Monthly Archives: January 2018

Quick thoughts on assessment

Some of you as instructors recently received emails requesting assistance in your courses this coming semester. Beth Dietz, in her role as assessment coordinator, created two excellent resources to quickly summarize the assessment efforts in the department.

A three-minute video explains things well and succinctly, and this document on the department Team Drive summarizes our department implementation. Thanks to Beth for creating these. I hope each of you might take a minute to understand this process and the value in supporting it as I do.

Finally, those on the CTE list occasionally receive Assessment Briefs that cover a wide range of topics, including the most recent entry describing the assessment of the Global Miami Plan.

Teaching/mentoring award for grad students

Miami may nominate up two graduate students for an award from the Midwestern Association of Graduate Schools (MAGS):

Two awards have been created to recognize the importance of excellence in teaching and mentoring as a component of graduate education and the preparation of graduate students for future service as college and university faculty. One award will be given to a doctoral student and one to a master’s student. Each award includes a citation and a $750 honorarium that will be presented at the MAGS 74rd Annual Meeting, April 4-6, 2018, at the Amway Grand Plaza Hotel, Grand Rapids, MI.

Nominating a masters and/or a doctoral candidate from your institution for one of these prestigious awards is an excellent way to recognize and encourage future faculty and support the Council of Graduate Schools’ (CGS) efforts to promote Preparing Future Faculty to meet needs in academia. Please consider submitting a nomination in each category as appropriate to recognize excellence in your graduate teaching assistants.

Please see me for more information if you are interested in nominating a student from our department to represent Miami. Submissions need to be received in the graduate school by January 19.

OARS winter and spring term workshops

OARS is sponsoring several workshops on using various systems at Miami for those that may not be familiar with them (click on the links from each date to register)

  • eSPA: Internal routing required for all external grant submissions (Jan 11; Feb 28)
  • HawksNest: Miami’s crowdfunding platform for research (Jan 23)
  • SPIN Plus: Funding opportunities database, search engine, and notifications (Feb 20)

See Heather Johnston in OARS or me for more information.