Faculty engagement in co-curricular activities provides meaningful opportunities for faculty to interact and teach students beyond the typical classroom setting. Research demonstrates many academic and personal benefits to students who interact with faculty outside of the classroom. Some of these benefits include:
- A positive effect on cognitive and affective student development
- Strong student satisfaction in post-secondary education
- Greater student persistence due to enhance intellectual development
- Improved academic performance, gain an increased sense of self, and higher levels of confidence and motivation
Faculty who are considered to have the largest impact on students are those who most frequently interact with students outside the classroom. The opportunities on this page are ways in which faculty can engage with students in co-curricular activities. If there are any questions about the opportunities below please contact the email provided with the opportunity or sas.utm@utoronto.ca. If you would like to submit a university associated co-curricular activity for faculty engagement on this directory please click here.
Faculty Engagement Opportunities
Academic Based Opportunities
Academic based opportunities give faculty the opportunity to focus on students' academic skill development, sharing course specific content, and instructing outside of the traditional classroom setting with the goal of supporting academic student success.
Activity: Exam Jam
Department: Centre for Student Engagement and Health & Counselling Centre
Description: Exam Jam is a day long event that offers students intensive course-specific study sessions alongside opportunities to engage in activities that help manage stress, while establishing healthy and productive study habits.
Faculty Role: Participating faculty plan and conduct a 60-90 minute review session for their Fall/Winter course. Exam Jam takes place in December and in April. Participating students are enrolled in a participating faculty member’s course, however faculty have the option to combine sessions with other instructors teaching the same course. Faculty register for Exam Jam on CISS. Faculty can make a request to participate in Exam Jam up until the last week of September (for Fall Exam Jam), and up until the last week of January (for Winter Exam Jam)
Contact: examjam.utm@utoronto.ca or Minal Ghayur
Activity: Eagle Orientation
Department: Centre for Student Engagement
Description: EagleOrientation (formerly known as O-Week) provides new students with an introduction to life at UTM, and all the campus resources available to make transition into university a successful one.
Faculty Role: Participating faculty represent their particular department by providing a department-specific academic orientation session. Such session includes the delivery of a sample lecture to give students an opportunity to experience lecture-style learning, while facilitating conversations regarding campus-specific resources for academic support. EagleOrientation events take place in July, August and September in addition to January. Faculty may reach out up to a month prior to events to participate.
Contact: orientation.utm@utoronto.ca or Minal Ghayur
Activity: Global Classrooms
Department: International Education Centre
Description: Global Classrooms (GC) offer an accessible way to internationalize teaching and learning experiences by combining global and cross-cultural collaborations with technology, enabling faculty and instructors to work closely with peers abroad. GCs benefit students and organizations in participating regions by offering a cost-effective complement to student mobility, as well as creating pathways to international exchange and study abroad.
Faculty Role: Each Global Classroom is developed based on faculty interest and can range in time commitment based on the type of global learning opportunity you are looking to create. The International Education Centre can support you to add global learning into your course. More information is available on our website on the benefits of Global Learning and the services we can provide.
Contact: International Education Centre
Program Name: Intercultural Learning & Development in the Classroom
Department: International Education Centre
Description: Intercultural Learning & Development in the Classroom rejects monocultural approaches to learning and instead encourages students to consider learning from global and intercultural perspectives. This can be achieved by considering issues and topics from a variety of perspectives and creating dynamics for diversity of opinions in the classroom.
Faculty Role: Intercultural Learning in the Classroom opportunities are developed based on faculty interest and can take shape of a variety of methods. For example: designing assessments that recognize and validate cultural differences, creating experiential opportunities for cultural interaction among students, including global issues in debates/videos/essay topics/etc. The International Education Centre can support you in adding Intercultural Fluency elements into a pre-existing course or support Intercultural Fluency as you develop a new course through customizable intercultural trainings and/or the Intercultural Development Inventory.
Contact: International Education Centre
Experience Based Opportunities
Experience based opportunities invite faculty to actively participate in an event, project, or activity to interact with students, share interests and build a campus community in a fun and interactive setting.
Activity: Social Innovation Projects
Department: Centre of Student Engagement
Description: The Social Innovation Project (SIP) is a 16-week community engaged learning opportunity that has groups of student volunteers working collaboratively with local not-for-profit organizations that have identified a challenge, issue, or opportunity within their organization that they would like to explore finding a solution. UTM student teams will work to develop and implement a project to meet the needs of the organization. The group of student volunteers will present the final project to the organization and UTM community.
Faculty Role: Faculty signing up to be a mentor to a specific project would be a valuable assist to give the student group an additional resource and connection to the faculty members passions and/or research. Students meet once a week, and we expect faculty mentors to check in with the groups at least 3 times per academic year or 3 times per academic term for research projects.
The program has two streams: Project (5-8 students), or Research (2-3 students).
We also would like faculty mentors to join us for a meeting in early November to overview the project proposals and make suggestions to each team.
Contact: engage.utm@utoronto.ca or Alysha Ferguson
Activity: Engaging Faculty Events (EFE)
Department: Centre for Student Engagement
Description: EFEs are opportunities for out-of-classroom interactions between students and faculty that allow for meaningful relationships to develop in areas of mutual academic interest.
Faculty Role: EFEs take place at varied times throughout the academic year; EFEs run for approximately 2hrs in duration. Open to all students; however, heavily marketed to first-year students enrolled in hosting faculty member’s discipline
Contact: engage.utm@utoronto.ca or Minal Ghayur
Activity: Faculty Field Trips
Department: Student Housing and Residence Life
Description: Faculty Field Trips (FFTs) aim to connect students participating in a Living Learning Community (LLC) and their professors outside the classroom. Faculty members take part in various programs which provides students a casual and fun venue to get to know faculty. This allows for students to develop connections, and have opportunities for academic, personal and professional growth.
Faculty Role: We ask faculty if they are excited for any specific activity/event ideas that may be related to the specific theme/course associated with the Living Learning Community. With that information, the LLC Program Facilitators coordinate the events and invite faculty to attend. We host 4 FFT events throughout the year. FFTs aim to provide a small group setting for faculty and students, so typically faculty interact with 5-20 students. If your department is not connected to an LLC, but would like to learn more please get in touch!
Contact: Charesma Biaspal
Activity: Living Learning Communities
Department: Student Housing and Residence Life
Description: A Living Learning Community is the opportunity for a group of students with similar interests to live together in the same residence community alongside an upper year peer mentor (LLC Program Facilitator) in their subject of study. These students are enrolled in at least one common course together. Residence currently has 8 uniquely themed Living Learning Communities that include: Bio(upper year), CCIT, CompSci, Foundations, LEAF, LifeSci, Education, and Global. If your department is not connected to an LLC, but would like to learn more please get in touch!
Faculty Role: Faculty who participate in Living Learning Communities are invited to marquee LLC events at the beginning and end of the year, provide feedback during annual debrief meetings and mid-point check-ins for the continuous improvement of the LLC program, and may be asked to participate in an interview for our monthly LLC newsletters. These faculty are also invited to all Faculty Field Trips that are hosted by the specific LLC community.
Contact: Charesma Biaspal
Activity: President’s Scholar of Excellence Program (PSEP) Faculty Mentors
Department: Centre for Student Engagement
Description: This is an opportunity for participating faculty members to mentor UTM’s highest academic achieving incoming students for their first year of study.
Faculty Role: 1 academic year; Faculty mentor meetings with a PSEP mentee take place at varied times throughout the academic year.
Contact: engage.utm@utoronto.ca or Jenny Danahy
Activity: Sneaker Squad (coming soon!)
Department: Dept. of Recreation, Athletics & Wellness
Description: Sneaker Squad is a free program under the MoveU campaign which promotes healthy active living and helps students understand the physical, social and academic benefits of physical activity.
During the fall semester, our program is led by two student leaders who host weekly walks to explore and appreciate our beautiful campus. We aim to invite faculty as guest walkers to join us for a walk and to interact with our student participants. Through this we hope to create an opportunity for students to feel connected to our campus community.
Faculty Role:
- 45 minute walk with a group of students (ranges from 5 – 15)
- Select 1 of 2, weekly time slots; timings for the semester are determined in September.
- Let us know 2 weeks prior
- Provided with promotional materials to share with your class
Contact: rawcwelcome@utoronto.ca
Program Name: UTM Abroad Program
Department: International Education Centre
Description: UTM Abroad offers opportunities for faculty to complement their teaching by embedding a unique travel opportunity relevant to the course theme. UTM Abroad Academic Experiences are developed by academic departments, taught by UTM faculty, and linked to the International Education Centre who facilitates the UTM Abroad program. Courses are offered during the semester, or year, with an embedded global experience during the break periods (e.g. Fall/Winter Reading Week), or embedded in a summer course. Pedagogically, UTM Abroad Academic Experiences capitalize on their international location, connecting the global experience to the course material. Past trips included countries such as Peru, Italy, Guatemala, Cambodia and Japan.
Faculty Role: UTM Abroad Academic experiences are developed based on faculty interest. The International Education Centre can support you to add global learning elements into a pre-existing course, or support the global learning component as you develop a new course. More information is available on our website on the benefits of Global Learning and the services we can provide.
Contact: International Education Centre
