Certificate in University Teaching
I have just completed the Certificate in University Teaching offered by the Centre for Teaching Excellence (formerly the TRACE Office) at the University of Waterloo.
The Certificate is designed to help participants prepare for and improve at university teaching. It consists of a few different courses:
- GS 901: Preparing for University Teaching. For this course I attended a number of workshops and submitted short response papers.
- GS 902: Preparing for an Academic Career. This course requires the most work. It consists of the preparation of a teaching dossier and a research paper. My teaching dossier describes my teaching philosophy, techniques, and experience, and includes extracts from course evaluation forms submitted by students. My research paper was about my proposal to use tutorial periods to have students present solutions to certain types of problems that are designed to improve formal reasoning and proof skills.
- GS 903: Teaching Practicum. For this course, observers from the Centre for Teaching Excellence came into the classroom three times during a course I taught (MATH 136, Spring 2006), provided me with a written report on strengths and areas for improvement, and I wrote response papers.
In doing the Certificate and in teaching two courses (MATH 136, Spring 2006 and Spring 2007), I have realized that I enjoy teaching and want it to be a part of my career. The Certificate could be improved in some ways, but overall it provides decent preparation for university teaching and causes one to think more seriously about the role of teaching in university.
I’ll receive the Certificate at graduation, assuming I ever finish this PhD thing.
Comment by Diana
Congratulations! I read your dossier, and it looks great. 
I like the idea of having student presentations in tutorial, maybe I’ll use that next term in STAT 333.
