By Stephanie Rohdieck, Associate Director of UCAT

Working in UCAT has been a wonderful experience and I am in awe at how much we’ve grown and accomplished in the 14 years since I first began here. Back then we had a handful of staff members and one graduate student working with the entire university. Today, I am lucky to have many more colleagues, and together we have been able to reach many more teachers at Ohio State.

One reason we can work with more people is because of the assistance we get from our Graduate Consultants (GCs). One of the best parts about my job is when I hire, train, and work with this group of incredibly talented graduate students. Our GCs play important roles in UCAT. Among their many duties are to help us write web and print material on teaching, do research on our programs, run the STAR group for new TAs, facilitate campus-wide and departmental workshops on teaching topics, and consult with TAs on their teaching.

As graduate consultants, they work with GATA nominees and hopeful future faculty on their portfolios, talk with TAs about their course design, assignments, and teaching style, and gather feedback on a TA’s teaching through classroom observation and Small Group Instructional Diagnoses (SGID). GCs come from a variety of disciplines on campus and all have lots of teaching experience. Together they have over 25 years of college teaching experience! Before they consult with TAs on their own, they go through a rigorous training process that takes about a year. They observe the professional staff, co-consult with them, receive constructive feedback from them, and then finally are observed doing their own consultations. UCAT takes great pride in both our training process and the quality of service teachers receive from our GCs. Two of our GCs this year are Doctoral Interns who receive additional training and mentoring as they prepare to enter the career path as Educational Developers.

We hope you get a chance to meet and work with our wonderful GCs. If you ever have any questions about our GCs or UCAT in general, please don’t hesitate to contact me at rohdieck.1@osu.edu.

Lindsay Bernhagen

Lindsay is one of two doctoral interns at UCAT, where she has been working since January 2011. She is also a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Comparative Studies, where  she served as the Graduate Teaching Fellow and for which she teaches sundry general education courses in American studies. Her research focuses on the ways people use music to amplify intimacy, with particular attention paid to gendered contexts for musical experience.

Elizabeth Brewer

Elizabeth Brewer is a Ph.D. candidate in the English Department, specializing in Rhetoric, Composition, and Literacy Studies and in Disability Studies. She began working as a Graduate Consultant at UCAT in the Spring semester of 2013. Her research focuses on rhetorics of psychiatric difference and distress. Elizabeth teaches courses in composition and disability studies, and she is interested in universal design and accessibility. Elizabeth is also the current Graduate Teaching Fellow for her department.

Amy Collins-Warfield

Amy started working at UCAT in the fall of 2012. She is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Educational Studies, where she served as the Graduate Teaching Fellow.

Claudia Cornejo Happel

Claudia is a graduate student from the department of Spanish and Portuguese. She has participated in the departmental orientation for new GTAs since 2010, and as a Graduate Teaching Fellow,  has organized and facilitated professional development events for her peers. Claudia started working with UCAT in fall 2012 where she is now the newest Doctoral Intern.

Tim Jensen

Tim has been working as a graduate consultant at UCAT since June 2012.  He is a Ph.D. candidate in the English department, where he teaches and researches rhetorical theory.

Michael Murphy

Michael started working at UCAT as a graduate consultant in January 2013.  He is a Ph.D. candidate in the department of Comparative Studies, where he has taught a number of different courses, and where he explores how certain American and Austrian modernist novels represent and enact principles of American Pragmatism developed by William James. Prior to working at UCAT, Michael served as the graduate teaching fellow in his home department.