Dear Colleagues,  

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) welcomes you to a new academic year!  Our mission is to provide professional development opportunities that foster faculty and student success in teaching and learning through learner-centered, reflective, and collaborative practices with faculty members, staff, and students at UTRGV and beyond.   

If you are interested in learning about our professional development highlights for the academic year 2024-2025, please review the attached document. Our highlights represent learning moments and future growth. We actively evaluate this data to inform future opportunities as we aim to create a collaborative and reflective space for all instructors and students. Additionally, as part of our ongoing assessment efforts, we appreciate learning how CTE Teaching Conversations and other professional development initiatives have impacted your teaching and learning practices as well as how we can continue to support you. Please consider submitting your reflections here.  

We would like to share the following teaching resources:  

• September Teaching Conversations: Please visit our CTE Events Resource page to learn more about the professional development teaching conversations that will be offered this month.
• TRICC: We invite you to support our Teaching and Research Integration in the Classroom and Community (TRICC) Speaker Series in partnership with the Division of Research this semester as our colleagues share their teaching and research intersections projects. If you are interested in nominating a colleague or yourself to serve as a speaker, please visit this page to learn more. 
• SoTL: In an effort to highlight scholarly research by UTRGV faculty members, we have partnered with the University Library to develop a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Repository. The intention of the repository is to serve as a reference for scholarly publications on teaching and learning, inspire future scholarly research, and inform evidence-based, growth-oriented teaching and learning practices across disciplines. If you would like to highlight your scholarly publications on teaching and learning here and/or if you wish to remove any scholarly publications, please send us an email to cte@utrgv.edu.
• UTRGV ADT: This past year the UTRGV Academy of Distinguished Teachers members in collaboration with the CTE facilitated a series of sessions on peer observations of teaching, which resulted in the design of a space intended to pair faculty members with each other to conduct a mutual peer observation of teaching. If you are interested in collaborating with a colleague, please complete this form and we are happy to help arrange a mutual pairing. For additional resources on peer observation of teaching, please visit this page.
• Service-Learning Course Designations: If you are planning a community engagement or service-learning opportunity for your students, please consider designating your course as a service-learning. Please visit this page to learn more. You can also write to cte@utrgv.edu and/or to the Office of Engaged Scholarship and Learning at engaged@utrgv.edu.
• B3 Course Designations: Faculty members who are interested in teaching their course(s) bilingually, in Spanish or with contextualized sociolinguistic practices (CSP) are welcome to learn more and apply for the course designations on the B3 Course Designation website. These course designations meet the requirements of the B3 Scholar Seal, an institutional honor undergraduate students may earn upon graduation. If you have any questions, reach out to bilingualintegration@utrgv.edu
• UT System Webinar Series 25-26: The University of Texas System Educational Developers in collaboration with the UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers designed a monthly webinar series on “Educating for Impact: Building World-Ready Students,” which will take place on the second Thursday of each month. If you are interested in participating, please sign-up here.  

If you would like to collaborate with the CTE, please consider the following opportunities:  

• CTE Faculty Fellow: We are proud to announce a call for a CTE Faculty Fellow on Innovative Assignment Design in the context of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Large Language Models (LLMs). If you are interested in applying, please see the call for applications attached and submit your application to cte@utrgv.edu by Friday, September 26^th by 5:00p.m.
• Teaching Conversations: Informed by CTE session surveys, annual needs assessment survey, and summer focus groups, we identified specific areas of need related to teaching and learning. If you are interested in leading and facilitating a CTE Teaching Conversation, please submit your proposal via this form.
• SaLT HSI: If you are interested collaborating with trained student partners through our Students as Learners and Teachers at a Hispanic Serving Institution program (SaLT HSI), please consider learning more about the program and submit a feedback request via this link. You can also reach out to alyssa.cavazos@utrgv.edu to explore potential partnership ideas.

• SoTL FLC: I would like to express a heartfelt thank you to the College of Liberal Arts and the Robert C. Vackar College of Business and Entrepreneurship for their support of faculty members who participated in a pilot Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Faculty Learning Community this summer. We appreciate the opportunity to expand and enhance this program across the institution in the future. Please contact us at cte@utrgv.edu if you are interested in exploring potential partnerships in this area.
• New Partnerships: We are committed to fostering partnerships on professional development with centers, offices, programs, departments, and colleges across UTRGV and within our community. We look forward to continuing our partnerships and exploring new initiatives with you. Please send your ideas and inquiries to cte@utrgv.edu.      

Thank you for all you do to support UTRGV students by being a mentor who believes in them. I wish everyone a successful semester filled with learning-enriching and fulfilling teaching moments with your students and colleagues. Take care.

Kind regards,   

Alyssa

Dra. Alyssa Guadalupe Cavazos 

Professor, Writing Studies 

Department of Writing and Language Studies 

ELABS 270-A | alyssa.cavazos@utrgv.edu

Directora, Center for Teaching Excellence 

Co-founder & Director, SaLT HSI

Student Success 

Edinburg Campus | EEDUC. 1.525 | (956) 665.3763 

Brownsville Campus | BMAIN. 1.212B| (956) 882.7334  

cte@utrgv.edu  

Distinguished Teaching Professor 

Fellow, UT System Academy of Distinguished Teachers