Graduate Teaching Credentials

We offer three tiered teaching credentials to graduate students who complete a series of activities designed to improve their teaching.

Showcase your teaching accomplishments

Demonstrate your teaching-related professional development to employers or admissions committees with teaching credentials offered by the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning. You can earn credentials by completing a series of activities—including workshops, observations, consultations, and reflections—designed to improve your teaching.

The credentials are sequential, self-paced, and open to any graduate student in the UM community. 

The Credentials

Information about the requirements for each teaching credential

In completing this credential, you will…

  • Discuss evidence-based teaching practices for engaging students, planning effective lessons, assessing student work, and gathering student feedback
  • Form a teaching community with peer instructors from a variety of disciplinary backgrounds
  • Observe and reflect on teaching practices within your discipline

Requirements

  • One semester of Fundamentals of Teaching: A Learning Community for TAs and Graduate Instructors. (If your department offers a credit-bearing course on postsecondary teaching, it may substitute for Fundamentals of Teaching, as long as you provide evidence for successful completion of the course.)
  • Observation of a faculty member’s undergraduate class within your field
  • 500-word written reflection on teaching, highlighting major takeaways from Fundamentals or a departmental course on teaching and your observation of faculty teaching. If you'd like further guidance on this portion of the application, you can find FAQs and writing prompts below.

When you have completed the requirements for the Fundamentals of Teaching certificate, fill out the application form below to submit your materials. A CETL staff member will follow up with you about any additional requirements or to issue your credential. 

Apply for this credential

In completing this credential, you will…

  • Identify evidence-based teaching practices and apply them in your classroom
  • Discuss teaching practices with faculty and graduate instructors from across the university
  • Reflect individually and with others on your teaching practice

Requirements

  • Completion of Fundamentals of Teaching Credential
  • Participation in five CETL events beyond the Fundamentals series (meetings of the Graduate Reading Group will count toward this requirement, as will the session on Inclusive and Equitable Teaching Practices CETL offers each semester in collaboration with Diversity and Community Engagement)
  • Observation of your teaching and follow-up consultation with CETL staff. In the event that your are unable to teach during your time at UM but would still like to pursue the Emerging Teacher credential, CETL staff will help you facilitate a practice teaching demo and consultation.
  • 500-word written reflection on teaching, highlighting major takeaways from CETL events and teaching observation.If you'd like further guidance on this portion of the application, you can find FAQs and writing prompts below.

You can schedule your teaching observation and consultation by emailing Emily Pitts Donahoe, Associate Director of Instructional Support, at ejdonaho@olemiss.edu

When you have completed the requirements for this certificate, fill out the form below to submit your materials. A CETL staff member will follow up with you about any additional requirements or to issue your credential. 

Apply for this credential

In completing this credential, you will…

  • Articulate your teaching philosophy and analyze your teaching practices
  • Compile and hone a teaching portfolio
  • Reflect on evaluations of your teaching
  • Prepare for the academic job market

Requirements

  • Completion of Fundamentals of Teaching and Emerging Teacher Credentials
  • Submission of annotated teaching portfolio, including:
    • A teaching statement or philosophy
    • A sample syllabus
    • A sample lesson plan
    • A sample assignment or assessment
    • Teaching evaluations (generated by students or observers)
    • Two portfolio reflections
      1. A 300-word evaluation of the sample teaching materials included in the portfolio discussing how they demonstrate evidence-based teaching practices
      2. A 200-word reflection on the teaching evaluations within the portfolio and what you learned from them
  • Portfolio consultation with CETL staff 

When you have completed your portfolio documents, please fill out the form below and email your documents to ejdonaho@olemiss.edu. A CETL staff member will follow up with you to schedule a portfolio consultation.

Apply for this credential

What students say

student looking down reading a book

About the Credentials

Working towards the Fundamentals of Teaching Credential played a significant role in sustaining me through my first experience as an Instructor of Record.”

Group of students smiling

About the Community

The learning community, together with the observation of a faculty member's course, has profoundly influenced my perspective on teaching.”

Credential Reflection: FAQs

Further guidance on writing the 500-word reflections included in your credential applications

If you’re applying for the Fundamentals of Teaching credential, write about the most important things you learned from participating in the Fundamentals learning community (or your department-sponsored teaching practicum) and from observing faculty teaching. If you’re applying for the Emerging Teacher credential, write about the most important things you learned from the CETL workshops or events you attended and from your consultation with a CETL staff member.

You might start by answering one or more of these questions:

  1. Which aspects of the sessions, observations, or consultations you participated in made the biggest impression on you and why?
  2. How do the approaches displayed in the teaching you observed or presented in the sessions you attended align with your own approaches? Where do they differ?
  3. What do you know, think, or do in your teaching now that you have completed the requirements for the credential that you didn’t know, think, or do before?
  4. What goals or future plans do you have for your teaching as a result of your teaching development experiences? 
  5. What lingering questions do you have about your teaching development experiences? What aspects of your teaching or of the research on teaching would you like to explore further?

This genre of writing is meant to be informal and open-ended. Above all, it is a narrative of your experience. Unlike a teaching philosophy, your reflection won’t make definitive statements about your teaching attitudes and approaches; instead, it will discuss the process of your teaching development, considering how your professional experiences (workshops, observations, consultations, etc.) have affected you or your pedagogical practice.

Your reflection is first and foremost for yourself, to help you gather your thoughts and chart progress in your teaching development. In that sense, you can think of the reflection as a personal journaling exercise. But you’ll also be writing to CETL staff who will want to know that you were engaged during the teaching development activities you participated in and thought carefully about how the information presented could enhance your teaching.

We have lots of evidence that metacognition (thinking about one’s thinking), self-assessmentt, and reflection support student growth, and they can support your professional development in similar ways.  Reflection is an important part of teaching practice and can help you explore, enhance, and build confidence in your pedagogy.
Emily Donahoe

Questions about the Graduate Teaching Credentials?

Reach out to Emily any time for more information about teaching credentials or other graduate programming. 

Emily Donahoe

Associate Director of Instructional Support in the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning and Lecturer of Writing and Rhetoric