CTL’s Graduate Fellowship for Teaching Excellence program honors graduate students who are dedicated to excellent teaching and is designed to foster conversations about teaching in order to help graduate students develop as teachers. Because CTL Graduate Fellows organize graduate student teaching workshops within their home departments or programs as well as for the university as a whole, the fellowship program can help improve teaching by your graduate students in particular and help them develop as future faculty.

Each CTL Graduate Fellow will receive a $6,000 award for the school year. This is in addition to whatever other funding a student receives. Fellows will participate in regular teaching discussions with the other Graduate Fellows, will organize teaching workshops for graduate students in their department roughly monthly, will lead workshops for graduate students across the university once a semester, and will mentor other graduate students in teaching, consulting with and observing current teaching assistants.

In order for a student to be recognized with a CTL Graduate Fellowship, graduate students must be nominated by the graduate chair of their home departments or programs. If you could nominate potential fellows, we would greatly appreciate it. We are looking to honor nominees who have demonstrated that they are outstanding and dedicated teachers. Nominees must also be doing well in their program and be respected by faculty and peers alike.

In addition to a letter of nomination from the graduate chair, potential fellows should provide CTL with a vita, a letter of recommendation that includes some discussion of the student’s teaching, and a two-part statement. The first part of the statement should discuss how the nominee teaches, particularly what he or she does in a typical class and why; in the second part the nominee should suggest teaching topics that would be valuable for graduate students in the department to explore. The statement should run no more than 500 words.

Nominations are due by noon, Friday, April 17. They may be sent electronically to ctl-help@lists.upenn.edu. If you have questions about the fellowship, please contact at lenthall@upenn.edu. 

***If you would like to be nominated, contact Nancy Bentley (nbentley@english.upenn.edu) ASAP.***