Teaching Communities & Fellowships | The Graduate School

Graduate Teaching Assistant & Postdoc Teaching Learning Community (GTA/P TLC)

This learning community engages educators with evidence-based practices and pedagogy to help them teach in accessible and inclusive ways.

Educators, including Graduate Teaching Assistants, Faculty and Staff share pedagogy, best practices, and holistic educator and student success strategies. This group strives to practice a culture of care and to build community and meets twice a month throughout the year.

GTAs and any teaching enthusiast can volunteer to present on topics and practices that are relevant to teaching undergraduate and graduate students and on identified needs in this space.

Sample topics are Communicating about difficult topics, Culturally Responsive Teaching, Using High Impact Practices, Rethinking the Syllabus, Engaging Students using Zoom, Recognizing Mental Health challenges using Kognito, Metacognitive Strategies.

IN!SPIRES Wellbeing Ambassadors

This group supports and advocates for graduate students and postdocs in their holistic wellbeing. Connect with us if you have challenges transitioning to MSU from a different background (coming from a different country, being a first-generation graduate student or postdoc, have challenges navigating wellbeing resources on campus, or trying to make friends).

Cohort Fellowship Programs

The Graduate School collaborates with academic units to offer several year-long fellowship programs for people interested in participating in communities of practice with other graduate students.

While in each of these fellowship programs, graduate students undertake year-long inquiry projects related to student learning in their disciplinary contexts.

The FAST Program is for doctoral students with interests in teaching, learning, and assessment in higher education.

Its primary goals are to provide opportunities for a diverse group of students to have mentored teaching experiences and gain familiarity with materials on teaching and assessment techniques.

The Residential College for Arts and Humanities at MSU collaborates with The Graduate School to sponsor three fellowship programs focused on undergraduate teaching and learning, cultures and languages, and arts and community engagement.

Graduate fellows will explore spaces where educators come to learn and think differently about teaching and learning, while building and exercising skills in design, facilitation, and collaboration.

CTLI Fellows’ work contributes to real outcomes that impact campus. Being a CTLI Grad Fellow means joining a diverse team of interdisciplinary experts to improve MSU as a teaching and learning institution.

The IIT Fellowship Program is for doctoral students with an interest in interdisciplinary inquiry and undergraduate teaching.

The program welcomes applicants from all colleges whose teaching areas are relevant to a college of public affairs.

This fellowship program is designed to support GTAs in their work and holistic educator development.

The GREAT CPF fellows will connect with graduate students, colleges, units and departments to identify any pedagogical and curriculum needs to advance GTAs teaching practices in their disciplines.

These fellowships expose graduate students to a learning community focused on innovative teaching and learning practices. There are multiple fellowship roles offered in this program.

At the completion of the required courses, students receive a Minor in Leadership in Integrated Learning.

This program’s primary goals are to provide a diverse group of graduate students committed to undergraduate education with:

experience conducting mentored research on undergraduate teaching and learning.
familiarity with contemporary instruction and assessment techniques
professional and career development opportunities related to undergraduate education.

Meeting these goals will result in fellows who can make meaningful contributions to undergraduate education as practitioners of contemporary scholarly pedagogical methods, as well as contribute to scholarship related to undergraduate teaching and learning.

This program pairs a multidisciplinary team of MSU graduate students with Lansing-area community partners to envision and complete collaborative community-identified projects that make a substantive difference in revitalizing Lansing.

This is a guided fellowship focused on interdisciplinary research and practice.

Fellows in the program will develop skills and knowledge related to the practice of interdisciplinary inquiry and collaboration, including qualitative and arts-based methods, team building, facilitation, and critical engagement with the concept of interdisciplinarity.