Teaching and Learning Scholars

The Teaching and Learning Scholars program provides an opportunity for deep inquiry into the intersection between your students’ learning experience, the fundamental concepts and assumptions of your discipline, and the body of scholarly work that is relevant to your teaching practice. You will become part of a cohort that meets every other week to reflect, discuss, and receive feedback on your ideas for improving your teaching and your students’ learning.

You will also develop and carry out a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project, which is an inquiry-driven, evidence-based systematic investigation related to your students’ learning. Because this is a cohort program, you will have an opportunity to share your investigation-in-progress with your Scholar colleagues in order to better make sense of the evidence you gather and refine your work so that it can be shared more broadly in presentations and publications.

PROGRAM BENEFITS:

  • Join a growing community of Northeastern educators engaged in scholarly investigation of teaching and learning.
  • Conduct research within your own teaching that can be shared through scholarly conferences and publications.
  • Receive mentorship and have an opportunity to become a mentor to other educators.

EXPECTATIONS AND TIME COMMITMENT:

  • Attend a day-long kickoff gathering online in early January.
  • Attend all meetings online during the academic year (75 minutes, every other week). Each meeting will also involve pre-work, such as readings and exercises.
  • Complete a series of project planning, writing, and peer feedback tasks over the spring and summer.
  • Use an electronic portfolio to plan, respond to feedback, journal, and store works-in-progress (private within the Scholars group). Provide substantive and timely feedback for your Scholar colleagues within their portfolios.
  • Conduct a systematic, evidence-based SoTL study of your students’ learning across one semester within a course that you are teaching.
  • Participate in CATLR events to share your insights with others at Northeastern.
  • At the end of your Teaching and Learning Scholars experience, author a short essay that shares your work publicly with the Northeastern community and share your work at CATLR’s annual conference.
  • After completing the program, be willing to mentor other educators who are interested in learning about SoTL and conducting their own SoTL projects.

STIPEND:

Teaching and Learning Scholars will receive a stipend of $1,000 per person for full participation in the program.

ELIGIBILITY: 

The Teaching and Learning Scholars Program is open to full-time faculty and co-curricular educators who teach for-credit courses at Northeastern University. Scholars meetings take place virtually, and we welcome applicants from across all of the Northeastern network. 

Most people accepted into the Scholars program are previous Teaching Inquiry Fellows, a sequence which CATLR recommends. Teaching Inquiry Fellows is a year-long cohort program in which participants draw upon learning science research to integrate or strengthen their evidence-based teaching practices.

ABOUT THE SCHOLARS PROCESS:

In Teaching and Learning Scholars, we ask that you enter the program with questions and curiosities about your students and their learning, as opposed to a defined idea for a project (see application details below). In the program you will work with your Scholar colleagues to consider the origin of your questions and curiosities, and the literature that might inform your line of inquiry, as you bring your Scholars project into focus. 

You will design a scholarly study in the first half of the Scholars program, then carry it out in a course that you teach in the second half. This project could be a close examination of a specific aspect of student learning in your course (what is), a structured investigation of a particular teaching approach (what works), or experimentation with new methods (what could be).

We especially encourage questions/curiosities that are grounded in one or more priorities of Northeastern’s academic plan

  • The co-creation of learning experiences with learners and/or communities
  • Learning that integrates DEI within and across disciplines
  • Learning across global contexts
  • Personalized and/or lifelong learning
  • Experiential learning (e.g., connecting curricular and CoOp/service/co-curricular learning, learning grounded in real world challenges, projects that generate artifacts that can be shared beyond the course)

APPLICATION PROCESS AND SCHEDULE: 

NOTE: The call for applications in 2024 has not yet been announced.

The application form will request the following information. Essay portions of the application have a 250-word limit.

  1. A description of the course in which you will do your SoTL study, with confirmation that the course will run during the second half of the year that you are in Scholars.
  2. In the course you intend to focus on in your Scholars investigation, what are three challenges or puzzlements you encounter regularly in regard to your students’ learning? In what ways are these challenges directly related to your discipline or domain?  In what way are these challenges inherent in learning across domains? NOTE: Where possible, please connect your ideas to the priorities listed above.
  3. What evidence of student learning do you currently gather in relation to these challenges? What does that evidence look like, what do you do with it, and what does it tell you? What kinds of richer, deeper evidence would you like to gather?
  4. (For people who have participated in other CATLR cohort programs) How might the concepts you have explored in other CATLR programs inform the focus of your Scholars investigation?
  5. What do you think you would bring to, and how would you benefit from, the Teaching and Learning Scholars community of practice?
  6. Your CV or resume
  7. A letter of support from your department chair or supervisor.

View the 2023 Teaching and Learning Scholars Application

If you have any questions, please email Gail Matthews-DeNatale.

Get in Touch

The call for applications in 2024 has not yet been announced. For more information, please contact Dr. Gail Matthews-DeNatale with any questions you may have.

Congratulations to the 2023 Scholars

Needa Brown
College of Science

Wendy Crocker
College of Professional Studies

Marguerite Matherne
College of Engineering

Ayce Yesilaltay
College of Science

Previous Scholars

2021 Cohort

Amy Lantinga
College of Professional Studies

Constantine Mukasa
College of Engineering

Enrique Moreno
College of Science

2020 Cohort

View the 2019-2020 Scholar Essays.

Bret Keeling
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

John Sangster
College of Engineering

David Tamés
College of Arts, Media and Design

Anne van De Ven-Moloney
College of Science

Elizabeth Zulick
College of Professional Studies

2018-2019 Cohort

View the 2018-2019 Scholar Essays.

Alessandra Di Credico
College of Science

Mary Lynn Fahey
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Kelly Garneau
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Dave Hagen
College of Professional Studies

Michelle Laboy
College of Arts, Media and Design

Andrew Mackie
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Laurie Nardone
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Desislava Raytcheva
College of Science

Katy Shorey
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Mark Sivak
Arts, Media, and Design and the College of Engineering

2017-2018 Cohort

View the 2017-18 Scholars essays.

Natalie Bormann
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Lucy Bunning
College of Professional Studies

Adam Cooper
College of Science

Rebecca Riccio
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Stephanie Sibicky
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

2016 Cohort

Carole Bell
College of Arts, Media and Design

Lucy Bunning
College of Professional Studies

Sue Freeman
College of Engineering

Lorna Hayward
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Joshua Hertz
College of Engineering

Hubert Ho
College of Arts, Media and Design

Jackie Isaacs
College of Engineering

Michael Jaeggli
College of Engineering

Marissa Lombardi
College of Professional Studies

Vasiliki Lykourinou
College of Science

Veronika Maliborska
College of Professional Studies

Missy McElligott
College of Science

Janet Monagle
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Laura Mylott
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Russ O’Haver
D’Amore-McKim School of Business

2015 Cohort

Gail Begley
College of Science

Kathleen Gonso
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Gregory Goodale
College of Arts, Media and Design

Lorna Hayward
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Joshua Hertz
College of Engineering

John Kimani
College of Engineering

Barbara Larson
D’Amore-McKim School of Business

Marissa Lombardi
College of Professional Studies

Missy McElligott
College of Science

Shan Mohammed
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Oyindasola Oyelaran
College of Science

Brian Robison
College of Arts, Media and Design

Chirag Variawa
College of Engineering

Belinda Walzer
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

2014 cohort

Qinghong (Ann) Cai
College of Professional Studies

Leslie Day
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Lori Gardinier
College of Social Sciences and Humanities

Jose Martinez-Lorenzo
College of Engineering

Casper Harteveld
College of Arts, Media and Design

Lorna Hayward
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Ann McDonald
College of Arts, Media and Design

Missy McEliigott
College of Science

Bridget Smyser
College of Engineering

Shan Mohammed
Bouvé College of Health Sciences

Courtney Pfluger
College of Engineering

Brian Robison
College of Arts, Media and Design

Kathryn Schulte Grahame
College of Engineering