On October 25, 2019, the GSTA held our Tenth Annual Pedagogy Day Conference at the CUNY Graduate Center. Pedagogy Day is a forum for doctoral students and faculty to come together to think collectively about pedagogy and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) in today’s diverse undergraduate classrooms. The theme of the conference was Transformative Teaching. Transformative pedagogy moves beyond the traditional “information-transmission” teaching paradigm by providing students with the knowledge and skills to become engaged citizens empowered to make positive changes in the world.

Our keynote presentation was delivered by Professor Cathy N. Davidson from the Graduate Center, CUNY. Professor Davidson is the co-founder of the Humanities, Arts, Science, and Technology Alliance and Collaboratory Her presentation was inspired by her recent award-winning book The New Education: How to Revolutionize the University to Prepare Students for a World In Flux. In her workshop, titled Revolutionizing Learning, Professor Davidson looked at the origins of the modern research university and its current legacy presence. She addressed the changes we need to make now and then focused on ways that each and every one of us can begin—right now—to make changes in our own classrooms that help our students to learn better and make teaching more satisfying for professors too.

You can view the video here.

CANCELED: GSTA meet-up at EPA

The GSTA teaching symposia and informal meet-up at EPA 2020 have been cancelled due to the majority of presenters and organizers traveling from the New York area. Sorry for the inconvenience!

However, if you’re a graduate student presenting Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) research at EPA, please let us know the time and topic of your presentation and we’ll be happy to share it on Twitter! Tweet us at @gradsteachpsych or send us an email at gsta@teachpsych.org.

GSTA at NITOP 2020

GSTA members had a great time at the 2020 National Institute on the Teaching of Psychology in St. Pete Beach, FL. It was inspiring to meet so many dedicated and innovative instructors of psychology!

Say Hi to the GSTA at EPA!

Members and former members of the GSTA will be presenting at this year’s Eastern Psychological Association (EPA) Conference taking place in Boston from Thursday, March 12 to Saturday, March 14. If you are in the Boston area, please join us!

GSTA Meet-Up at EPA

Grab a drink and join us at 5pm on Friday, March 13, 2020 at M.J. O’Connor’s at the Park Plaza Hotel. All are welcome, especially graduate students and early career psychologists!

GSTA Members Presenting at EPA

GSTA members have organized several symposia that are part of the STP’s Teaching Symposium Series. On Friday, March 13 (11am-12:20pm in the Stuart Room), we will be sharing recent findings on “Teaching Attitudes and Behaviors of Novice College Instructors.” This symposium will describe results from two surveys distributed through the GSTA assessing graduate student instructors’ approaches to teaching, model teaching characteristics, emphasis on workforce-relevant skills, and awareness of students’ academic motivations.

Just a few minutes later (12:30-1:50pm in the Stuart Room), we will be sharing strategies for “Transformative Pedagogy,” including a flipped learning model, embedding quantitative reasoning throughout the curriculum, and using role-play to increase understanding of research ethics. Many of our presenters are also authors of chapters in the upcoming second volume of the GSTA’s e-book series How We Teach Now. This a great opportunity to get a sneak peek of just a few of the great resources in the new volume!

Presenting at EPA? Let us know!

Let us know the time and topic of your presentation and we’ll share it on Twitter! Tweet us at @gradsteachpsych or send us an email at gsta@teachpsych.org.GSTA Listserv

The GSTA has an online discussion list DIV2GSTA, To join the listserv, visit here and click on “Subscribe or Unsubscribe” in the Options box on the right side of the screen. After you subscribe, you may send messages to the list at DIV2GSTA@lists.apa.org.

As you may have heard, 2020 marks a big change for the GSTA. Starting this year, the GSTA has moved away from having a designated host institution to a regional model with representatives from institutions around the country. We thank the Graduate Center, CUNY for hosting the GSTA for the past two terms and Dr. Patricia Brooks for serving as the GSTA Faculty Advisor during this time.

We are excited to announce that four new at-large members will join the Chair and Deputy Chair in steering the GSTA for 2020! Dr. Meera Komarraju, Vice President for Membership will serve as the new GSTA Faculty Advisor. The steering committee will have its first virtual meeting in January to discuss GSTA budget, expectations, and programming. We look forward to working together to support graduate student instructors!

Meet the 2020 GSTA Steering Committee!

GSTA Chair

Elizabeth Che is a doctoral student in the Educational Psychology Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research interests include the use of Wikipedia editing to develop students’ writing and other teaching practices that foster development of workforce relevant skills. She teaches Introductory Psychology at the College of Staten Island.

GSTA Deputy Chair

Jessica Brodsky is a doctoral student in the Educational Psychology Program at the Graduate Center, CUNY. Her research interests include media literacy assessment and instruction, and development of online resources for teaching students how to read scientific texts. She teaches Experimental Psychology at Hunter College.

GSTA Steering Committee Members

Adam Green is a master's (en route to doctoral) student at Southern Illinois University Carbondale. His research interests involve moral and political beliefs. He has assisted in several courses including Research Methods, Applied Behavior Analysis, and Advanced Statistics. He hopes to support and improve GTA experiences through the GTSA.

Amy Maslowski is a Counseling Psychology doctoral student at the University of North Dakota. She received her master’s degree in Clinical-Counseling Psychology from the University of Minnesota Duluth. Amy has undergraduate instructor and graduate and undergraduate GTA experiences. She is involved in SoTL research and published and presented in ToP outlets.

Terrill Taylor is a Counseling Psychology doctoral student at the University of North Dakota. He has served in several teaching experiences at the graduate level, which includes having taught courses on research, introductory psychology, and helping skills. He is currently the lead instructor for an undergraduate course on U.S. diversity.

Maaly Younis is an Educational Psychology doctoral student at the University of Northern Colorado. Her major areas of research are studies of transformative learning and academic engagement in teacher education, Photovoice, and culturally responsive pedagogy. She teaches several undergraduate courses such as Introductory Psychology, Educational Psychology & Psychological Statistics.