CETL Faculty Fellows

The Center for Engaged Teaching & Learning (CETL) Faculty Fellows Program aims to positively influence learning and teaching at UC Merced and contribute to a growing community focused on intellectual inquiry around student success. UC Merced faculty participating in the Faculty Fellowship Program will:

• Join a community dedicated to enriching intellectual inquiry around learning and teaching.
• Hone their skills as educators.
• Enhance their leadership skills, serving as pedagogical consultants.

Faculty Fellows design projects specialized in a particular theme or outcome aligned with the campus strategic plan, such as:

• AI as Ally, Not Enemy: How can instructors collaborate with artificial intelligence (AI) to optimize student engagement and improve access? This cohort will consider emerging strategies for using AI as a partner to make course content more meaningful for students (e.g., make it feel like a game). We will also explore how AI can serve as a tool to improve student success. Lastly, we consider how AI can be a pedagogical partner, providing you with feedback and drafts on course artifacts as you design your curriculum
• Optimizing Instruction in Large Classes: How do we activate learning without burning ourselves out? This cohort will discuss strategies to personalize the learning experience for students in large classes and optimizing the labor investment of instructors. We will explore evidence-based techniques like using Gradescope to streamline the process of providing feedback, implement cooperative learning to make classes feel smaller, and effectively use the flipped learning model.
• Teaching for Tomorrow: How do we prepare students for the 21^st-Century? For jobs that have not yet been invented, for interpersonal collaboration across differences, for solving ‘wicked problems.’ This cohort will explore what “professionalization” means for the future. We will discuss essential skills that students must develop, how those can be cultivated in our courses, and strategies for encouraging skill transfer beyond our classes/disciplines. Along with that list, we will explore strategies for how to generate non-cognitive habits of mind (and heart) for discovering purpose and meaning-making.

Meet the CETL Faculty Fellows

Rosemarie Bongers	Lindsay Crawford	Sylvain Masclin	Yiran Xu
Assistant Teaching Professor Applied Mathematics	Assistant Teaching Professor Public Health	Assistant Teaching Professor Life & Environmental Sciences Department	Assistant Professor Global Arts and Writing Studies

Interested in Becoming a Faculty Fellow?

• Duration & Compensation
  • The Fellowships are for one academic year.
  • Participants will receive a $5,000 honorarium.
  • Applications occur from Spring through Summer.
• Expectations
  • Attend monthly colloquia with other fellows.
  • Develop expertise in a pedagogical topic or area of emerging need/relevance in your department/discipline/school through independent study, with potential for research in the scholarship of teaching & learning.
  • Disseminate knowledge in consultation with the CETL staff through:
    • Delivering a faculty learning community or workshop series
    • Creation of online materials suitable for asynchronous instructional use.
    • Conduct 1:1 consultation with faculty, as requested/ referred.
    • Actively participate in the Course Design Institute
    • Subcommittee work with the systemwide CTL Consortium if relevant
    • Serve as an ongoing CETL “Pedagogy Partner” affiliation (e.g. open classrooms as exemplars