Purposeful Teaching Fellowship


Sponsored by the CFDE and the Emory Purpose Project

Apply Now!

  • Application window runs from Sept. 23rd - Nov. 1st, 2024
  • Applicants will be notified before the Thanksgiving break about their acceptance status
  • Past applicants are encouraged to apply again if they are still interested!
  • See below for comments from current fellows
  • The Purposeful Teaching Fellowship is open to all full-time faculty (including tenured, non-tenure track, teaching track, clinical track, and other faculty with long-term appointments).

Description:

The Purposeful Teaching Fellowship focuses on developing courses that support student learning and student flourishing. It will help faculty consider what it means for students to flourish in a course and provide concrete strategies to promote this. See below for a description of flourishing in an educational setting.

For students to flourish, faculty also need to flourish, and this fellowship is set up to provide a supportive environment for faculty to flourish in their teaching practices at Emory.

To participate in this fellowship, faculty must have a course that they will develop or redevelop and implement in the 2025/26 academic year. The fellowship is designed to support implementation as well as development.

Goals:

  • To bring purposeful course design and pedagogy into Emory classrooms to promote student learning and flourishing.
  • To develop a support structure around teaching to provide faculty with time, competence, and conversation to develop classes where they can also flourish.
  • To provide recognition to faculty commitment to excellent teaching.

2025 Cohort Dates:

  • Friday, February 7th, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm
  • Friday, February 14th, 9:00 am – 11:00 am

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  • Friday, February 28th, 9:00 am– 11:00 am
  • Friday, March 7th, 9:00 am – 11:00 am

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  • Friday, March 21st, 9:00 am – 11:00 am
  • Friday, March 28th, 9:00 am – 12:00 pm

Agreements:

  • Provide a syllabus and access to the previous Canvas site if applicable that you will be working on to the cohort leaders
  • Provide an updated syllabus and Canvas site to review
  • Participate in all sessions in the spring semester (dates listed above)
  • Participate in 1 pre-semester course review with the cohort in August, 2025 (date tbd)
  • Participate in two (2) check-in sessions the semester you are teaching
  • Participate in exit interview and/or focus group about the fellowship

Funding:

  • You will receive a $2,000 stipend deposited into your research/discretionary account for participation in the program distributed upon the completion of specific milestones throughout the fellowship
  • It is anticipated that upon completion of the fellowship, as a fellow there will be ongoing opportunities to be a leader in this work
  • We will also compensate you with food! A light breakfast will be provided each session

Session Topics:

Part I: The Set-up
  • Session 1: Fellowship Overview & Purposeful Course Goals
  • Session 2: Making Connections
Part II: The Learning Path
  • Session 3: Where the Learning Happens
  • Session 4: Weekly/Module Goals
  • Session 5: Content Curation
  • Session 6: Grading & Syllabus
Questions? E-mail Liesl Wuest, lwuest@emory.edu

Consider how the different CFDE Faculty Fellowship programs compare (.pdf)

Throughout the fellowship, we will be talking about flourishing and purposeful course design and looking at concrete ways to implement strategies in the course that is being redesigned. Below is a brief introduction of the definitions we will be starting with.

Flourishing is a term that dates back as far as Aristotle and is still being discussed and researched today. Though not the final say on what flourishing looks like in an educational setting, researchers Richard Ryan and Edward Deci describe flourishing through an educational lens below, and we will use it as a starting point to further explore what flourishing looks like and means in a course setting.

“By flourishing, we mean becoming motivated, vital, resourceful, and fully functioning adults. Flourishing individuals feel both empowered and confident in their learning and problem solving and feel a sense of belonging to their schools and their larger human community…

…The promise and hope of school is not only that they enable and enhance cognitive learning and growth in specific subject areas…, but also that they facilitate the development of high-quality motivation, engagement, participation, citizenship, and social-emotional well-being. The capabilities for engagement and self-regulation will likely be more serviceable in subsequent life than any particular facts learned in the schools…they should not discourage, demotivate, or kill the confidence of the students they serve or leave them feeling alienated, reactive, excluded from society, or more antisocial.” (Ryan & Deci, 2017 p. 354)

Course Alignment + Design for Learning + Design for Flourishing = Purposeful Course Design

  • Puts student learning and emotions at the heart of every course
  • Research-based practices in cognitive and skill development coupled with research on ways to promote student well-being and flourishing

Autonomy:
Different aspects include providing choices in learning (materials and practice), autonomy-supportive vs. autonomy-controlling environments, and structural elements like grading, evaluation, and mastery. Empirical research shows that the more students feel they have a choice in how they participate in the course, the more perceived self-worth, intrinsic motivation, and cognitive competence they have. Overall, students learn better.

Competence:
Competence concerns the feeling of mastery, a sense that one can succeed and grow. The need for competence is best satisfied within well-structured environments that afford optimal challenges, positive feedback, and opportunities for growth” (Ryan & Deci, 2020 p. 1).  Competence supports curiosity, exploration, and manipulation—all critical components of learning.

Relatedness:

Relatedness, also referred to as belonging, has to do with people feeling socially connected, feeling cared for by others, and feeling significant among others. It also is connected to people giving to others and being part of larger social organizations. A lot of language around flourishing is about connection and purpose—both to other individuals as well as to values and communities.

In course design, social connection is often seen in focusing on building a community of learners through icebreakers and introductions at the start of a semester, facilitated discussions, and group work. However, what is often missing in traditional models is helping students connect the course to a larger purpose. How does it relate to the context of the curriculum? How is it relevant to you outside of class? How can you connect it to community-based or experiential learning like internships that you participate in? (Connecting to purpose also supports competence and autonomy!)

2024 Cohort:

Michal Arbilly, Assistant Teaching Professor, Biology & QTM, ECAS

Jennifer Ayres, Professor, Candler School of Theology

Yuk Fai Cheong,Associate Professor, Psychology, ECAS

Erica Davis, Assistant Clinical Professor, School of Nursing

Jennifer Frediani, Assistant Professor, School of Nursing

Yun Kim, Associate Teaching Professor, Linguistics, ECAS

Michael Martin, Associate Teaching Professor, Biology/Environmental Science, Oxford

Marilia Ribeiro, Associate Teaching Professor, Spanish and Portuguese, ECAS

Aaron Putt, Assistant Teaching Professor, Film & Media Studies, ECAS

Erin Weinisch, Assistant Professor, Director of Didactic Education Physician Assistant program, SOM

Here's what they say!

Regarding your teaching, what have you gained from the instruction portion of the Purposeful Teaching Fellowship?
  • I gained a deeper understanding with how to create meaningful class activities. These sessions helped me create activities that are both fun and helpful to students because they allow the students to open up more on the lectures taught and connect with the information learned.
  • The model of course objectives broken down into thinking about what students should know, what they should be able to do, and how they should feel really resonated with me. Thinking about alternative grading structures was also helpful along with conversations about reflection and finding ways to help students think about purpose. And being able to break 'flourishing' into something more tangible like autonomy, competence, and relatedness is really helpful.

  • I brought to the fellowship a pre-existing commitment to student flourishing, and some rather intuitive, implicit pedagogical approaches that support this goal. What I gained, though, was a more strategic and grounded framework for claiming this approach, announcing it to students, and designing assignments with autonomy and relatedness in mind, alongside our historic focus on competence.
Regarding your connection to other faculty, what have you gained from the instruction portion of the Purposeful Teaching Fellowship?
  • It was eye-opening to hear other faculty, from many different disciplines, talk about their challenges and their successes. It made me think of perspectives not often discussed in my own field. I also really liked that the workshop was in-person and we committed to spending two or three hours together each week. We were able to make personal connections with other faculty, which may even lead to collaborations in the future.

  • It's always nice to be reminded of the community of committed teachers we have at Emory. It was nice to see us across the university and in different roles and disciplines.

  • Was really grateful to meet colleagues from across the university. The commitment that each of us have to not only our students' flourishing, but also our own, was an energizing and heart-healing discovery. It's been a hard few years for all the reasons. Thank you for introducing me to these wonderful people who still want to connect to the real heart of teaching and learning.

  • It was such a rare/precious experience what I got to interact with faculty members from different campuses. I really appreciated it.
What would you say to other faculty about the Purposeful Teaching Fellowship?
  • I think it is worth your time if you truly want to reduce the stress of your students and help them thrive in the current environment. This seems to be the direction higher education is moving in and it definitely strays from traditional lecture-based pedagogy that we are used to.

  • One of the primary complaints faculty have about their students is that they are overly focused on grades and doing the required work for a class but not engaging in the course beyond that. I think the Purposeful Teaching Fellowship offers faculty a way of engaging students the way they want to - in a more meaningful way that is centered around personal growth.

  • I'd say that the workshop was an excellent opportunity to do a close analysis of your teaching; it not only inspired me with ideas or theories, but created a time/space for actually implementing them. I usually attend workshops or webinars and leave full of ideas, but end up not having time to follow up on them. The format of the workshop allowed me to take the review of my courses seriously and devote energy to take concrete steps for changing assignments, class format, and the syllabus.

  • It's a wonderful opportunity to re-imagine your course from the inside out. You'll meet other terrific colleagues who are sometimes wrestling with the same questions as you, sometimes have already tried something that will help you. And don't worry that this fellowship will ask you to "sacrifice rigor." Instead, it will help you accompany students on a deeper path of learning.