The Sciences Teaching Club

Dr. Valerie Bennett
Associate Professor & Chair,Department of Biology, Clarion University of Pennsylvania

Advice for Future Teaching Faculty: Tips for Success at Every Step of your Academic Career

Topics that will be covered include developing skills and experience as a graduate student, post-doc'ing, temporary or adjunct positions, the job search, marketing yourself to undergraduate teaching universities, and the road to tenure.

Contact: Emily Furbee (efurbee@cmu.edu)

Assessing Your Approach to Teaching
Who decides the purpose of teaching and how to do it? Even within a discipline, philosophies on theory, application, critical thinking, learning how to learn, fostering social change, helping students mature, and more are numerous. In this workshop, we will:

• examine some theoretical teaching paradigms
• introduce a tool to help you reflect on your own approach to teaching
• strategize how to better align your teaching behaviors and goals

This seminar can serve as a starting point for writing your teaching philosophy statement.

Contact: Emily Furbee (efurbee@cmu.edu)

Please RSVP at http://www.doodle.com/5bqbzgmur95twnvh

Achieving Tenure
Faculty from local colleges and universities in Pittsburgh will be sharing their stories about achieving tenure at their respecting institutions.

Contact: Melissa Krajcovic (mwitzber@cmu.edu) and Emily Furbee (efurbee@cmu.edu)

Discussion Panel on the Pathway to Obtaining a Tenure-track Job

We have invited faculty from various disciplines to share their experiences of the application and interview processes that they have gone through, and that you may one day encounter (and you thought grad school applications were hectic...).

Contact: Ming Zhang (mingruiz@andrew.cmu.edu)

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.

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!

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.

Panel Discussion on Teaching Careers
This forum will include faculty from multiple universities and colleges, including Cuyahoga Community College in Cuyahoga Falls Ohio, Carlow University, Robert Morris University, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Pittsburgh. Each of the faculty will discuss a day in their shoes at these different institutions, the challenges associated with a career at their institution, the motivation of the students they teach, and unexpected responsibilities in their department or university. The faculty will also be answering questions from students.

Panelists:
Catalina Achim, Ph.D. Associate Professor of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University
Ormond Brathwaite Ph.D. Associate Professor of Chemistry at Cuyahoga Community College
Jacquelyn Joseph-Silverstein Ph.D. Executive VP, Academic and Student Affairs at Cuyahoga Community College
William Dress Ph.D. Interim Department Head, Science and Assistant Professor of Science at Robert Morris University
René Picó Ph.D. Associate Professor Elementary Education Carlow University

Sept 16
5 - 7 p.m.