Faculty Bulldog Days Celebrate Teaching and Learning at Yale
Jeff Hobbs, Writing Narrative Nonfiction and Journalism
Faculty Bulldog Days is a celebrated Yale tradition that invites instructors across campus to celebrate teaching while learning from one another. Over the course of one week, Yale faculty, instructors, and staff are offered the unique opportunity to become students again – visiting open classes, exploring new disciplines, and gathering ideas they can bring back to their own teaching. Organized by the Poorvu Center since 2015, this annual event draws more than 200 instructors each year, both as classroom hosts and visitors.
This past spring, 132 faculty and staff visited 81 open classrooms across a range of disciplines, including STEM, the social sciences, humanities and interdisciplinary fields. From Artificial Intelligence, Ethics, & Society and Orbital Mechanics and Mission Design to Writing Humor and Structures of Feeling in 21st Century Texts, each class offered a glimpse into the excellent teaching that happens every day at Yale.
Medical Device Design & Innovation class at ConMed (Daniel Wiznia)
“It was nice to get introduced to a totally different discipline,” said Anikka Jordan, a first-year doctoral student in neuroscience who attended the Introduction to Media course. “As a neuro student, [Introduction to Media] was completely outside of my typical area of expertise.”
Some courses even extended beyond campus walls, offering enrolled students an opportunity to experience their fields outside the Yale environment. Daniel Wiznia’s Medical Device Design & Innovation class, for example, traveled to ConMed in New Haven to see firsthand how the company’s pioneering medical equipment is making a difference in the lives of patients around the world.
Marla Geha, Orbital Mechanics & Mission Design
“It was great to see students interact with a company outside of Yale,” explains Devon Barker, an Assistant Director in the Poorvu Center who attended Wiznia’s class. “Working together as a class, the students really had a chance to see what they could do next. And they asked really exciting questions.”
While Faculty Bulldog Days allows participants to explore areas outside of their chosen disciplines, it is also an opportunity to showcase our community’s extraordinary expertise and learn from one another.
Structures of Feeling in 21st Century Texts (Alfred Guy)
“I would definitely do Faculty Bulldog Days again,” explained Lizzy Nand, who earned a PhD in microbiology from Yale. “There’s so much potential for learning from one another as teachers, and it is so important to add that collaborative learning element, especially as teachers, if we are going to continue to be excellent teachers.”
Faculty Bulldog Days will return this fall, October 5-9. Registration is now open, and details are available on the Poorvu Center website.