Teaching Fellows

General Qualifications

Teaching Fellows will be academic staff members with tenured, tenure-track, or continuing appointments who have demonstrated both commitment to excellence in their own teaching and willingness to champion the importance of teaching development in the university community. Previous Teaching Fellow recipients may be considered for another two-year Teaching Fellowship term if it has been at least two years since the completion of their previous term.

II. Roles and Responsibilities of Teaching Fellows

Teaching Fellows will contribute directly to the achievement of the Teaching Centre’s primary objectives to:

• Foster a culture of excellence in teaching and learning inside and outside the classroom.
• Coordinate and facilitate professional development opportunities for the teaching community.
• Develop, identify, and support innovative teaching practices.
• Deepen the University’s commitment to the scholarship of teaching and learning.
• Investigate innovative educational practices, strategies, technologies, and processes.

In reaching these objectives, Teaching Fellows work collaboratively with Teaching Centre staff in supporting some of the following Teaching Centre activities:

• Planning, organizing, and hosting workshops to enhance teaching and learning.
• Aid in planning, organizing, and hosting of Talking About Teaching series.
• Participating in the Teaching Centre's mentorship program.
• Leading and/or supporting research on teaching and learning (Scholarship of Teaching and Learning).
• Helping with planning and organizing our SPARK annual teaching conference.
• Providing updated and relevant content/resources for the Teaching Centre's website.
• Contributing towards the Teaching Centre’s Firefly newsletter.
• Promoting and supporting the use of the Agility Innovation Zone to enhance student learning.
• Participating in or assisting with planning print, web, and/or video productions to enhance teaching and learning.
• Other activities, as agreed upon in negotiation with the Executive Director of the Teaching Centre and Agility.

III Term of Appointment

Teaching Fellows will be appointed for a two-year term. The Teaching and Innovation Advisory Council may appoint up to two Teaching Fellows a year, with staggering start dates. Normally, two Fellows will be appointed to commence their terms on July 1 of each year. An appointment as Teaching Fellow carries funding for a one course teaching relief or funding for one Graduate Student Assistant for the two-year period, normally to be applied during the term of appointment; course relief is to be negotiated with the Dean of the Faculty/School.

IV Application Procedures

In acknowledgment of the fact that academic planning cycles vary among faculties, applications for teaching fellows may be made up to two years in advance of the proposed term of appointment. The call for applications, identifying Teaching Fellow expectations and available terms of appointment, will normally be made in November of each year. Faculty members may apply for terms to commence on any of the following:

• July 1^st – June 30^th (i.e., 6 months from application date)
• July 1^st – June 30^th of the following year (i.e., 18 months from application date)

Application deadline is the third Friday in January. From this list of nominees, the Advisory Council will select up to two Teaching Fellows for each academic year. Final decisions will be communicated to the Deans and applicants no later than the end of March.

Application Dossier:

Candidates for a Teaching Fellowship must submit an application package including the following components. As a guideline, please try to limit the content of your entire dossier to no more than the equivalent of 25 pages.

1. Letter of support from your Dean or Chair.
2. Philosophy of teaching/self-reflection of teaching practice (maximum of 500 words)
3. Evidence of teaching excellence (may include: examples of effective/innovative teaching strategies, examples of course materials, examples of course evaluations, student comments, and peer reviews of teaching)
4. Participation, contributions, and/or leadership in teaching development (maximum of 500 words)
5. Rationale for candidate’s interest in serving as a Teaching Fellow – (rationale should support the strategic priorities of the Teaching Centre (https://www.uleth.ca/teachingcentre/mission) and contribute to the improvement of teaching and learning at the U of L) (maximum of 500 words)

Application Procedure:

• All components of the application should be submitted electronically and be appropriately labeled (ex: 1-Letter-of-Support-Dean, 2-Philosophy of teaching/self-reflection).

• Components can be submitted as PDF, or URL/Links.

• If submitting URL/Links, please provide a short description.

• Contact the Teaching Centre administrative assistant to set up an electronic folder for your dossier. (teachingcentre@uleth.ca)

• The Teaching Centre is available to assist you with the application submission process up to 3 working days before the submission deadline.

• Candidates are encouraged to talk to the Teaching Centre about their proposed activities for their two-year term prior to applying

Upon final review of applications, the review committee may recommend an applicant be:

1. Approved for the period requested
2. Approved with a recommendation for an alternative term
3. Asked to resubmit in a subsequent competition; or
4. Denied a teaching fellowship position.

The Advisory council may fill all teaching fellowship positions available within the two-year application period.

NOTE to previous Teaching Fellows: New applicants may be granted first consideration for available positions.

Richelle Marynowski - Faculty of Education
Teaching Fellow - January 2017 to December 2018

As a Teaching Fellow, I am looking forward to supporting Faculty and Graduate Students in continuing to refine their assessment and grading practices. I believe that having Teaching Fellows supports colleagues in working together to make our practice, and thus the learning experiences of students, better.

Randy Barley - Department of Biological Sciences
Teaching Fellow - July 2017 to June 2019

It seems that in 2017, students view smartphones as being almost as essential to their lives as oxygen and with continuous notifications, interjecting themselves into the minds of students, it is becoming increasingly difficult for them to focus on the task of learning. The goal of my fellowship is to examine the detrimental impacts that smartphones are having on student learning both in the classroom and beyond and to explore strategies to help students cope in this increasingly information-dense world.

Keith Roscoe - Faculty of Education
Teaching Fellow - July 2010 - June 2011

Keith constructed a teaching handbook for graduate students who took on a teaching assistant role during their master's degree.

Helena Danyk - Department of Biological Sciences
Teaching Fellow - July 2010 - June 2011

Helena focused her time as a Teaching Fellow working with our staff to help revitalize the Graduate workshops for teaching assistants. To this day we are still running these workshops which remain very popular with graduate students.

• Leading our Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) working group to further the profile and support for this type of research on campus.
• Researching promising practices when using AI technologies in the classroom and who is using these technologies in their teaching.
• Looking at current course evaluation processes and practices across campus to help improve the process (for Faculty and Students) as well as help Faculty better utilize the information that can be gleaned from this process.
• Researching Open Access resource usage on campus and helping to identify the supports that are necessary to allow Faculty to move to Open Access if they want to.