Teaching Ops for Postdocs
Nathalie Zarisfi
Thursday, 03 April 2008 17:53 UTC
One of the central skills for postdoctoral researchers who wish to continue in the academic arena has always been teaching. If you didn’t have the opportunity to teach as a graduate student, how and when do you learn to develop a course, write a syllabus, lesson plans, plan group activities, make science accessible, mold young minds etc… And most importantly, what do the teaching statements/philosophies need to read in the job application when you have limited teaching and mentoring experience.
I thought we could list some resources, mentors and opportunities for those folks interested in augmenting the bench with the chalk board.
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Replies
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future science educators is an excellent resource for adjunct openings, pedagogical seminars, networking with like minded indies. they ran some eye opening seminars last fall – julia sable, tasha sims and shari saideman are my touchstones in this arena.
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at columbia university, there is a program that offers postdocs teaching experience while they are still in lab: frontiers of science fellows split their effort 70/30 or 80/20. it is teaching intensive and perhaps a consideration for the latter years of a postdoc. but i would stress that this is a mentored op and you work with some of the names in science at columbia. plus darcy kelley, the founder of the course (developer, whatever the term), is a force and really is devoted to making science accessible to undergrads/lay audiences.
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