Overview

Are you a graduate student or postdoc in the College of Natural Sciences planning for a career that involves teaching? Would you like the chance to have a meaningful teaching experience, design your own seminar course in a community of supportive peers and mentors, all while getting paid? Apply to be a CNS Teaching Fellow!

What does a CNS Teaching Fellow do?

Each Teaching Fellow teaches 1-3 sections of First Year Seminar (FYS) in Fall 2024. Each FYS section:

  • Has a maximum of  enrollment of 19 students per class
  • Meets once a week for 50 minutes

You will be instructor of record and fully responsible for your own course, but with plenty of friendly support.

How do you decide what topic to teach?

Select the topic of the seminar yourself: teach what you love!

The shared theme for CNS First Year Seminars is “Think Like a Scientist,” so consider how you can use your topic to encourage students to evaluate scientific evidence. We encourage you to pick a topic that is related to your research interests and is also likely to interest a typical undergraduate.

Examples of past FYS courses taught by CNS Teaching Fellows:

  • All for One, One for All: Cooperation in the Animal Kingdom
  • Rethinking Intelligence
  • Emotions: Inside Out or Outside In?
  • How Games Hook Us: The Science of Game Design
  • Biology but Make it Gay
  • Secret Sensory Worlds
  • Poison Fruit: True Crime and Nutrition in the Media
  • Utopian Dream or Dystopian Nightmare? The Amazing and Terrifying Uses of Big Data in Today’s World
  • There’s a Volcano Under the Town Hall! A Roleplaying Game

Shared goals of all First Year Seminars

First Year Seminars are designed to offer a structured way for students who are new to UMass to engage intellectually and connect with their peers and an instructor in a small class setting. In addition to introducing students to a compelling topic in science, each First Year Seminar should provide students with information about campus opportunities and resources to help them adjust to and succeed in their first semester at UMass.

All First Year Seminar instructors are asked to use 3 Core Practices:

  1. Help de-mystify the college experience (provide learning strategies, readiness, resources)
  2. Help students make interpersonal connections
  3. Practice the skills of self-care and help-seeking

See the site on First Year Seminars, especially the page for instructors. We will help you work these practices into your classes in effective ways.

Please note that in a 50-min class that meets once per week, there’s not a lot of content that you can cover, and we encourage you to focus on active learning strategies (such as small group work) rather than lecturing. In a typical class session, you might give a 10-min lecture with two short activities. These activities also support the second core practice of helping students make interpersonal connections. We provide training to help you plan your class sessions, and Teaching Fellows always share and build on each other’s ideas and strategies.

Teaching support

We provided lots of support to help you plan your course and this continues throughout the fall while you are teaching! Teaching support includes:

  • A required two-day in-person workshop in May on understanding your students, designing your course, writing an attractive course description, selecting activities, etc.: 
    • Dates for 2024: Monday, May 13th and Tuesday, May 14th, 8:30-5:00 each day 
    • We understand that you may have an exam to take or proctor and you may be excused for the exam period (but we also encourage you to try to reschedule so you can attend the full training).
  • A required one-and-a-half-day in-person workshop in August on class management, leading discussion, understanding FERPA, finalizing your syllabus, etc.
    • Dates for 2024: Wednesday, August 21st, 8:30-5:00 and Friday, August 23rd, 8:30-12:00 
  • Optional summer help sessions if you want feedback while you are planning
  • Required weekly one-hour meetings with a group of Teaching Fellows and a mentor during the semester you are teaching (times TBA; you’ll have a choice)
  • Optional observations of your teaching
  • Help in crafting teaching statements suitable for job applications, based on your experience as a Teaching Fellow

What you get

  • $2066.40 per FYS section (most Fellows teach two, with identical course content for both; if you teach 3 sections you are eligible for GEO benefits)
  • A $500 training stipend upon completion of the 3.5 days of training
  • A set of teaching skills learned and practiced in a supportive environment
  • The chance to develop course materials relevant to your future teaching plans