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Teaching & PD Programs

As the Director of Undergraduate Teaching (2019-24), I led the reorganization of the ​Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) Multi-Section Course Program in the Department of ​English, which employed 80+ grads annually serving 6K undergrads in required courses ​annually. This document offers a high-level overview of the “hubs” and “spokes” I led a ​talented team of faculty administrators in implementing to create greater efficiency and ​transparency in the GSI program.

A centerpiece in my reorganization efforts of the GSI program was my vision for a ​“Teaching Hub” – a central and centralizing platform that would foster a vibrant ​teaching community empowered by inclusivity, access, and transparency surrounding ​teaching processes, opportunities, resources, and best practices.

Among many curricular programs I developed in the Department of English, none was ​more rewarding than overhauling the aging curriculum and teacher-training program for ​the “Basic Writing” version of W131-Composition, which serves first-generation and ​historically underserved students at Indiana University, Bloomington. My work rebooting ​this program significantly lowered DFW rates and elevated learning outcomes, for which I ​was presented the Campus Partner Award by the IUB Groups Scholars Program (2022).

The Department of English’s Intensive Writing General Education (GenEd) courses were ​another key curricular and teacher-training program I significantly revised as the Director ​of Undergraduate Teaching. As with all my programs, I created both a scaffolded ​curriculum for the course and a parallel scaffolded teacher-training program for the ​instructors, including a handbook, course materials, and an instructor Canvas site. ​Among other innovations I brought to this suite of courses, I introduced a metacognitive ​“Learning Portfolio” capstone project and a customized version of “specs grading” ​offering a new approach to assessment rooted in ethical, equitable practices.

Key to creating effective multi-section courses that better support undergraduate ​learning was revamping the way we approach teacher-training of these courses, ​particularly by new or inexperienced instructors. Because the majority of our ​undergraduate writing classes were taught by graduate students and because our ​campus offered no regular course design institute open to non-faculty, I created and ran ​an annual Writing Course Design Institute (WCDI) open to grads and faculty alike, which ​I built on a model of flipped training (borrowing the best practices from flipped learning).