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The Graduate School

Teaching Certificate

The Graduate Professional Development Team’s Teaching Certificate offers master’s, doctoral, and postdoctoral scholars guidance for how to effectively teach and mentor within a higher education environment. It is structured to provide foundational workshops and electives that help develop one’s teaching and mentoring skills. The Teaching Certificate offers two levels of achievement:

  • Level 1: Basic
  • Level 2: Advanced

By earning a teaching certificate you will:

  • Identify ways to effectively engage your students
  • Learn teaching strategies that lead to learning outcomes
  • Understand the skills needed to appropriately mentor students
  • Gain an awareness of how who they are is reflected in your teaching approach
  • Recognize what teaching entails and how to manage those aspects that are a part of the classroom experience as well as the needs outside of the classroom
  • Be able to write and articulate your teaching philosophy
  • Earn a notation on your transcript

If you would like to pursue the Teaching Certificate, please sign up here.

Friendly tip: The workshops feature interactive activities, so please be sure to bring a laptop or tablet device with you to the workshops you plan to attend.

Register for a workshop

Certificate Level 1: Basic

The four (4) workshops listed below, or attendance at the all-day New TA Workshop held in August, are required for the Teaching Certificate. Note: You must attend the entire day of the New TA Workshop in order for it to count in place of the foundational workshops. (When you check-in via our registration system at any of our workshops, we are able to see the time you checked in.):

  • Teaching College
  • Engaging Diverse Learners
  • Using Learning Outcomes
  • Mentoring 101

Four (4) electives are to be chosen from the options listed below. Note: for a list of all workshops being offered in the current semester, please see the Professional Development Workshops page.

  • Active Learning Strategies
  • How to Survive Your First Day of Class
  • Collaborative Learning Strategies
  • Universal Design for Learning
  • Teaching in an AI Environment
  • Games & Learning
  • Immersive Learning with Augmented & Virtual Reality
  • Assessing Learning
  • Processing Course Evaluations
  • Writing a Teaching Philosophy
  • TA Toolkit Workshops offered through DELTA and/or the Library (no more than two (2) can be taken as electives and must focus teaching to count as an elective

One (1) of the following is required for the Teaching Certificate:

  • Teaching assistantship (and a reflection paper)
  • Mentoring an undergraduate student through the Graduate School’s partnership with the Office of Undergraduate Research (and a reflection paper). For more details on the mentoring option, see the mentoring website (“PRIME the Pack”) and/or contact Dr. Janet Goins, Director of Undergraduate Research
  • Find a job posting that interests you which involves teaching.
  • Submit all required materials to apply for that position such as CV/resume, cover letter, teaching philosophy statement, and the job position description. Below are rubrics to guide you in the process. (Note: please submit your documents as Microsoft Word files.)

Certificate Level 2: Advanced

The second level offers you the opportunity to deepen your knowledge of the topics covered in Level 1 by discussing pivotal articles on teaching and learning with a cohort of Teaching Assistants (i.e., Community of Practice) and facilitated by the Director of Teaching, Dr. Phil Tietjen. You will also have the opportunity to create and receive feedback on evidence-based learning designs and participate in a research community focused on teaching. When you successfully complete the Advanced Teaching Certificate you will receive a notation of your official academic transcript. Prerequisite: Completion of Teaching Certificate, Level 1. Register for the Advanced Teaching Certificate.

Interested in learning more? Contact Dr. Phil Tietjen.