Teaching is a collaborative act, and the Pedagogy Fellows Program is by definition a community of practice. Every year, approximately 34 experienced and creative graduate students from 28 departments and programs across the FAS come together at the Bok Center to support their peers in their roles as undergraduate teachers by leading pedagogy seminars and workshops, consulting with Teaching Fellows (TFs), and developing resources on teaching and professional development. Over the course of the year, we meet regularly...

The Lemann Program on Creativity and Entrepreneurship (LPCE) kicked off with a remarkable inaugural year, guided by the vision of the late Dr. Robert Lue. This new program, which was based at the Bok Center and inspired by Dr. Lue’s passion for making a positive social impact, reached hundreds of students this year.  We are grateful to the many Harvard students who hopped on board our new adventure in learning-and-doing. Our students’ creativity sparked promising venture teams and deepened our growing community. Students applied their ingenuity and academic knowledge to problems...

Teaching is an act of scholarly communication, whether you are explaining a concept, giving a lecture, or presenting your research on the Sanders Theatre stage. Whether you are working with a small, familiar group of students or a large public audience, what goals do you have? How can you structure your content, use your visuals and voice to support those goals, and keep the audience engaged in your ideas? Engaged communication is a core component of the Bok Center’s work; over the past year, we translated lessons of engaged communication to the Zoom setting, and adjusted how we coach...

The Bok Center’s Professional Communication Program for International Teachers and Scholars has always embraced community building as a key part of our work. PhD students are able to develop their communication skills when they learn, practice, and reflect in a supportive community of peers. This is especially true for international PhD students working to develop oral English proficiency, cross-cultural understanding, and teaching skills.

Before the pandemic, students would have participated in-person in...

We are excited to recognize and celebrate the 2020-21 Bok Teaching Certificate Recipients.

The Bok Teaching Certificate gives GSAS PhD students a tangible marker of their ongoing commitment to developing as teachers in higher education. Guided by three principles—Learn, Practice, Reflect—those who pursue the Certificate explore different topics in teaching and learning through departmental pedagogy courses and Bok Seminars, reflect on...

Is there any document that does more, and receives less recognition, than the humble course syllabus? By comparison with the other documents scholars produce—journal articles, dissertations, even letters of recommendation—our syllabi hardly rate; they’re often regarded as ephemeral, purely functional, designed to be read once or twice and then cast aside at the end of the semester. But in fact, the syllabus is so much more than a reference document.... Read more about Exploring Syllabus Design

When OEB50: Genetics and Genomics wrapped in Fall 2019, Professors Robin Hopkins and Dan Hartl, who co-teach the course, decided to incorporate a creative project that would allow students to engage course material in new ways in the next iteration. Little did they know that the next iteration of the course would be on Zoom!

When it came time to design the creative project, Hopkins and Hartl turned to OEB graduate student Grace Burgin, a Media and Design Fellow at the Bok Center’s Learning Lab. ...

Over the years, the Bok Center has worked with academics at various stages of their careers who are trying to summarize large scale research projects in short compressed bits of time, particularly through our support of Harvard Horizons and the Star Friedman Challenge. Supporting senior thesis writers is a perfect extension of this work, and in January, the Learning...

The Bok Center has been excited to collaborate with the Harvard Art Museums to bring ideas and strategies for teaching with museum collections to faculty and Teaching Fellows through a series of workshops and, for the first time this spring, a Bok Seminar. What started as an independent session run by Jen Thum (Assistant Director of Academic Engagement and Assistant Research Curator, Harvard...

Winter Teaching Week 2021, building upon our reimagined Fall Teaching Conference, featured an expanded slate of offerings tailored to the feedback we’ve received from graduate students since we started teaching remotely last March.... Read more about New Year, New Winter Teaching Week

In the wake of the attack on the nation’s Capitol last week, President Bacow wrote, “As members of a university community dedicated to truth, learning, research, debate, and service, we condemn ignorance and hatred, and stand in support of the rule of law and the role of knowledge.”

Regardless of your discipline, current events relate in some way to your teaching—whether this means...

Bok Center staff played an active role in last Friday’s annual Harvard Initiative for Learning and Teaching (HILT) conference on Championing Equitable Instruction and Inclusive Classrooms, a topic at the core of our work with instructors at all stages. In addition to our many staff who attended the conference as participants, two Bok staff members led breakout sessions. Pamela Pollock, Director of Professional Development, co-facilitated a breakout session on...

This summer was a busy time at the Bok Center. In the November-December issue of Harvard Magazine, the Bok Center’s Director of Pedagogy Adam Beaver describes some of the ways in which the Bok Center worked with the Office of Undergraduate Education to help faculty prepare to teach remotely this fall. One of the unique challenges facing fall term faculty—one that they did not face in the spring, when they pivoted online halfway through the semester—was the absence of in person meetings where faculty and students  could build rapport and community that could be sustained...

The Bok Center is excited to announce the launch of a new graduate fellow program, the Media and Design Fellows (MDFs)! As part of the Bok Center’s Learning Lab team, MDFs support innovative course development within the FAS, partnering with faculty and staff to design a variety of digital tools, course materials, and assignments for undergraduate courses and departments.

Across the disciplines, faculty and students are innovating by deploying richer media (3D models, high quality videos, well-designed infographics and illustrations) and richer interactions...

In the midst of a pandemic, many global challenges, and the prospect of a fully remote fall semester, the Bok Center spent the summer grappling with a multitude of questions: How should we prepare graduate student TFs to teach remotely? How could we reimagine our flagship event, the Fall Teaching Conference, usually a bustling two-day conference held in Sever Hall the week before classes start? How could we meet the needs of both new and experienced TFs facing an unprecedented semester?

Like instructors everywhere, we couldn’t take anything for granted. We...