FSI Online Teaching Fellow

FSI Online Teaching Fellows: Ways of Knowing, Freshman Scholars Institute

Summer 2023

 

The Freshman Scholars Institute (FSI) is an intensive seven-week summer program for invited incoming first-year students, hosted by Princeton’s Emma Bloomberg Center for Access and Opportunity. In 2023, in response to incoming students’ different needs, FSI will be offered both in-person and online. 

 

FSI Online offers a cohort of entering Princeton students the chance to experience the intellectual, co-curricular, and social life at college prior to the beginning of the fall semester. Participating students are a diverse and motivated group of first-generation and/or low-income scholars who have been invited to the online program in order to nurture their demonstrated potential as scholars and leaders. During the program, Freshman Scholars have the opportunity to immerse themselves in Princeton’s intellectually vibrant culture through a seminar-style course and to engage with their fellow scholars in a variety of co-curricular, community-building activities. By experiencing early the many resources that Princeton has to offer, Freshman Scholars have the chance to prepare themselves to be future campus leaders and peer mentors. 

 

Overview of Position

Online Teaching Fellows for FSI Online come from a range of disciplines to teach “Ways of Knowing” (WOK), an innovative, interdisciplinary critical thinking, reading, and writing course. Under the guidance of the Associate Director and the Academic Coordinator, Online Teaching Fellows will work closely with their colleagues to provide students with mentorship and to teach them the skills necessary to prepare them to be young scholars at Princeton. 

 

Responsibilities include:

 

  • Attending FSI Online Faculty Orientation in late May/early June. (dates TBD)
  • Participating in weekly all-faculty planning and check-in sessions during the semester that ensure fair and common standards across the curriculum and provide consistent student experience across sections. (1 hour/week)
  • Reading and watching all asynchronous material for each class week prior to each week’s all-faculty planning meeting, and preparing materials for precept. (2-3 hours/week)
  • Facilitating two 80 minute Precept sessions per week, where students discuss course materials and begin working on their writing assignments. (3 hours/week)
  • Holding weekly 1-on-1 conferences with students to discuss their ideas and works-in-progress. (4-5 hours/week)
  • Offering feedback on student work, including grades. (2-3 hours/week) 

 

FSI Online classes begin on July 10th and end on August 18th, with final project presentations taking place on or around August 21st. WOK sections will meet throughout each week, but not all at the same time. To help account for FSI Online students’ time zone differences, classes will be scheduled throughout the day, possibly including both morning and evening sections, so as not to unduly burden students who are far from Eastern Standard Time.

 

Online Teaching Fellows are compensated based on their status. Those with a Ph.D. receive $6,300 per precept section (up to 2 sections). Graduate students can teach 1 section and will receive $5,250 for 1 section. All Online Teaching Fellows will also receive a one-time $750 per person for course development.


 

Instructions for Applying:

All applicants, new and experienced, will be interviewed as part of the hiring process. To apply, please send the following materials to Dr. Andy Hakim ([email protected]), copying Dr. Marina Fedosik ([email protected]) and Christy Kahler ([email protected]) by Monday, March 20th.

 

•  CV and 

•  Cover Letter (~1½ pages). This letter should describe your interest in the role, and experience with access and opportunity work. 

 

Please feel free to direct questions to Dr. Hakim. 


 

WOK Course Description

Ways of Knowing (HUM 250/WRI 250) is an immersive seminar that empowers first-year students to become active producers of knowledge in an academic community by introducing them to scholarly ways of thinking, reading, and writing across the University. In this course, students analyze and engage a variety of multidisciplinary and multi-generic texts that raise questions about power, institutions, and identity. In Summer 2023, Ways of Knowing will focus on the constellating theme of “Knowledge and Power,” examining texts that all stage inquiries into the way that knowledge is produced, manipulated, disseminated, and consumed. Through this exploration, students will gain a critical understanding of the diverse—and intersecting—manners that scholars ask questions and generate knowledge. 

 

A core value of a Princeton education is that students develop the ability to craft clear, convincing, and persuasive arguments based on their own original analysis, allowing them to emerge as independent thinkers situated in a community of scholars. The learning goals of Ways of Knowing lay the groundwork for this ambition in three crucial ways. First, students develop strategies for and experience with effective and critical reading. Students learn to purposely read canonical and non-canonical scholarship from across the disciplines. In so doing, they learn how to process a large quantity of texts and how to think analytically about those sources. Second, students apply these critical reading skills to place diverse texts in conversation with one another, to analyze the contours of this conversation, and to carve out their own intellectual space within it. Finally, WOK establishes a foundation for students to become active leaders in the university community; instructors emphasize the habits of good engagement and collaboration upon which the University thrives. Students will gain experience in sharing and scrutinizing their ideas in a seminar environment as well as providing thoughtful feedback to others through active listening skills. Throughout the summer, students cultivate habits of reflection about their future intellectual work at Princeton and beyond.

 

Weekly Schedule & Course Elements

Each week, students will engage in the following slate of course elements, which are a mix of synchronous and asynchronous components. 

 

  1. Canvas Material (Asynchronous): Students will be expected to read and respond to course module content and readings on the Canvas platform throughout the course as preparation for lectures, colloquium, and precept. (Approximately 2-3 hours/week)
  2. Lectures (Asynchronous): Recorded lectures will be offered two times per week. 
  3. Monday: The first lecture will teach students a particular analytic skill through a recorded “precept-style” conversation about the week's readings. 
  4. Thursday: The second asynchronous lecture will teach students how to approach the week’s writing assignment, breaking down the prompt and reinforcing applicable skills. 
  5. Colloquium (Synchronous): 
    1. Wednesday: All student participants are expected to virtually attend a whole-course “colloquium” on Wednesdays, in which faculty members stage a discussion about the course readings, while students ask questions and participate in the conversation via chat. (1 hr)
  6. Conferences (Synchronous): Students and Teaching Fellows will meet 1-on-1 each week to discuss students’ ideas for assignments. (~20-30 min per student)
  7. Precept (Synchronous): Students will meet synchronously twice each week with Teaching Fellows (graduate students or Princeton lecturers).
    1. Tuesday: In the first weekly precept, they’ll engage in their own small group discussion on the course readings and their application to our contemporary social context. (80 min)
    2. Friday: In the second weekly precept, they’ll begin work on their writing assignment. With their teaching fellow, the students will discuss what they learned in Thursday’s “writing prompt” lecture. Then, they will assess sample essays and begin drafting exercises. Teaching fellows will provide guidance and feedback.  (80 min)
  8. Writing Assignment (Asynchronous): Each week concludes with a writing assignment, which scale in complexity and length, building and extending on the intellectual work from the week before. Students begin by analyzing texts, reading “with and against the grain,” before composing a substantive dialogue between scholars. The second half of the course is grounded in a draft and revision of a major theoretical argument drawing on course texts. The final assignment is a creative project, where students reflect on a key theoretical idea and translate it into a register appropriate for a particular community of their choice.