Education
FSU Honors Program introduces new Graduate Teaching Fellowship
The University Honors Program has launched a new Graduate Teaching Fellowship, which allows advanced graduate students to design and teach unique honors courses.
The fellowship, the first of its kind, allows doctoral students chosen through a competitive process to design and teach original interdisciplinary Honors Discovery Courses and receive structured faculty mentorship that helps their professional development.
“There are so many incredible graduate students at FSU who are passionate about developing as both researchers and educators as they prepare to enter the increasingly competitive academic job market,” said Michael Furman, associate director of the FSU Honors Program. “We are proud to give them the opportunity to fulfill their potential in the classroom while continuing to provide our honors students with unique courses that enrich their academic experience.”
“There are so many incredible graduate students at FSU who are passionate about developing as both researchers and educators as they prepare to enter the increasingly competitive academic job market. We are proud to give them the opportunity to fulfill their potential in the classroom while continuing to provide our honors students with unique courses that enrich their academic experience.”
– Michael Furman, associate director of the FSU Honors Program
After a competitive application process that started last fall, the inaugural cohort of selected doctoral students worked under Furman’s guidance to develop specialized courses from scratch, introducing niche fields to the honors curriculum and expanding offerings for students.
Now, those students, Laura Anthony, Sarah Bliss, Harrison Miller and Cole Patoine, are in honors classrooms, teaching those self-designed courses, which explore science communication, books as material goods, identity performance in the modern digital age and trending nutritional topics.
“I didn’t expect to develop my own course until much later in my career, so the opportunity to do so as a Ph.D. candidate is invaluable,” said Anthony, who is teaching Telling Stories with Science: Communicating Science to Any Audience. “Creating an interdisciplinary course that spans several undergraduate majors was an exciting prospect.”
Graduate teaching fellow Patoine said the courses inspire students to explore new academic areas that anyone can jump in and learn, no subject-based knowledge required.
“[The courses] let students get the opportunity to expose themselves to a new area they may not be familiar with while taking on little risk since the courses are taught in a way that allows anyone from any knowledge background to jump right in,” Patoine said.
He designed the course called “Nutrition in the Age of Misinformation: Evidence, Mechanisms, and Modern Health Trends,” which helps students objectively evaluate the widespread and often biased nutrition advice that is common to encounter in everyday life.
“What I want students to leave with isn’t a list of correct answers, because those change,” Patoine said. “It’s the ability to look at research through an objective lens and know what it can and cannot prove and then notice when a headline has claimed more than the research earned. That skill doesn’t stay in nutrition. It follows them into medicine, into policy, into whatever they read tomorrow.”
With each new cohort of fellows, honors students will have new course subjects to choose from. Credit earned from enrolling in an Honors Discovery Course can be applied toward the 13 credit-hour minimum of honors coursework required to complete FSU’s Honors Program.
The FSU Honors Program was ranked No. 1 in Florida by the college ranking publication College Transitions. The program fosters a tight-knit community of highly motivated and intellectually curious students who are committed to learning and growth. The program offers a tailored experience with specially designed coursework, dedicating advising, priority registration and specific Honors residence halls.
“For graduate students, the fellowship offers a competitive advantage in the academic job market,” Furman said. “It grants doctoral candidates the intellectual space to reflect and further refine their teaching philosophy while building a concrete example of that philosophy in practice.”
Applications for the next cohort of the Graduate Teaching Fellowship are open until Oct. 1. Students interested in the program, both undergraduate and graduate, can learn more about the program and the courses available via the University Honors Program website.
