Welcome to the Koehler Center Support Page for TCU Ph.D. Students and Teaching/Graduate Assistants

The purpose of this area on our site is to provide information and support specific to the needs of graduate students who may now be teaching college classes or who may be doing so shortly after graduation.

The academy expects a lot from instructors, but sometimes graduate students find themselves in front of classes without a great deal of formal training in the art and science of teaching.  This area on our site can provide useful information to help you prepare to teach.

This is also a site where we will provide information related to your academic job search.  For example, creating an accurate and compelling teaching philosophy statement and/or an academic professional portfolio can be important parts of your job search.

The Koehler Center serves and supports faculty, teaching and graduate assistants, and terminal degree students.  In addition to this site, the Teaching and Learning Conversations held three times each long semester, and the Koehler Center Library, our support includes one-on-one consultations.
 

Click here to access the November 2008 TCU Teaching & Learning Conversation with advice from journal editors on getting published in peer-reviewed journals.

Click here for Daren Brabham’s article, “Within Reach: Publishing as a Graduate Student.”

Click here to read an article written by a University of Kansas professor who gives advice for how to use a teaching/graduate assistantship as preparation for the tenure track.

Click here to access ten teacher-student conflict scenarios along with advice for what to do and how to prevent them from recurring.

Click here to access the University of California-San Diego Teaching Assistant Handbook.

Click here to access the Michigan State University Teaching Assistant Resource Listing, a nice collection of short papers dealing with targeted topics.

Click here to access a listing of the most frequently asked questions in academic job interviews.

Click here for an overview of the teaching philosophy statement.

Click here for an overview of the academic professional portfolio.

Click here to access the Koehler Center Library database where you can search our holdings in the “Starting a Teaching Career” category.  Come by and check out a book!

Click here to go to a great resource page for early career faculty.  The resource was designed for geosciences faculty, but the advice given is frequently very applicable to instructors in any discipline.

Click here for a compendium of one-page papers from a University of Richmond Distinguished Teaching Fellow who has distilled decades of personal discoveries about good college teaching into an easy-to-use booklet in PDF format.

Click here for five strategies to succeed in your academic career.

Click here for an article explaining in depth how a department at one university filtered through 637 applications, what things doomed certain candidates, what things raised the stock of others, and, ultimately, how the search committee made its decision.  A former TCU student was one of the two hires.