From left to right: Club members, Emily Furbee, Melissa Witzberger, Ken Hovis and Elane Fishilevich, judging the Pittsburgh Regional Science Fair.

The Sciences Teaching Club
The Department of Biological Sciences

The goals of the teaching club are:

• Enhance the skills of graduate students in preparing for a future career involving teaching. 
• Learn pedagogy through workshops and seminars.
• Encourage students to seek out teaching experience.
• Provide members with documentation of teaching experience upon completion of Eberly Center training and seminars.

Fall 2009 Schedule

September 8, 5-6 p.m., MI Board Room
Introduction to the Club, Election of Ffficers

October 20, 5-7 p.m., MI 448
Deanna Matthews
Micro Teaching Workshop
Four students teach a class for five minutes and receive feedback from everyone in attendance. Those not teaching will act as students. Eberly professionals also attend to evaluate student teaching.

November 4, 5-6 p.m., MI Social Room
Jennifer McFann
Science Teaching in the Peace Corps
Are you interested in using your science teaching skills to help a developing country? Are you eager to learn, first hand, about a different culture? If so, you're invited to attend an information session on Peace Corps opportunities just for you!

December TBA
Ethics Round Table Workshop
Ethics training is a necessary condition for receiving and maintaining grants from outside organizations such as the NIH and NSF. We will be discussing case studies that involve scenarios that may happen to you when you are hired as a new faculty member. We will have experienced faculty on hand to help guide us through this session.

January TBA
Achieving Tenure as a Professor
Tenure professors will meet with the club to discuss the process of achieving tenure at their respective universities.

February TBA
Discovering your Teaching Style
We will discuss the various teaching styles and then students will take a quiz to see where they fall into the spectrum of teaching styles. We will then discuss whether our current teaching methods align with our ideal teaching style and how to better align these aspects if they are not aligned as expected.

March TBA
Academia or Industry
How to make the switch from industry to academia or from academia to industry. What are the perks and cons of each?

April TBA
Faculty Application Process in Chemistry
Several chemistry professors will meet to discuss the application process in academic chemistry. (This meeting may expand to include other disciplines, but the current desire was to hear from chemistry professors.)

Students are also encouraged to tutor local high school and college students and to serve as judges at the local science fairs.