Professional Development Opportunities

The General Education English office offers a wide variety of professional development opportunities. Please watch your university email and English Department social media channels for updates.

General Education Curriculum Meetings

Before the start of each fall and spring semester, the General Education English Department gathers for a mini-conference in which we attend workshops (often led by the Director of General Education English or a guest speaker). We also include breakout sessions where General Education English faculty members provide workshops on various topics. The curriculum meetings give an enthusiastic jumpstart to the semester as we gather together to share best practices for our students. Stay tuned for the next CFP!

Professional Development Workshops

General Education English also offers professional development workshops throughout the semester. Past workshops have addressed professionalization, grading/feedback, assignment scaffolding, and blended learning modalities. Interested in leading a workshop? Contact the General Education English office for more details.

Additionally, MTSU’s Learning, Teaching, and Innovative Technologies Center offers a variety of pedagogy focused workshops throughout the semester. These workshops, which are open to all faculty members regardless of department specialty, focus on a range of multidisciplinary topics, such as accessibility, using secondary sources, and approaches to using technology in the classroom.

Peck Research on Writing Symposium

Held each spring (and generously funded by the Richard & Virginia Peck Foundation), the Peck Research on Writing Symposium is a one-day mini conference where an invited composition scholar provides a keynote lecture about their research and facilitates a workshop on its pedagogical applications.   

The Peck Research on Writing Symposium has two purposes:

• to engage writing faculty from area universities and secondary schools in considering timely issues in the research and teaching of writing, and
• to bring together members of the WPA Midsouth affiliate of the Council of Writing Program Administrators for our annual meeting.

Past speakers for the Peck Research on Writing Symposium include Paul Kai Matsuda, Andrea Lunsford, Cheryl Ball, Elizabeth Wardle, Derek Mueller, and Christine Tardy.

You can find additional information about the Peck Research on Writing Symposium on the official webpage.

Celebration of Student Writing

Hosted by the General Education English program, this writing showcase displays the exciting work happening in English classes to the wider university community. The Celebration of Student Writing includes a wide variety of student writing, from projects developed in first-year writing and second-year literature classes to academic and creative compositions completed by advanced English students. English 1020 (Research and Argumentative Writing) instructors in particular are encouraged to invite students to create research poster presentations for this event as a way to share their research with an audience outside of the classroom.

Limited space is also available for readings/screenings/performances—if you have a student who submitted stellar work during the past year, nominating that individual to read that work is an excellent form of recognition. And finally, one way to encourage your students to participate in this event is to allow them to present at the Celebration of Student Writing in lieu of taking a Final Exam.

Award Opportunities

Putting yourself up for awards is an invaluable way to develop your professional identity and build your CV to impress future employers. It’s also a great way to simply get recognized for the wonderful work you do (and many come with monetary prizes!). You can find more information about available awards here, as well as information about many awards you can nominate your students for, so they too can be recognized for their accomplishments. The John N. McDaniel Excellence in Teaching Award, the William R. Wolfe Graduate Writing Award, and the True Blue Core Writing Awards will be of particular interest to GTAs. Applying for these awards, even if you don’t get selected, is a valuable time to develop materials like Teaching Philosophies that you will eventually need on the job search, and nominating students for TBC Writing Awards can have a huge impact on student writers. So put yourself (and your students’ great work) out there!