The Inclusive Excellence in College Teaching Certificate is offered by the Center for Academic & Faculty Excellence. Students aspiring to teach in formal academic contexts, or whose work will take them into consulting or other leadership work that engages and leads minds will benefit from the certificate.The certificate is offered to all enrolled students at CGU. Alumni can also earn the certificate and take the courses. See the Registrar’s alumni enrollment page and contact the Registrar’s office at Student.Records@cgu.edu with enrollment questions.
The certificate helps you develop the following knowledge and skills:
- Teaching is a leadership process that integrates excellence, ethics, and engagement to include and support all learners toward success.
- Inclusive pedagogy that embraces and integrates diversity in all its forms (culture/ethnicity, nationality, age, language, gender, sexual orientation, abilities/disabilities, learning cultures, life experiences).
- A design approach for integrating inclusive pedagogy as part of the mission of higher education to prepare a diverse student body for the emerging world.
- An understanding of how and why learners engage and disengage with learning.
- How to select and design pedagogical strategies and tools, including in digital form, to support learning engagement and success.
- How to design courses that are inclusive and engage students in active learning to master both course content and critical human capacity skills for the 21st century.
- A critical awareness of yourself as a teacher-scholar and leader that you can articulate in a teaching philosophy and diversity statement.
- How to begin and maintain a reflective practice so that as an educator and leader you are an agile, ethical, and lifelong learner.
Certificate Outcomes:
After completing the certificate students will be able to:
- Think reflexively in supporting your beliefs, values, and goals at disciplinary and personal levels as a future-oriented, inclusive, and agile educator.
- Analyze and address issues in legacy systems in education that block, marginalize, and oppress learning and learners in current and emerging contexts
- Apply active learning and design thinking principles in designing, observing, and facilitating inclusive, equity-minded, and future-focused learning.
- Integrate learning science and transformative pedagogical principles that disrupt learning barriers and promote engagement and active learning in teaching design and learning facilitation.
- Collaborate within and across disciplines to develop transdisciplinary principles for ethical, future-focused teaching and learning.
Certificate Courses:
The Inclusive Excellence in College Teaching Certificate requires successful completion of two courses, “TNDY 430: Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education” and “CAFE 530: Inclusive Excellence: Pathways to the College Teaching Certificate” (previously titled: Teaching Practicum and Portfolio). Each course and the certificate completion are recorded on your transcript.
TNDY 430: Transdisciplinary Changemakers. Justice-Centered Frameworks for Education
4 units, regular tuition cost
Course Description: This course invites you on a transformative journey to develop the mindsets to become an ethical, agile leader of learning. We present teaching as a transdisciplinary and inclusive future-focused endeavor for positive learning and development in diverse settings, within and beyond the classroom. In doing so, we engage with the question of how we can effectively and ethically respond to increasingly complex global and institutional contexts in preparing learners holistically for their futures. Working collaboratively in multidisciplinary teams, we will use systems, complexity, and design thinking frameworks to explore student identities and diversity in our classrooms, the changing global paradigms that shift our teaching missions and methods, and what learning sciences and the ethics of education tell us about engagement and motivation. We will also draw from key frameworks such as Universal Design for Learning (UDL) and Active Learning in this exploration. We will work reflexively using a Portfolio-based approach to explore and document our own assumptions, values, and beliefs about education and how these transform in the light of our discoveries about ethical, agile teaching. Our goal will be to co-create pedagogical principles that transcend disciplinary teaching and learning cultures toward agile, ethical leadership of learning in our diverse educational and work contexts. To earn the Inclusive Excellence in College Teaching Certificate, you must also complete the second course.
CAFE 530: Inclusive Excellence: Pathways to the College Teaching Certificate
(Previously titled: Teaching Practicum and Portfolio)
2 units, regular tuition
Course Description: This class structures your progress through the teaching practicum and completion of all the teaching portfolio items for the Inclusive Excellence in College Teaching Certificate. In this course, you will apply the principles and frameworks from first into practice. The class focuses on coaching and a structured assignment submission and feedback process. Using the work that you began in the first course, you will complete your sample course design and syllabus. In addition, you will develop a sample learning management system course and a teacher-scholar website. The course culminates in a final integrated reflection of your entire journey toward becoming an inclusive, future-focused educator.
If you cannot take on the full demands of the certificate, you can build your own portfolio of teaching tools and resources, course syllabi, and useful documents like a sample course or teaching philosophy statement for your job search through our consulting and appointment service. You can also just attend TNDY 430 for professional development without planning to take the second class or earning the certificate.