TALS prepares graduate students for faculty role

Heather Ward says she couldn’t imagine entering professorhood without it, and Cassie Chambliss says she’s better prepared to be a full participant in a university because of it, and David Shernoff says it created for him a community of engaged teachers and learners.

So what on earth has had such a profound effect on these people? It’s called TALS (Teaching and Learning Scholarship), a new certificate program at UW–Madison that’s carving fresh connections for graduate students.

TALS is a campuswide interdisciplinary program that’s on a mission: to strengthen the preparation of graduate students for the dramatically changing academic workplace of the 21st century. And it does that by enriching their capacity to be effective teachers and faculty members.

“For many professors, the future will not be more of the same,” says Clif Conrad, professor of educational administration and director of TALS. “So we help TALS students reconsider the role of faculty to include the dual responsibility of teacher and learner.”

TALS was created with support from the Graduate School in fall 1999 and has attracted and retained more than 25 graduate students from 19 disciplines. The first cohort graduated in August, and the second will finish the 10-credit minimum this May. Among the TALS components:

• Pairing students as peer-mentors for research on a topic important to them in teaching and learning
• Faculty-guided preceptorship that provides formal feedback on practice teaching, usually as a teaching assistant, and a videotaped session
• Frequent use of information technology, including online discussion groups
• Mock interviews and portfolio development
• Discipline-specific course on teaching

Part of the portfolio is a brief paper students write that summarizes their teaching and learning philosophy.

“Teaching and learning is scholarship, just as research is,” says Sandy Courter, associate director of TALS and director of the Engineering Learning Center. “These TALS students will be change agents when they become faculty members, changing the way we do undergraduate education, not just research.”

More than 25 guest speakers have volunteered their time to TALS. “It’s been satisfying to have an exchange with other graduate student teachers,” says Chambliss, a doctoral student in African Languages and Literature. “We can think and talk about teaching in a deeper way and then take that back to the classroom.

She says that’s a boon for graduate students, whose discipline-based teaching and research are often isolating. The certificate credential on their transcript alone shows their commitment to teaching and learning. That can give them an edge in the marketplace, given the relative indifference of many universities toward preparing graduate students for teaching.