The Center for Teaching is now accepting applications for the 2022–23 Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows program. More than 120 Vanderbilt faculty members from six colleges and schools have participated in the program, now in its 12th year.
The program provides a set of professional development opportunities for junior faculty to learn about successful teaching practices. Selected fellows will learn to design and refine courses, add to their general repertoire of teaching skills, and more fully integrate teaching and research. Fellows will benefit from engaging in these activities in a community of peers and mentors, including past Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows, senior faculty mentors and CFT senior staff.
“The JFTF program is a great way for junior faculty to hone their teaching practice while also growing their teaching community,” said Cynthia Brame, associate director of the Center for Teaching. “Fellows repeatedly come out of the program talking about how much more confident they feel in the choices they make as well as how much value they get from working with the other fellows.”
If selected, fellows will engage in a variety of program activities designed to help develop more effective and efficient use of time on teaching tasks. Program activities include a seminar on teaching and learning, individual consultations, classroom visits of both senior faculty and peers to observe teaching in action, dinner discussions and a dinner reflection at the end of the year to share their areas of growth. In addition, Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows receive $2,000 in research funds to enhance their teaching.
The Junior Faculty Teaching Fellowship is open to all full-time, VU-employed (provost-reporting) faculty and to VUMC-employed faculty who have been at Vanderbilt between one and six years. Preference is given to applicants without tenure, but exceptions are made.
The deadline for applications is Monday, May 2. Applicants should submit an application letter, teaching statement, letter of support from a department chair (or dean for applicants from schools without departments) and curriculum vitae. The selection process is confidential, and selection decisions will be made by the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows Committee.
Interested faculty should visit the Junior Faculty Teaching Fellows website to access the application form and for more information about the application process and the program itself.