You will benefit from (1) workshops designed to help you apply effective teaching and learning strategies, (2) team activities developed to help you collaborate in a cross-disciplinary and diverse environment, and (3) networking with other participants.

The program will consist of interactive presentations by nationally and locally recognized faculty, staff and administrators. Workshops and discussions will help you bridge the gap between theory and practice to improve teaching and learning and develop other professional skills.

Workshop presenters will include experts from the Vanderbilt-Northwestern-Texas-Harvard/MIT Engineering Research Center (VaNTH). VaNTH focuses on improving bioengineering education and devising ways to apply those improvements to all STEM disciplines. VaNTH frequently conducts workshops for faculty and post-docs from many scientific and engineering fields.

1. Workshops

The workshops are designed to provide content knowledge about teaching and learning plus opportunities for you to apply this knowledge to your own teaching. In addition, you will have an opportunity to reflect on your own learning and how that affects your teaching. By the end of the program, you will have prepared or revised a syllabus for one of your own courses and at reworked least one of the following: a lecture, a learning activity, a reflective exercise, and/or an assessment tool. In addition, you will engage in broader professional development focusing on the following topics:

• learning communities
• learning-through-diversity
• qualities of effective classroom presentations
• assessment strategies to promote student learning
• problem-based learning
• innovative approaches to teaching
• distance learning technologies
• issues related to climbing the academic ladder
• teaching-as-research

2. Team activities

Outside experts will provide expertise on specific issues by leading the workshops and discussions. Local experts will participate in team activities. You will work in small, cross-disciplinary teams to develop effective presentation skills and create teaching materials. Every effort will be made to design diverse teams including participants from a variety of disciplines, and to help you recognize the importance of developing and modeling collaborative skills.

3. Networking

Opportunities for further interaction and learning after the summer program ends will include continuing dialogue with experts through electronic mail. You may wish to adapt an innovative model of staff development for your own institution.

4. Meals

Breakfast, lunch, and late afternoon refreshments will be provided. 

5. Dress

The dress code for the conference is casual. The average high temperature in Nashville in June is about 86 F.