We’re excited to continue our staff spotlights, this month featuring Associate Director Katherine Beydler.

If you’re a graduate teaching assistant or someone who supervises graduate teaching assistants, we hope you become familiar with Katherine and her work at the center. She is especially happy to consult on teaching portfolios, formative assessment of teaching, mentorship of teachers, peer teaching communities, and TILE active learning classrooms. She is also an affiliate faculty member in the Department of Classics, where she teaches classes on ancient medicine and environmental history. We asked Katherine to answer a few questions for us so you can get to know her ahead of your consultation. 

What are your primary responsibilities at the Center for Teaching? 

I direct most of our programming for graduate student instructors. This includes the annual New TA Orientation, the Grad Teaching Fellows program, and the Center's work with the national teaching support network CIRTL. I also support teaching mentorship in a variety of ways: with faculty who supervise large numbers of TAs on teaching teams, for first-year graduate students, and with faculty-faculty mentoring relationships. For several years I led the TILE program, in which the Center helps faculty prepare to teach in one of the University of Iowa’s popular active learning classrooms.  

What kind of consultations do you do most often? 

I often consult with instructors about how to represent their teaching in official documentation, whether for tenure and promotion or for job applications. The act of distilling your teaching values and practice into a brief piece of writing is a complicated task for which a thought partner is useful. I also consult frequently with graduate student instructors who are developing their own course for the first time—it's an exciting task that can also feel overwhelming.  

What are your scholarly areas of interest? 

As an educational developer, I am interested in what factors produce self-efficacy and increased confidence in graduate student instructors. The transition from learner to teacher is a challenging one, especially amidst all the other new experiences of graduate school. I’ve been studying the impact of structured peer mentorship and guidance on TAs in multiple programs over the last few years. As a faculty member engaging in a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) project, I study what course structures (assignments, lecture strategies, etc.) help students engage effectively with ancient Rome not as a forerunner of the modern world, but in its own vibrant historical setting. 

What is your favorite part about working at the Center for Teaching? 

I truly enjoy the wide variety of people I get to work with! The instructors at the University of Iowa are wonderful, designing and teaching a fascinating range of courses for our students. I can discuss a large, flipped lecture on finance with a Tippie faculty member in the morning and how to ungrade a small seminar on Beowulf with a graduate student in the afternoon. I get to be a learner while I do my job—it's always rewarding.  

Tell me about the course you teach.  

I teach in the Historical Perspectives gen ed—the course is called Ancient Medicine. We discuss the practices of ancient Greek and Roman doctors along with their cultural setting, always trying to address the “why” of a medical idea rather than simply the “what.” This coming fall, I will be teaching this class in a TILE room for the first time, experimenting with adding more active learning and group activities to my lecture.  

What are your hobbies, interests, or special talents? What do you do for fun? 

I play a lot of video games as well as table-top roleplaying games like Magic: The Gathering. I just finished up my first run of Baldur’s Gate 3 and am looking forward to the release of Civilization VII. I also enjoy gardening—I've been trying to re-wild my yard over the last few years, but it turns out that grass is really hard to kill. 

Where is your favorite place to eat in Iowa City?  

It’s hard to pick one favorite. Depending on the day, you might find me at Baroncini, Pullman, or Saigon Corner. 

Interested in a consultation with Katherine or any other Center for Teaching staff member? Request a teaching consultation!