Professional Activities

Teaching is an integral part of doing science. For those looking to develop their teaching skills, there are a lot of resources available.

UMD TLTC

UMD's Teaching and Learning Transformation Center (TLTC) offers many great resources, including:

• Frequent workshops on specific teaching topics, along with all of the past workshop materials and some recordings

• A great deal of advice on specific aspects of teaching

• The University Learning and Teaching Program, a certification program for grad students wanting to more purposefully reflect and learn about teaching

  • Level 1 for this program is a low time-commitment way to carve out time to engage with evidence-based teaching practices and reflect on your own goals as a teacher!

Physics Teaching Seminar

The UMD physics department is fortunate to have a physics education research group that teaches a seminar semi-regularly, usually coded PHYS889Q and typically 1 or 2 credits. See the course schedule or email the group for more information.

The UMD Physics department has several student organizations, some involving undergrads as well as grad students and some only involving grad students. These include:

• GradComm (the Graduate Committee): has broad responsibilities in the department, but schedules events, acts as a liaison to senior members of the department, and generally works to improve the lives of graduate students

• Mental Health Task Force (MHTF): focuses on mental health for graduate students in the department with a mix of analytics (surveys and data analysis), event planning, and general advocacy work

• Physicists of Underrepresented Genders (PUGs---formerly Women in Physics): works to make our department more inclusive and supportive of students from underrepresented genders, both graduate and undergraduate. Organizes a successful mentorship program every year

• Graduate Student Government (GSG): involves grad students from across UMD to undertake university-wide efforts to improve the lives of graduate students

• Graduate Resources Advancing Diversity with Maryland Astronomy and Physics (GRAD-MAP): provides research and networking experience to undergraduate students from underrepresented backgrounds with less access to research opportunities (e.g., students studying at small institutions, community colleges, etc.)

You can see the department website for more information.

Consider the informal trainings on a variety of topics below.

Teaching: see the Teaching category above

Mentorship

• Join GradComm's mentorship program! They typically recruit mentors before the beginning of the academic year. Contact them at phys-gradcomm-email@umd.edu and look out for their emails.

• The UMD Graduate School has a number of resources, including

  • • Publications like a workshop summary on different aspects of good mentoring and seminar materials to introduce mentoring

• STEM mentoring information, tools, and resources from the National Academy of Sciences

• Online self-paced courses offered through the University of Minnesota (available to external people)

• Pathways to Science Mentoring Manual, with a specific section on mentoring for graduate students

• TED Talks on Mentoring

Oral and Written Communication Skills

• Consider participating in UMD's Three-Minute Thesis competition, where you present your research to laypeople in three minutes. Find info here.

• Presenting Science from UC-San Francisco's Office of Career Services

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

• Pathways to Science's Diversity Reference Library

More to come.

Coming soon!