By Phil Williams
pwilliam@franklin.uga.edu
You’d think that earning a Ph.D. would be reward enough. Through years of struggle and study, students work day and night, go into debt and generally abandon the world for the pursuit of higher education. Then the hammer falls.
 Many universities get 500 applicants—or more—for a single tenure-track assistant professor position, and the competition can be savage. So would-be professors are always asking themselves this: What is my edge? How can I compete?
One way is a new program sponsored by the Franklin College of Arts and Sciences and the Institute of Higher Education, a program that hires beginning scholars for one to three years to help them hone their teaching skills. Now in its second year, the Postdoctoral Teaching Fellows Program was the first of its kind in the country.
“We see this as a window for young scholars to focus entirely on enhancing their teaching,” says Sylvia Hutchinson of UGA’s Institute of Higher Education, who coordinates the program with Ron Simpson, also of the IHE. “These are top-notch graduates who are doing exceptional teaching while continuing their research work. I am truly proud of them all and excited about this program.”
The program grew from discussions between Robert Anderson, associate dean of the Franklin College, Bill Jackson, director of the Office of Instructional Support and Development and Thomas Dyer, vice president for instruction. It began in the fall of 1999, drawing 10 fellows, selected in a nationwide search, in eight departments.
“For me, coming right out of graduate school, the Franklin Fellowship was the perfect position,” says Philip Thibodeau, now in his second year in the classics department. “The substantial teaching experience it offered, when combined with the reflection on teaching techniques that took place at our meetings, eased the learning curve for my first experience at full-blown college teaching.”
While the program allows Fellows to gain up to three years of teaching experience, the benefit to the university is substantial. For roughly the salary of postdoctoral fellows, the university gains temporary faculty members who are committed to becoming better teachers, and students receive instruction from ambitious young scholars.
The Fellows attend regularly scheduled seminars, classes and workshops and participate in peer evaluation, mentoring and team-building. Inside the classroom, they learn everything from designing course syllabi to teaching strategies.
The first group included Julianne Braun from Wake Forest University (chemistry); Laura Edmonson from the University of Texas (drama); Stephen Hill from the University of Birmingham, England (political science); Beth Warner from the University of Akron and Cleveland State University (political science); Ko Honda from Princeton (math); Andrew Lamb from Notre Dame University (philosophy); Judy Houck from the University of Wisconsin (history); John Moser from the University of Illinois (history); Romita Ray from Yale University (art history); and Philip Thibodeau from Brown University (classics).
At the end of the program’s first year, Edmonson left for a tenure-track position at Florida State University, Houck went back to Wisconsin for a postdoctoral research appointment, Honda accepted a post-doctoral fellowship at Stanford (and will then head to the University of Southern California, where a faculty position awaits him) and Ray accepted a position as curator of prints at the Georgia Museum of Art.
While the program is financially supported by the Franklin College and the Office of the Vice President for Instruction and coordinated by Hutchinson in the IHE, all Fellows are selected by the departments in which they will reside during their tenure.
Houck expressed her affection for the program when she left at the end of last spring semester.
“This has been an overwhelmingly positive experience for me,” she said, “and I am sad to be leaving Dr. Hutchinson and the other fellows. I have grown immensely as a teacher this year, learning from practice, from the other fellows and Dr. Hutchinson. I feel very lucky to have had this
opportunity.”
Indeed, the program has been such a success that similar projects have been started in UGA’s Honors Program, in the Terry College of Business and in the department of biological and agricultural engineering, which is in the College of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. The Institute for Higher Education is also coordinating those efforts. Other colleges and universities have inquired about the program as well.
While the Franklin Fellows focused on their classrooms, they found themselves bound by their common experience and, as Hutchinson notes, attended gymnastic meets and movies together, visited in each others’ homes, and even jointly hosted Halloween and Super Bowl parties.
“I value highly the fact that the program provides professional and social connections with mentors and teaching Fellows,” says Lamb. “These relationships are a key.”
The program is also expanding. While new Fellows took the places of Edmonson, Honda, Houck and Ray, the departments of geography and music joined the program with one Fellow each and chemistry added a second Fellow.
The Fellows learned early that there’s more to teaching than just standing in front of students and lecturing. They learned, for instance, how technology is changing the classroom.
“I am by far one of the biggest technophobes you can find on this campus,” said Edmonson, “and I’m continually amazed at the fact that I’m using PowerPoint and WebCT like a pro. It’s an accomplishment that I’m quite proud of.”
The Fellows also found time to take a retreat to the north Georgia mountains for a camping trip at Unicoi State Park. Though Hutchinson had never camped before, she gamely went along and found that the Fellows had no intention of simply relaxing.
“We probably had our most interesting discussions of the entire year in the van going up or around the campfire,” she says. “We really believe this program will have a ripple effect. Later, when these young people are professors, we want them to look back on their experience here and know that UGA would be a great place to send their top grad students, or recommend us to top scholars who are interested in relocating. I am truly overwhelmed with the opportunity to know these young people.” |
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