Programs and Services
These programs, services and resources listed below are the result of innovative collaborations among Brandeis faculty, staff and students that align with the Brandeis University Learning Goals, Core Learning Goals, Core Values, and The Framework for the Future. That being said, we're always excited to develop new programs and services to support you.
We hope you see something below that excites you and in which you'd like to participate. If there's ever anything else you'd like to do, please don't hesitate to reach out and let us know!
We invite all members of the Brandeis teaching community to join us and participate in all of our events, which are listed on our Events page and the CTL Workshops Calendar.
How can we help?
Here at Brandeis, the Center for Teaching and Learning is dedicated to supporting instructors with their teaching and learning needs. If you are an instructor (including faculty members, lecturers, graduate student TAs, etc.), please fill out a CTL Help Request form to explain the issues and challenges you are facing, and we will reach out to you with help shortly!
In a Pedagogical Partnership, a faculty member chooses a student partner to work with them on a course they teach throughout the semester. The student partner sits in on their faculty member’s course and meets with them weekly to provide feedback from a student point of view. The CTL provides training and support for both the student partners and the participating faculty members throughout the semester.
This program is an opportunity to harness student feedback, collaboration and partnership to meaningfully address some of the challenges we're experiencing in our classrooms and to think deeply about equitable and inclusive course design, explore new pedagogical approaches, or incorporate new course content.
Participating faculty will receive a $1,000 stipend for the semester and student partners will receive $1,250. If you are interested in working with a student partner, or if you have any questions about the program, please email ctl@brandeis.edu.
Faculty Learning Communities (FLCs) are small groups of five to six faculty who meet every other week throughout the semester to discuss teaching and learning issues, inspire one another and make teaching a communal act (rather than a solitary one).
The program involves three components:
- 80-minute in-person meetings every two weeks;
- peer teaching observations; and
- short, selected readings.
FLCs are designed to foster supportive environments in which faculty can investigate, question, explore, and apply new classroom techniques and share new ideas about teaching and learning.
The program is open to any full-time faculty members, teaching on a multi-year contract or tenured/tenure-track. Participating faculty will receive a $600 stipend upon completion of the program.
If you are interested in participating in an FLC, or if you have any questions about the program, please email ctl@brandeis.edu.
- Provost's Teaching Improvement, Experimentation, and Research (TIER) Grants (previously known as Teaching Innovation Grants) are designed to encourage faculty to try new and/or enhanced ways to enrich their students' learning (see past awards).
- External Grants to Support Teaching may also be useful to explore.
Would you like a sounding board to discuss your syllabus? Do you want to incorporate a type of new assignment or more active learning or inclusive teaching strategies into your course? Do you want help training your TAs or help with developing an external educational grant? Would you like to discuss your mid-semester or end-of-semester student feedback or how to deal with chatGPT?
We're here for you! Please feel free to reach out to us at ctl@brandeis.edu, fill out a CTL Help Request form, call us at 781-736-8322, or drop by our offices in the Farber Library (Faber 2 office).
New Faculty Orientation is a week-long orientation in August to welcome new faculty to Brandeis, meet colleagues, discuss effective teaching strategies, and visit learning spaces.
The Committee on Teaching, Learning and Assessment advises that all Brandeis University syllabi must be accessible and must provide Important Brandeis Policies and Resources. See the CTL's Brandeis University Syllabus webpage for additional resources.
The CTL offers the required pedagogical training for teaching fellows, teaching assistants, course assistants and instructional assistants, and also offers seminars and workshops tailored specifically for graduate students. We are also always thrilled to support graduate students in any way that we can, so please never hesitate to reach out. For more information, see the Teaching Assistants and Course Assistants webpages.
Faculty recipients of Provost's Teaching Improvement, Experimentation, and Research (TIER) Grants and other grants to support teaching share their wisdom, along with additional panel discussions, awards, and other events centering teaching and learning at the end of each school year.
Discuss and apply teaching and learning practices and develop or revise syllabi, readings and assignments for a course, over multiple days.
CTL staff members are available to observe your class and offer confidential feedback for formative purposes only. These observations are confidential and are not connected to reviews for promotion or tenure.
Supporting equitable and inclusive teaching is a central part of the CTL's mission, and we collaborate with the Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, Student Accessibility Services, Heller School for Social Policy and Management, Brandeis Counseling Center and other partners to offer programming, events, and resources that focus on inclusive teaching for faculty, staff and students.
Please let us know if there is anyway that we can support you and your colleagues in service of this mission.
Your students' feedback during the early part of the course can help you identify small course adjustments that will improve their learning and engagement. Brandeis' Midcourse Feedback webpage highlights further benefits and explains how to gather student comments anonymously through LATTE. This feedback will be shared with you alone and will not be used in any formal evaluation of your teaching effectiveness. We would be happy to help you review your students' feedback and help you consider how to responding to it. Please contact ctl@brandeis.edu for a confidential consultation.
CTL staff collaborate with Information Technology Services and Media and Technology Services, the Technology Help Desk and other campus colleagues to curate these resources.