How do I pitch a course that I want to develop?

[adel9216]

Hello,

I have an idea for a course that I could develop based on my doctoral topic. I have good ideas of the weekly themes I'd want to address, how I'd want to structure the semester, what kind of assignments and presentations I would give, and the type of instructor I want to be. The thing is that I don't know if I can "pitch" my idea to my university or to the university I am considering for becoming a Visiting Research Scholar in 2021. I wouldn't teach it now, I would like to do it after comprehensive exams or even dissertation proposal.

I do have a lot of public speaking experience, so speaking in front of a group in English or French is not an issue for me. But I have never taught a class entirely on my own, at this stage. I have done a little bit of teaching and discussion facilitation as a TA (the prof would allow me to teach the first half of each class, and I have gotten excellent and solely positive reviews and comments from the students in evaluations at the end of the term). So I don't know if it's typical for a PhD Candidate to pitch a brand new course or if the university would trust me in doing so. Maybe I am also underestimating the amount of work it represents to develop a course from scratch. I have seen that there are mini-courses at my university on pedagogy in postsecondary institutions which I will probably enroll in as well.

What are your thoughts?

[phattangent]

At my institution (R1), faculty can submit course proposals with the support of their department head. You usually have to list the description, learning outcomes, and topics. Once submitted, the proposal goes through some committees in the institution's governance body to ensure it doesn't conflict with any institutional or regents agreements (and other checks), then the entire governance body votes.

In my department, we probably wouldn't let a grad student submit a proposal unless it's for an intro-level class and a faculty member was on board to teach it as well.

Talk to your major professor about it.

[marshwiggle]

At my institution (R1), faculty can submit course proposals with the support of their department head. You usually have to list the description, learning outcomes, and topics. Once submitted, the proposal goes through some committees in the institution's governance body to ensure it doesn't conflict with any institutional or regents agreements (and other checks), then the entire governance body votes.

In my department, we probably wouldn't let a grad student submit a proposal unless it's for an intro-level class and a faculty member was on board to teach it as well.

Talk to your major professor about it.

This is the important thing; no department wants to jump through the hoops to create a course that no one wants to teach in a couple of years (i.e. after you leave). Many places have something like a "special topics" course that allows people to teach one-offs; that may be an option.

FWIW, since you've never taught a complete course yourself, I' d suggest waiting until you've done that to propoae a new one, since you'll learn a lot from how things don't go as expected even when the course has been running for a while.

[no1capybara]

Hi,

If the university you're visiting has a center for faculty learning (or whatever they call it), I highly encourage you to take as many workshops/symposiums from them as you can. Build it in as a part of the expected outcomes of your visit.  Also see about team teaching a class with a faculty member.  I'm sure someone would be happy to share their load with you!

[Parasaurolophus]

You can prepare the syllabus (and the pitch) now, and use it as part of your job market pitch and materials.

[Hegemony]

If you're considering doing this at the university where you will be a visiting scholar, you would be doing it as an adjunct. As many threads here will attest, adjuncting pays very little, almost starvation wages, for quite a lot of effort, and even more the first time you teach something.  But there are two more pressing obstacles to teaching this course at the university you're contemplating. The first is that they probably have all the adjuncts they need, and they will not give you any particular preference just because you're a visiting scholar. In fact they will probably give you less, since you won't be around long-term to teach in future years. They'd probably much rather on-board someone local, who will be available in the future, if they're going to take on someone new — which, again, they may not be looking to do in any case.  The second is that they hire adjuncts to teach the lower-level regular requirement-satisfying courses that come around the most often. Intro to Whatever, and the like. They don't hire adjuncts they have no prior experience with to teach a new course that does not fulfill any established university requirements. (Typically a course has to go through a long approval process to fulfill those requirements, and one criterion is that the course will continue to be taught regularly.)  So the conventions of the planning and hiring process mean that it's very unlikely this would work. That's apart from the fact that you're going there to finish your dissertation, aren't you? Teaching a course is very time-consuming and would mean that your dissertation would not be finished on time.

You could inquire about teaching it at your home university, but my guess is that your grad student terms mean that you are required to do certain kinds of teaching, and that this is not one of those kinds. Generally people don't develop their own courses until they have some experience teaching already-established courses as the main instructor. But consult your advisor or the department scheduler for more details.

[Caracal]

Well, my grad school had a fellowship where you could apply to teach a freshman seminar if you were ABD and I taught a course through that. It might be worth checking to see if something like that fellowship exists. That said, I'm not sure I'd be trying that hard to do this. Designing a course in your area of expertise is often harder than teaching a survey course. For one thing you have to come up with everything from scratch and don't have the benefit of borrowing notes and slides from colleagues and friends. It can also be hard when you're close to a topic to see how best to teach it to undergrads and you might tend to overcomplicate things.

Also remember that most future employers are going to care more about your ability to teach lower level courses than upper level courses that mirror your research interests. If you can teach a few of those, that's even better. I probably owe my continued employment to the fact that I started teaching the second half of the survey (the one further away from my research) as I was finishing grad school.

[polly_mer]

Your job as a grad student is research and your own studies.  Teaching is a distraction at this point so don't do it unless that's how you're funding your own studies.

You can prepare the syllabus (and the pitch) now, and use it as part of your job market pitch and materials.

Yes, you can do this as well as no1capybara's advice on taking advantage of the many workshops etc. on teaching and developing courses offered wherever you can get them.  But AFTER you have made good progress on your own classes as a student, research, and comprehensive exams.  Don't waste any time at the moment on preparing classes you aren't currently teaching.

As others have written, do not waste energy now in trying to get the course approved for somewhere you have no permanent job and no one wants the additional course.

Do not invest much energy now in developing a brand-new upper-division elective course when you have zero experience as instructor of record.  The public-speaking aspects of teaching are a fairly minor part of the instructor of record experience.  Again, I will say: content knowledge is insufficient to teach well, as many people learn the hard way every term and then come here to ask necessary questions.  Once you have taught some standard courses, have a permanent enough job, and know what is missing from the current curriculum in that place, then you can invest energy in the bureaucracy for teaching.

[mamselle]

You could spend a half-hour outlining it for yourself if you have good ideas you want to remember.

Then start a 'splinter' file...that's what one of my advisors said she did to get an idea out of her mind and onto paper.... and then set it aside, so as not to be distracted by it. I have a pendaflex full of ' em now...

I pull stuff out of mine every now and again...I think in the "language of the syllabus," I like parsing the grammar in developing ideas and defining significant points with an audience in mind.

One such 'splinter' is in process now, in fact...paper to give in May, in fact, that started life as a very tentative course proposal...awhile ago...

M.

[Puget]

Well, my grad school had a fellowship where you could apply to teach a freshman seminar if you were ABD and I taught a course through that. It might be worth checking to see if something like that fellowship exists. That said, I'm not sure I'd be trying that hard to do this. Designing a course in your area of expertise is often harder than teaching a survey course. For one thing you have to come up with everything from scratch and don't have the benefit of borrowing notes and slides from colleagues and friends. It can also be hard when you're close to a topic to see how best to teach it to undergrads and you might tend to overcomplicate things.

Also remember that most future employers are going to care more about your ability to teach lower level courses than upper level courses that mirror your research interests. If you can teach a few of those, that's even better. I probably owe my continued employment to the fact that I started teaching the second half of the survey (the one further away from my research) as I was finishing grad school.

My university also has a competitive teaching fellowship like this for ABD grad students to teach an undergrad seminar in their research area, and I'm currently supporting one of my students to apply for it because she wants to explore and prepare for a possible career at a more teaching-focused college. A agree overall with Caracal though that this is only a good idea if you are ABD and making good progress on your dissertation, with strong time-management skills to balance that with the teaching.

[dr_codex]

I Chair our Curriculum Committee, and echo many of the comments above. We strongly discourage new courses from anybody if they haven't run once as "Special Topics". (The only exceptions are courses that we need on the books immediately for compliance reasons, an outside accrediting body, and/or a professional licensure requirement.) There are also other flavors of "Topics"; if you pursue this, look for things like "Topics in Modern Basketweaving" and the like. We would be very unlikely to consider a submission from a non-permanent faculty member, unless there were a compelling reason to add it to our course catalog. Changing the catalog is a pain, and so is doing all the paperwork for a new course.

Like others, I would discourage you from doing this right now, except as a "dream course", which you can pull out during an interview. I spend too much time in grad school teaching the kinds of courses that you are describing. By the time I graduated, I had more experience than most of the new tenure-track faculty hired around me. But I didn't have the publications, or the efficient time to degree, that would get me the interview that got the others their jobs.

Yes, some teaching experience is valuable, especially of the kind where you are running a classroom. You sound like you have that, as well as somebody who can write your "teaching letter of reference". But too much teaching experience can be a trap, particularly if the course are upper-division, highly specialized, and probably hard to take to a new institution.

[adel9216]

I can do some teaching after comprehensive examination, there are some reserved spots for PhD students as lecturers in my departement. My advisor also once told me that it's important that I do get some experience. I do think he is right, but it's important to not have it being detrimental to me completing my thesis. In terms of developing my own course, it's a colossal task with a lot of imperatives I had not considered or were aware of. I agree with you all that it's probably more strategic for me to pitch my idea as part of my application package when I will apply for academic positions.

Thanks everyone for your input!

[the_geneticist]

I can do some teaching after comprehensive examination, there are some reserved spots for PhD students as lecturers in my departement. My advisor also once told me that it's important that I do get some experience. I do think he is right, but it's important to not have it being detrimental to me completing my thesis. In terms of developing my own course, it's a colossal task with a lot of imperatives I had not considered or were aware of. I agree with you all that it's probably more strategic for me to pitch my idea as part of my application package when I will apply for academic positions.

Thanks everyone for your input!

As someone who is on our curriculum committee, has developed and taught new courses, and trains graduate students how to teach I have some advice.
One, write down your idea!  You are clearly very excited and feeling creative.  I keep a running "list of neat ideas" and have developed some into full lessons/modules.
Two, DO NOT pitch it as a new course as a graduate student.  You will be way, way too busy and it's not a requirement for your job.
Three, do see what kind of teaching experience you can get.  As a warning - "opportunities to teach as a lecturer" = "we don't have enough money to pay you to do research for your entire Ph.D/we don't pay our faculty enough to teach in all of our courses/we're too cheap to pay our adjusts enough to keep them" in many places.  Proceed cautiously.

[Golazo]

Some of the advice here seems a little bit R-1/2 or bust. I did something similar to the OP (after I was ABD, which was crucial), during the summer session. Indeed, over the course of my program I offered four different courses as instructor of record and this (both lower level and upper level) was essential for being competitive for LAC and directional jobs, which are a big part of the market. My current LAC wouldn't consider someone without this as a minimum level. Some of the amount you should teach perhaps depends on your aspirations. If you goal is r1 or prestigious postdoc, then spending more time on research is a reasonable choice, but we should be clear that such a choice makes it very hard to get on the TT at a more teaching focused place (excluding SLACs that have R1 research goals) without doing something post PHD to gain more experience.

I certainly agree that you need to be able to make good progress on the dissertation. But teaching 1 class shouldn't undermine this. Of course, this should ideally be done in an environment where the ABD student is mentored both on how to teach and how to prep effectively. I think the utility of opportunities to teach depends on if it is "here are your 80 students, good luck" or "here is the program we've organized to help prepare you to develop your own course and to be effective in the classroom." If done properly, a course on someone's research topic should be easier to prep. If your program doesn't have a formal program, find a mentor who will work with you in learning how to develop a course, how to prep, and how to deliver effectively. Also, this person can write you a good teaching letter on the job market.

Also, OP, if you are in Canada, I would advise getting experience teaching in both French and English if possible. The colleagues I know who are truly capable of bilingual teaching have had a number of interesting opportunities.         

[adel9216]

Some of the advice here seems a little bit R-1/2 or bust. I did something similar to the OP (after I was ABD, which was crucial), during the summer session. Indeed, over the course of my program I offered four different courses as instructor of record and this (both lower level and upper level) was essential for being competitive for LAC and directional jobs, which are a big part of the market. My current LAC wouldn't consider someone without this as a minimum level. Some of the amount you should teach perhaps depends on your aspirations. If you goal is r1 or prestigious postdoc, then spending more time on research is a reasonable choice, but we should be clear that such a choice makes it very hard to get on the TT at a more teaching focused place (excluding SLACs that have R1 research goals) without doing something post PHD to gain more experience.

I certainly agree that you need to be able to make good progress on the dissertation. But teaching 1 class shouldn't undermine this. Of course, this should ideally be done in an environment where the ABD student is mentored both on how to teach and how to prep effectively. I think the utility of opportunities to teach depends on if it is "here are your 80 students, good luck" or "here is the program we've organized to help prepare you to develop your own course and to be effective in the classroom." If done properly, a course on someone's research topic should be easier to prep. If your program doesn't have a formal program, find a mentor who will work with you in learning how to develop a course, how to prep, and how to deliver effectively. Also, this person can write you a good teaching letter on the job market.

Also, OP, if you are in Canada, I would advise getting experience teaching in both French and English if possible. The colleagues I know who are truly capable of bilingual teaching have had a number of interesting opportunities.         

Hello, I am fully bilingual (French-English) :)