Pedagogy

Yale’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) promotes equitable and engaged teaching throughout the University, and supports students across the curriculum as they take ownership of their learning. As part of the CTL’s mission, it encourages innovation and enhancement in teaching and learning through the considered use of technology.

Yale’s Foundations Biology Course is a year-long interdepartmental biology sequence consisting of four half credit modules. The series provides an excellent interdisciplinary biology foundation for students considering careers in the biological sciences or health sciences.

The "Being Human in STEM” project started as a class in fall 2016, adopting the same format as a course from Amherst College by Dr. Sheila Jaswal. The project will help establish a dialogue between STEM students and faculty, while working together to improve the accessibility and inclusivity of STEM at Yale.

The Helmsley Charitable Trust supports four Helmsley Postdoctoral Teaching Scholars at Yale University, two in physics and two in math. The Helmsley Scholars pioneer innovative teaching approaches in their respective Yale departments as well as at area partner institutions, employing the use of instructional technology and evidence-based teaching methods shown to increase student persistence in STEM.

Led by Yale’s Shizuo Kakutani Lecturer in math, James Rolf, Online Experiences for Yale Scholars (ONEXYS) provides a cohort of incoming Yale students with the opportunity to prepare for the rigors of quantitative study at Yale before arriving on campus in the fall.

The Summer Institutes on Scientific Teaching work to transform STEM education through evidence-based practice. At regional Summer Institutes, college and university faculty, instructional staff, and future faculty develop teaching skills at multi-day workshops. Workshop topics focus on current research, active learning, assessment, and inclusive teaching provide to create a forum to share ideas and develop innovative instructional materials designed for implementation at home campuses.

Freshman Scholars at Yale (FSY) provides a cohort of incoming first-year students with the opportunity to engage early-on in the Yale experience by living and studying on campus for five weeks in the summer. At no cost to the students, Freshman Scholars participate in activities, coursework, seminars, and trips designed to facilitate and enhance their transition to Yale.

The Rainforest Expedition and Laboratory course introduces undergraduates to research by providing them an opportunity to discover novel microorganisms in the Amazonian rainforest and screen them for natural products with applications for human health and the environment. The students learn about biodiversity, the process of scientific inquiry, and the open-ended possibilities available for scientific investigation.

As a direct result of the AAU STEM Initiative, we have implemented numerous professional development activities for our faculty. Professional development is being implemented in a multi-pronged fashion, and includes observation and feedback for faculty, and multiple professional development activities including multi-day summer institutes, a mentoring program, a community of practice, and a speaker series.

The primary focus is to implement and evaluate our multiple-strategy approach for incorporating active learning into lower-level STEM courses. The multiple-strategies approach allows instructors flexibility in integrating active learning into a framework that meshes with their approach to teaching and with the demands of their discipline and the academic department with which the instructor is affiliated.