Biography
Derek is a visiting associate director at CETL, working remotely from Nashville and visiting campus a few days every month. His projects include supporting the adoption of active learning instruction by STEM faculty, consulting with faculty and departments as they address student success challenges in introductory STEM courses, and providing faculty development on the topic of teaching and AI. Reach out to Derek if you would like to talk about STEM education or teaching with technology.
Prior to his work at UM, Derek directed the Vanderbilt University Center for Teaching for more than a decade, where he helped faculty and other instructors develop foundational teaching skills and explore new ideas in teaching. He leverages that experience as an independent consultant, working with faculty and administrators across higher education on issues of teaching, learning, and faculty development. Derek is also a frequent keynote speaker at colleges and universities, usually presenting on teaching and technology.
Derek is the author of two books on teaching and technology. Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching was published by West Virginia University Press in 2019, and Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments was published in 2009 by Jossey-Bass. Derek writes a weekly newsletter called Intentional Teaching and produces the Intentional Teaching podcast.
Derek has a PhD in mathematics and has taught math courses at Vanderbilt and Harvard University.
Intentional Tech: Principles to Guide the Use of Educational Technology in College Teaching (West Virginia University Press, 2019)
Teaching with Classroom Response Systems: Creating Active Learning Environments (Jossey-Bass, 2009)
“Students as Producers: Collaborating Toward Deeper Learning,” in Scholarship in the Sandbox: Academic Libraries as Laboratories, Forums, and Archives for Student Work (Association of College and Research Libraries, 2019)
“An Indirect Journey to Indirect Impact: From Math Major to Teaching Center Director,” in #Alt-Academy (MediaCommons, 2015)
“Wrapping a MOOC: Student Perceptions of an Experiment in Blended Learning,” with Doug Fisher, Kathryn McEwen, and Blaine Smith in Journal of Online Learning and Teaching (2013)
Education
Ph.D. Mathematics, Vanderbilt University (2003)