Ready to Remarkable: Planning for the New Term as Teachers and Mentors

15 Jan

The conference rooms and hallways of the Center for Teaching and Learning are abuzz as we join University of Minnesota faculty and instructors in preparing for a new teaching and learning semester. The spring term here also features an increase in the volume of questions from graduate students and postdoctoral fellows about academic career planning and job search practices and development of dossier documents.

Given that context, we’ve pulled together two sets of resources for this semester-starting post:

Links to five of our most read “semester starting” teaching posts from the archives in order to bring a bit of that hallway energy into a blog post.
With many graduate students and postdoctoral fellows launching into preparation of job search portfolios or heading to campus interviews for new posts based on the strengths they’ve demonstrated to hiring committees via portfolios of research and teaching they’ve already completed, this Ready to Remarkable blog post also includes resources related to the job search that will be of use to graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and their mentors and advisors.

So read on, plan well, and add to the comment / reply feature if you have want to make a query along the way.

Resources for Instructors about to Begin a New Teaching Semester

Resources for Faculty and Staff Working with Graduate & Professional Students that You Can Start Using Today

Before applying for positions – sections from “The Graduate and Professional Students’ Guide to Career Planning“

Self Knowledge (non-academic) and Knowing Yourself (academic)
Resources for gaining an Understanding of Institutional Types (academic) and of Market Knowledge (non-academic).
Conducting a Job Search – from application to interview, an overview
Career Planning Tools (generally); and see specifically Telling Your Story (academic) and Marketing Yourself (non-academic).

Job Search Documents – ideas for moving from ready to remarkable

Resources on CV, Resume, Interviewing and More – UWashington Career Services
Documenting Teaching Effectiveness http://z.umn.edu/idaportal
The Commandments of Cover Letter Writing
Writing Effective Research Statements and for responding, a Rubric

Everyday Resources for Graduate Students – on writing, communication and funding

Bench marks, activities and select resources: Comprehensive Guide to Finishing the Degree (adaptable across disciplines)
Twitter chats that work – #phdchat, #phdchatUMN, #thesiswhisperer, #researchwhisperer
Blogs/Wikis that support – PhD Chat, ThesisWhisperer, ResearchWhisperer, and PhD2Published

Everyday Resources for Advisors and Mentors

Google Site – Resources for Mentors & Advisors
Virtual Commons – Resources for Grad Students

Tags: career planning, ready to remarkable

Featured Posts

Enhance Cognitive Capacity to Maximize Learning

Four Key Strategies Cognitive load refers to the amount of mental effort expended in your brain’s working memory. Learners only have so much working memory available. With attention to cognitive capacity and cognitive load, we support learners in managing the Too Much Information monster. When learning new material, what may be a simple concept for […]
Incorporating Canvas Tools: Helping Students Keep Up

As the University of Minnesota transitions from Moodle to Canvas, CEI will be highlighting some of the ways that instructors can leverage Canvas to meet learning and teaching goals. This is the first of four planned posts for this academic year. As instructors, we want students to come to class prepared, complete assignments on time […]
Online Learning Spaces – (Re)Imagining Discussions

3 Research Resources: (Re)Imagining Discussion in Online Learning Spaces How might we evaluate, measure and grade, online discussion forums? Teachers commonly opt for participation measures such as a counting the number of times and ways people participate, or the weighting of the quality of response content, or build a rubric to guide their review as […]
Developing a Learning Culture and Learning-Centered Climate

3 Resources Cultures of Learning 1. What is a culture of learning? The short answer, posted by an Edutopia blogger, is this: a culture of learning is a collection of thinking habits, beliefs about self, and collaborative workflows that result in sustained critical learning. 2. Rethinking our default definitions of learning is a crucial first step for thinking […]
The Write Situation: Assignment Clarity and Timing

With this post, we’re continuing our (re)introduction of the Teaching with Writing project’s monthly writing tips. See the Teaching with Writing pages on the Center for Writing website for teaching resources, including sample assignments and syllabi. Establish the Situation for Your Assignment “At the heart of every assignment is the rhetorical situation — someone […]