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CETLI offers a range of short courses designed for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. These courses count towards the CETLI Teaching Certificate’s workshop requirements and focus on preparing graduate students as future faculty.

Educators are responsible for creating classes in which all students feel welcome and capable of succeeding. How can identities salient to our students (race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality, nationality, and other backgrounds) not only be valued in the classroom, but leveraged as strengths for learning? In this mini course, participants will uncover a variety of approaches to help students learn and thrive to the best of their abilities. Over five weekly meetings, participants will complete a series of readings, engage in discussion on inclusive teaching, and identify skills and practices to implement in their classes to make these more inclusive and equitable. Open to Penn doctoral and terminal master’s students and postdocs. Attendance counts as two workshops towards the CETLI Teaching Certificate. 

One section is open for enrollment for Spring 2024:

Mondays from 1:45 to 3:15 pm
March 11-April 8 

For more information, contact Michelle Johnson.

The Course in College Teaching is a ten-session seminar intended to prepare postdoctoral fellows and graduate students nearing the job market to teach college courses and to help them develop as instructors. The course will provide a structured series of workshops and discussions to help PhD students or postdoctoral fellows with little or no teaching experience. (Note: except in fields like design where a masters is a terminal degree, the Course in College Teaching is not appropriate for masters students.) Each session will use practical, hands-on activities to help students reflect on their own teaching goals and style. Students who complete the course will consider concrete ways of organizing, preparing for and teaching a course. Students will also create a portfolio of teaching materials – from sample assignments to in-class activities to syllabi – that they can use on the job market and to prepare them for their future as teachers.

For more information, contact Ian Petrie.

Fall 2022 Syllabus

If you’re designing a course to propose here at Penn (or another institution), or for a job market sample and you’d like some structure, camaraderie, and feedback to keep you on track, consider signing up for CETLI’s Course Development Seminar. As a group, we will work on articulating course objectives, identifying content/readings, designing assignments/assessments and crafting course policies. After the first meeting, each session will require all participants to submit an element of their course.

For more information, contact Ian Petrie.

This four-meeting mini course is designed to introduce graduate students to online teaching, considering how to teach a fully online course that is both engaging for students and meets rigorous standards. Students will get experience working with the Canvas platform and think creatively about how to use Canvas and a wide range of other online tools. Alonside this technical experience, students will consider key pedagogical questions for teaching online such as keeping students motivated and creating a sense of community. The sessions will help graduate students prepare not only for online and technology-enhanced teaching at Penn, but also in their future careers as faculty in an increasingly digital academy.

One section will be offered in Spring 2024:

Wednesdays from 4-6pm, January 24-February 14 (register for zoom link)

For more information, contact Ellen Rhudy