Special opportunities for career preparation & exploration

We strongly encourage all of our graduate students who may be interested in an academic career to gain teaching experience in both formal and informal settings. We offer practical, carefully supervised teaching experience as a Graduate Teaching Assistant (GTA) in laboratory and discussion sections, with extensive training and support.

A formal course elective, College Science Teaching, is designed for graduate students in the sciences or science education. Led by Professor Sandra Abell (Biological Sciences and Science Education, and Director of the MU Southwestern Bell Science Education Center), participants develop a deeper understanding of what it means to learn science and set goals for science learning, a repertoire of interactive teaching strategies, and a personal teaching philosophy.

GTA Workshop participants In our elective Teaching Practicum: GTA Workshop, new GTAs develop and polish their theoretical and practical teaching skills as they explore the research literature on the teaching-learning process and then immediately incorporate that knowledge in practice in their classroom.

The MU Preparing Future Faculty (PFF) initiative is modeled on the national PFF program with activities ranging from the PFF Seminar to an optional full Minor in College Teaching.

Fifteen of our graduate students have organized Life Sciences Graduate Student Outreach, to connect graduate students from MU with classrooms in local public schools and show K-12 students that science is really fun and how interesting scientific questions are asked and answered. Teachers can select from a list of graduate students who are available to visit with their students to talk about their own research areas and the excitement of their own scientific discoveries. All presentations are highly interactive and provide the K-12 students multiple hands-on activities and opportunities to experience the excitement of discovery of their own. The program was designed in close collaboration with the MU Science Education Center, and the Center provides workshop activities to prepare our graduate students for their venture into the public schools.