Hosted by the Penn Center for Excellence in Teaching, Learning, and Innovation (CETLI)
This summer, we will be featuring blog posts written by PhD students who participated in Career Services’ Career Exploration Fellowship (CEF), a program that helps doctoral candidates explore their career interests through networking opportunities with advanced degree professionals. Click here to learn more about CEF.
Describe your experience working with your host.
Dr. Rebecca Stein, one of the directors at CETLI, was such a wonderful, welcoming, and helpful host. I learned a lot from meeting several times with Dr. Stein about her role and work at CETLI, her career trajectory, and what the work of a center for teaching, learning, and innovation includes. She also put me in touch with several other people with doctoral degrees at CETLI who I was able to meet with to learn more about their work and career journeys. Dr. Stein also invited me to a wide variety of CETLI events to understand the work of the center across different areas, from regulatory compliance for online learning programs, to professional development programming for graduate students, to online learning program development across Penn schools.
What did you learn from this opportunity (about yourself, potential career fields, the job search, etc.)?
My time with Dr. Stein and learning about CETLI offered me a great window into the types of work related to pedagogy, faculty and graduate student support, learning technology and online program support, and cross-school and cross-department support that centers for teaching and learning can offer. As someone who has studied teaching and learning in teacher education and K-12 teaching, it was really interesting to learn more about all the interesting support that centers for teaching and learning can offer to faculty, graduate students, and program design in higher education. Informational interviews and CEF-facilitated workshops were also helpful to start thinking about what it might mean to pursue a role outside of traditional faculty roles.
How did your CEF experience benefit your future career plans?
CEF was a great way to learn more about higher education teaching and learning support roles, and online learning programs in higher education. I also so enjoyed learning from Dr. Stein and other professionals in the field and hearing about their journeys within higher education from faculty to CETLI.
What was the most valuable part of your CEF experience?
I really enjoyed informational interviews to learn more about different career paths in the field of teaching, learning, and online learning outside of faculty roles at a School of Education. I also found the different in-person and online events that Dr. Stein invited me to attend very helpful to understand the breadth of different topics and types of programming and work that is supported by CETLI.
Top reason PhD students should apply to the CEF program?
CEF is a really fun, low-stress way to think about careers beyond tenure-track faculty roles and to get connected to wonderful folks who you might otherwise not meet, both fellow Penn PhD students and also your host and the other professionals they connect you to.