Certificate in Teaching and Learning
An important aspect of the Center for Teaching Excellence’s mission is to provide resources both for graduate students who are currently TAs or instructors of record at Rice, as well as for graduate students and postdoctoral fellows who wish to build academic careers in which teaching will play a significant role.
As a part of these efforts, we have established an accredited certificate program in pedagogy. Once completed, the Graduate Certificate in Teaching and Learning (GCTL) will appear on students' transcripts, providing a valuable credential to add to their CVs. The program was officially approved by the Faculty Senate on November 12, 2014.
The GCTL provides participants with a combination of formal pedagogical training, practical experience, and mentoring that will prepare them to be effective college teachers. The courses that comprise the GCTL are:
- UNIV 500 Principles of Effective College Teaching: This course provides an overview of essential, research-based methods used by college instructors to enhance the quality of student learning. Topics include course and syllabus design, student engagement, classroom management, and more. The course will culminates with the development of a teaching philosophy and a sample syllabus. Offered during the Fall semester only.
- UNIV 501 Research on Teaching and Learning: This course explores scholarship on teaching and learning in detail with special attention to the breadth of approaches and methodologies. The culminating project will be a literature review in an area of interest. Offered during the Spring semester only.
- UNIV 502 Practicum in College Teaching: This practicum allows students to design and deliver teaching demonstrations and to receive feedback on their work. The course will also focus on the place of teaching in the broader landscapes of higher education and the academic job market. Offered during both Fall and Spring semesters.
- UNIV 599 Teaching Portfolio: This independent study serves as a capstone to the UNIV sequence on teaching and learning. Students will meet individually with the instructor to plan and complete a teaching portfolio. Offered during both Fall and Spring semesters.
Currently, some departments offer pedagogy seminars, whereas many others do not. The certificate program provides a complement to these disciplinary offerings by addressing the broad landscape of pedagogical techniques and research. By the same token, students in departments that do not have such courses can benefit from a close study of best practices in teaching and learning. Students who have taken a 3-credit, department-level pedagogy course may substitute it for UNIV 500 by contacting the CTE (cte@rice.edu). This substitution is not automatic in Esther; students with a UNIV 500 substitution who are attempting to register for UNIV 502 and or UNIV 599 will need to contact the CTE before registering to request a restriction override. The CTE will also be auditing these course substitutions so please contact the CTE to ensure that you will receive credit for UNIV 500.
Students ready to register for UNIV 599 require a registration override. Please use this form to request a UNIV 599 override for the upcoming semester.
To officially apply to the certificate program, current graduate students should complete the "Graduate Declaration of University Certificate" located in the Registrar's form database. This can be done at any point in the process: before you take any UNIV courses, in the middle of taking certificate courses, or as late as during UNIV 599. Contact the CTE (cte@rice.edu) to be connected with a CTE faculty person who can provide the required signature on the declaration form.
Postdoctoral fellows who wish to audit UNIV courses may do so; however, we do not provide official registration in the course. Contact the instructor for the course you are trying to join to find out more information.