Building Teaching Professional Development for Harvard Graduate Students involved in STEMM Educational Outreach

Awardee: Deepali Ravel, Brittany Michel, Taralyn Tan (HMS)

Summary: Awardees will create and curate professional development resources for evidence-based inclusive teaching that is specifically tailored to Harvard graduate students involved in STEMM outreach programs.

Research indicates that for the typical STEMM graduate student, a teaching assistant (TA) position will be their only teaching- and inclusion-related professional development opportunity. While Harvard TAs have access to robust training as well as more targeted offerings within departments or programs, they are typically focused on TAs currently working in graduate and undergraduate courses and, therefore, miss a critical population of graduate student teachers: those completing their teaching experiences through Harvard’s many community outreach programs. Although a wealth of inclusive teaching resources does exist at Harvard and online, time constraints, lack of awareness, and geographic barriers for Longwood-based students mean that there is still a major need for accessible, context-specific training in these areas.

This project team from the Harvard Medical School proposes to create and curate training resources for evidence-based inclusive teaching that is specifically tailored to Harvard graduate students involved in Science Technology Engineering Math and Medicine (STEMM) outreach programs but that will also have broad appeal to other educators and trainees within the Harvard community.