As a partnership between the University of Tulsa Public Schools, the Teachers Institute for Tulsa (TIFT) benefits both institutions. While our primary function is to prepare and empower K12 teachers in Tulsa Public Schools, we offer a host of benefits to the university community, in particular faculty members who participate as seminar leaders.
University of Tulsa (TU) faculty who lead seminars work alongside K12 teachers (called “Fellows”), helping them draft, develop, and research for their curriculum units. In doing so, they help to translate their expertise into suitable units for K12 students in the Tulsa community. Professors at TU who have participated in the program report that this type of broader impact is difficult to have beyond their scholarly communities and the walls of the university. Our program enables TU professors to connect their academic work with the pedagogical expertise of TPS teachers, in turn reaching several classrooms and hundreds of students across the district.
Not only does TIFT allow professors to have a broader impact with their scholarship, they gain knowledge of teaching strategies as they work with Fellows. This aspect of the program captures the collegiality that we emphasize. Professionals come together to bring their expertise to bear on improving the quality of instruction offered to local students. Seminar leaders share content-area expertise, while Fellows share pedagogical expertise. Faculty members who lead TIFT seminars often learn new techniques and strategies for leading active-learning classrooms and creative, often interdisciplinary ways of thinking about student work. Ultimately, TU faculty often leave the TIFT program having become a better teacher themselves, with new ideas about how they can lead classrooms.
Finally, TIFT is one of many programs at TU that are designed to help us become the heart of Tulsa. By investing TU faculty’s time and resources into public school teachers, we are able to impact over a thousand TPS students through the teachers in our program. And as new cohorts of Fellows go through the program and old teachers continue to use the curriculum they create, the impact of TIFT grows with each iteration. We’re proud of the work we do with TPS teachers and we’re excited to see how the program inspires more collaboration and connection between TU and the larger Tulsa community of which we are a part.
Current and Former Seminar Leaders at TU
- Miriam Belmaker, Associate Professor of Anthropology
- Denise Dutton, Applied Associate Professor of Philosophy
- Lara Foley, Associate Professor of Sociology
- Quraysh Ali Lansana, Visiting Associate Professor of English and Creative Writing
- Sean Latham, Pauline McFarlin Walter Chair in English and Comparative Literature
- Gabriel LeBlanc, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry
- Robert B. Pickering, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology
- Laura Stevens, Chapman Professor of English
- Bruce D. Willis, Professor of Spanish and Comparative Literature
- Jan Wilson, Wellspring Professor of History and Women and Gender Studies