The Sheridan Center provides a wide variety of programs, consulting services, and resources designed to help you succeed in graduate school and beyond. Sheridan can help you develop and refine your teaching, writing, and communication skills. The Sheridan Center’s offerings for graduate students include:

• Transcripted Teaching Certificate programs
• Online, self-paced programs on Teaching Essentials for Graduate TAs and creating teaching statements
• Workshops on a variety of teaching topics
• Individual consultations on pedagogy, digital teaching, course design, and documenting your teaching 
• Teaching observations
• Membership in the CIRTL Network, including the ability to do a Teaching-as-Research project
• Consultations and workshops on graduate writing
• Dissertation writing support, including week-long Dissertation Retreats and weekly writing groups
• English Language Support pre-orientation, workshops and consultations 
• Online teaching resources 
• Resource library of books, journals, and digital media about teaching.

The Sheridan Center recommends completing the Sheridan Teaching Seminar Certificate during the first or second year of a doctoral program.

A collaborative program involving the Graduate School and Wheaton College, the Brown-Wheaton Faculty Fellows Program offers a semester-long teaching fellowship for qualified students. During their appointments at Wheaton, graduate students are responsible for all aspects of teaching a course. They work with a faculty mentor at Wheaton and are remunerated at the same stipend level as Brown teaching assistants.

Wheaton is a selective, coeducational liberal arts college of 120 full-time faculty and 1,500 students. Located in Norton, Massachusetts, Wheaton has a national reputation for excellence in teaching. The campus, just eighteen miles from Brown, provides a collegial and congenial atmosphere in which Brown graduate students can gain mentored teaching experience in a liberal arts college setting.

Learn about the Brown/Wheaton program

The Division recruits graduate students, post-docs, faculty, and staff to teach in a variety of credit-bearing and non-credit, on-campus, online and site-specific academic programs and courses to pre-college and undergraduate students. These paid teaching positions provide graduate students with opportunities to design and teach their own courses, an invaluable experience as they prepare for their future work, whether in teaching or in other fields. Non-credit courses are offered in sessions between one to six weeks, in an intensive format for high school students. The full range of Brown's academic disciplines are represented among the many pre-college programs and courses offered, exposing pre-college students to the rich intellectual resources of the University. In the University's Summer and Winter Sessions, the undergraduate curriculum is extended into the summer and winter months, offering advanced graduate students a significant teaching experience and the opportunity to propose  courses taught to undergraduates and, in the summer, a small number of high school students.

To teach in one of the pre-college programs, graduate students must be beyond their first year of study, be making satisfactory progress toward degree completion, have the endorsement of their Director of Graduate Study and/or Principal Investigator, teach a topic from their home department/discipline, discussed their teaching plan with the Graduate School, have some teaching or TA experience and/or have participated in the Sheridan Center’s Teaching Certificate programs or workshops. Many of these courses also need TA support, which is also an excellent way to prepare for future teaching. 

Similar to teaching in pre-college programs, graduate students interested in proposing a Winter or Summer Session course must be in advanced standing, receive approval from their dissertation advisor, their program’s Director of Graduate Studies, and the Graduate School. The relevant academic department chair's approval may also be requested. In addition, graduate students should have some teaching and TA experience. Participation in the Sheridan Center’s Teaching Certificate programs or workshops may be requested as part of the course proposal process. Courses proposed by graduate students must be discussed (before submitting a proposal) with the relevant academic department chair to ensure alignment with academic year course planning.