Every semester, as registration rolls around, Tufts students begin to shift their obsessive internet surfing away from social networking Web sites like Facebook.com to SIS Online and Ratemyprofessor.com. Such laborious research on teachers and classes should hardly come as any surprise. In fact, many students will attest to the fact that the quality of the professor often has the ability to make or break a class.
Sinaia Nathanson, senior lecturer in Tufts' Psychology department, recognized that academic mastery of a certain subject does not necessarily translate into good teaching. Following this belief, Nathanson and Lynne Pepall, the dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, helped pioneer the Graduate Institute for Teaching (GIFT) in 2007. Nathanson currently serves as the director of the program.
The GIFT program brings graduate students who are interested in becoming college−level faculty together with Tufts professors for teaching instruction, in order to benefit the students' future careers at Tufts or elsewhere. The program emphasizes building strong teaching and communication skills and also aims to engage graduate students in new research, technology and other education−related fields.
GIFT was one of Pepall's first initiatives upon becoming the Dean of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. Before GIFT was created, only a summer workshop in which graduate students taught at the summer school existed for graduates interested in teaching.
"Summer school teaching is very compressed; you don't get time to think through your courses. I wanted to redesign the program. We wanted to focus on our doctoral students, and to feel like our doctoral students will always have understood the connection between research and the educational mission," Pepall said.
Pepall also emphasized the importance of including faculty and the fluid nature of the program, which she says they "tweak every year." The program is so well−received that it has begun to receive attention from abroad; this year, two post−doctoral students from Saudi Arabia enrolled.
One of the unique aspects of the GIFT program is that it draws students from diverse departments and schools, ranging from drama to chemistry. Pepall explained that the program is competitive.
"We cap it at 20. There [are] only 12 AS&E students and we take four post−docs from the other schools and one or two Fletcher students," she said.
Pepall emphasized the program's appreciation of diversity. "We like to keep some spaces for other schools. We offer it every year; we hope that every doctoral student will have one chance to go through the program," she said. GIFT is split into two phases. The first phase, an intensive workshop on pedagogy, runs through June. It covers an array of topics, including syllabus and course design, lesson planning, presentation skills and the use of technology in the classroom.
The summer courses deal with more abstract and complex issues that are critical for good teaching. Ashley Shelden, a doctoral student who graduated from Tufts in August of 2009 and now teaches English at Kennasaw State University in Georgia. She explained that one of the most helpful aspects of the summer course was understanding more about the types of students she would be teaching, and how they learn material best.
"There was a lot of information given to us about how students these days are more visual learners and more tactile learners. They tried to get us to find ways to teach material in a variety of media so that within one lesson — say about a text — we would also get the students to interact visually in some way," Shelden said.
Nathanson emphasized the importance of the less−concrete topics. "It's very eclectic. Basically we want to take our GIFT fellows behind the scenes to see what it takes to create a valuable course," Nathanson said.
One concept covered heavily in the summer program is the idea of engagement. The first day of training for the fellows begins with a lecture called "Triggers and Hooks." Another topic covered is the cognitive aspect of learning, to which doctoral students may not have been introduced otherwise. For example, Nathanson teaches a course on how to deal with problems in the classroom. Teachers are also taught how to lead discussions on current events, aligning with Tufts' commitment to create active citizenship.
After the summer workshop, the GIFT teaching fellows co−teach a class under the supervision of a Tufts professor. This opportunity is unique, as the teaching fellows are allowed to design and deliver some of the teaching sessions (in contrast to teaching assistants, who usually only assist the professor). The co−teaching experience is also intimate, as each professor only mentors one teaching fellow per semester, allowing for the maximum amount of learning.
Pepall emphasized the importance of co−teaching.
"It's an experience that helps you figure out how to design a course and make it effective," she said. "The faculty love it — it's a way for them to have a partner in their teaching and how to make their teaching better."
Fellow GIFT alumni attest to the effectiveness of the co−teaching experience. Shelden, who co−taught the course "Postmodernism and Film," said that her co−teaching experience was the best part of the GIFT program. "It was great being able to collaborate with such a brilliant professor, and it was also great to have feedback from my advisor on my teaching," Shelden said.
Robert Fox, a Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alumnus who co−taught an English class on Shakespeare in the fall of 2009, agreed. "It was good to get my feet wet, and to be able to talk about literature as opposed to writing," he said.
Fox was also able to help his co−teacher, Associate English Professor Kevin Dunn, construct the curriculum. "We met over the summer and talked about what changes we should make to the syllabus, and I was able to offer suggestions," he said.
Both Shelden and Fox emphasized that the program was especially helpful because it gave them an opportunity to teach, observe and digest effective teaching methods.
The GIFT fellows praised the diversity of the program, which brings together students from an array of departments and schools. "It was cool to get to know people in other departments. Even more important was getting to see how people teach in other departments," Fox said.
"The fellows also get a chance to connect and to scrutinize the same phenomena — teaching — through all different lenses. Someone from biology doesn't look at teaching the same way as someone from drama does," Nathanson said.
According to both its planners and alumni, the GIFT program imparts valuable lessons and strategies that graduate students otherwise might miss.
"It was great to have the space to think about how people learn. For me, that was the unexpected pleasure of the GIFT program. It was more talking about how people learn, which I think is something that teachers don't do enough," Fox said.
Shelden believes the lessons she learned from GIFT prepared her for teaching her own classes. "The whole question of engaging students in different ways, and to use visual texts and technology in order to engage them — that's very much a part of what I try to do in the classroom," she said.
