The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) has announced that Harvard is among seven universities selected to receive awards to develop new approaches for enhancing graduate student skills and understanding in the assessment of undergraduate learning.
The award, funded by CGS through grants from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Teagle Foundation, will help GSAS integrate learning assessment into programs that prepare graduate students for faculty careers.
“GSAS students are among the most dedicated and creative teachers at Harvard, and they often far exceed the expectations of the teaching fellow role in their commitment to the practice of pedagogy,” says Xiao-Li Meng, GSAS Dean and Whipple V. N. Jones Professor of Statistics. “This grant will allow us to support them in their professional development by equipping them with tools to increase their effectiveness. In partnership with the Derek Bok Center for Teaching and Learning, we’ll develop programming that translates our students’ most innovative and successful ideas into quantifiable assessment methods.” Details on how GSAS will deploy the new funds will be released in the coming months.
The project is designed to identify effective institutional models for improving the preparation of future faculty across all fields, while also examining issues specific to Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) fields, social sciences, and humanities. In a press release dated October 31, 2012, CGS announced that it will work with partnering institutions to develop their findings into best practice guidelines for integrating assessment into faculty professional development programs such as the Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) program launched in 1993. Project partners will contribute to a web-based clearinghouse of resources on learning assessment.
In addition to Harvard, the institutions selected to receive funding are Cornell University; Indiana University; Michigan State University; North Carolina A&T State University; University of California, Merced; and University of North Carolina at Greensboro.
An additional 19 universities will participate in the project as affiliate partners.
The Sloan Foundation has invested in the enhancement of introductory and gateway courses in STEM fields, which are vital to US student persistence in science majors and the cultivation of domestic STEM talent. Elizabeth S. Boylan, Program Director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, says that “Sloan is committed to assisting future STEM faculty to attain the tools and skills they will need to become highly effective faculty—attuned to how their students are learning and what they, as faculty, can do to maximize the learning potential of all their students. I expect that the institutional participants will greatly enrich the graduate community’s understanding of best practices in this area.”
Projects to prepare future faculty in the humanities and social sciences are supported by funding from the Teagle Foundation. “We are excited about this project because it reaches graduate students at a formative moment in their teaching careers, an approach that will potentially result in life-long commitments to the assessment and improvement of undergraduate learning, says Richard Morrill, Teagle Foundation President. “The Teagle Foundation looks forward to learning what these forward-thinking institutions will discover and achieve as they work collaboratively across the arts and sciences.”
This project builds upon the results of a prior partnership with the Teagle Foundation to explore needs and opportunities for the integration of undergraduate learning assessment into PFF programs. “Assessment of student learning is an essential skill for effective teaching, and yet many new faculty are not exposed to useful methods and tools until they are managing the responsibilities of a first job,” noted CGS President Debra W. Stewart. “The awardees and affiliates have shown extraordinary leadership in recognizing this important link between graduate training and successful teaching.”
The Council of Graduate Schools (CGS) is an organization of over 500 institutions of higher education in the United States and Canada engaged in graduate education, research, and the preparation of candidates for advanced degrees. Its mission is to improve and advance graduate education, which it accomplishes through advocacy in the federal policy arena, research, and the development and dissemination of best practices.