleges handle high course loads and have little time for research, they are expected to be committed to teaching and to enjoy it. The only way to be certain that one enjoys teaching, and to be prepared for its challenges, is to have experience in the classroom - either as a post-doc, as a lecturer, or as a teaching assistant.

To ask questions or to make contributions, contact Katherine Friedrich (newsletter at cirtl.net).

Next newsletter: August, 2008
Deadline for announcements and contributions: July 23, 2008

To view previous newsletters, visit the archive.

This newsletter is published by the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning, 1025 W. Johnson Street, Madison WI 53706, newsletter@cirtl.net, http://www.cirtl.net/. To subscribe or unsubscribe, please visit cirtl-newsletter.

This material is based upon work supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 0227592.
Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.