Category: Uncategorized

by Priya Parikh, Graduate Student, School of Medicine “So, what is your assessment and plan for this patient?” As a third year medical student, I am used to hearing this question during rounds when we present the patients we have been following to our residents and attending physician.  Early on in the year, this was… Continue reading Critical Thinking in Medicine: Reflections of a Third Year Student

The Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning enthusiastically announces the newest members of our staff. Instructional Developer: James Fortney James has been teaching undergraduate courses on communication, identity, and difference for nearly a decade. Prior to joining the Center, he was faculty in the Department of Communication Studies at Western Washington University. He also… Continue reading The Reinert Center Welcomes New Staff

by Mitch Lorenz, Graduate Assistant, Reinert Center Following thoughtful class design, lecture preparation, online class portal updating, and first day of class clothing selection comes the time when we, as teachers, must step into the classroom and actually interact with students. Regardless of the degree of preparation, unexpected problems may arise as students begin to… Continue reading Embracing Challenging Students

by Debie Lohe, Director, Reinert Center Next week, the Reinert Center will launch a pilot for a new program focused on helping SLU faculty and graduate student instructors design and teach courses in ways that are culturally responsive.  While the particular emphasis for the pilot is on engaging international students more inclusively, the concepts of… Continue reading Reinert Center Pilots New Program on Culturally Responsive Teaching

The Reinert Center is currently accepting proposals and nominations for two important SoTL initiatives.  Please see below for more information. CALL FOR PROPOSALS The Paul C. Reinert Center for Transformative Teaching and Learning Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Symposium Deadline: Friday, May 23, 2014 We invite faculty and graduate students to submit a 500-word proposal for… Continue reading Upcoming Initiatives related to the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL)

by Elisabeth Hedrick-Moser, Graduate Assistant, Reinert Center When Nicholas Kristof declaimed in his New York Times column that “Some of the smartest thinkers on problems at home and around the world are university professors, but most of them just don’t matter in today’s great debates,” he, unsurprisingly, unleashed some backlash from the academic community. Kristof’s… Continue reading Irrelevant or Engaged?

by Shawn Nordell, PhD, Associate Professor, Biology “Conceptual understanding” is a learning objective commonly seen in primary, secondary and post-secondary courses as well as throughout the educational literature.   Indeed, there is an emphasis in many disciplines to design a curriculum that promotes students’ conceptual understanding within a discipline rather than simple procedural knowledge or rote… Continue reading Why Are Concepts So Hard?

by Rebecca Hyde, Research & Instruction Librarian, Pius XII Memorial Library It’s easy to assume students learn about research and library resources before they ever get to your class, but think about the last time you assigned a research project. Were you happy with the quality of the information and the sources your students used? Could… Continue reading Collaborating with your SLU Research Librarian

by Michael Lewis, Associate Vice President for Faculty Development and Associate Professor of Chemistry I’m currently teaching an upper-level lab course, Biochemistry Laboratory I.  The course is required for Biochemistry majors, and given current demand for the course from students in the program, these are the only students in the course; we do not have the room… Continue reading “Teaching” an Upper Level Lab Course

by Debie Lohe, Director, Reinert Center This was the underlying question at Dr. Russell Carpenter’s workshop last week on Applied Creative Thinking.  Dr. Carpenter’s work suggests it can, and his recent book, Teaching Applied Creative Thinking, helps us to better understand how we might do so.  As I’ve reflected on the workshop and on the… Continue reading Can creative thinking be taught?