Learning pedagogy

Catharine Judson & Emma Buckingham
Graduate Classical Archaeology Students

In September, the graduate students of the Department of Classics at UNC and the Department of Classics at Duke invited Ted Gellar-Goad, PhD ’12 (Wake Forest University) and Laury Ward (Hillsdale College) to speak about life as a new faculty member at liberal arts colleges. They spoke on a large range of topics, with the main focus being on how to successfully transition from graduate student to faculty member.

Some of the topics included how to navigate the interview process successfully; balancing teaching, research, and service obligations; and addressing challenges for women, minorities, and underrepresented groups in higher education. Much of the discussion was practical in nature and designed to be concrete advice for older graduate students beginning to contemplate the job market. The wide range of experiences on the job market and as new faculty members between the two speakers (based on gender, and size and nature of institutions) allowed for a broad and frank discussion of both the rewards and the pitfalls of academia as a young professional. Ted and Laury provided examples of syllabi, class descriptions, and teaching innovations which they had developed as faculty members, as well as commentary on the process of developing these.

This workshop was the second event in a series devoted to pedagogical strategies in Classics. It was funded by the William R. Kenan Charitable Trust and the Mary Duke Biddle Foundation, which funds inter-institutional projects by students at UNC and Duke.

Duke-UNC Classics graduate students held a topically similar workshop in spring 2014. That session was led by three established faculty members in Classics and Classical Archaeology who were recent recipients of college teaching awards: Dr. Nita Krevans (University of Minnesota), Dr. Andrea Berlin (Boston University), and Dr. Joan Connelly (NYU). The focus of that workshop was on undergraduate teaching at large universities, and methods for further developing teaching strategies useful in the classroom environments at Duke and UNC.