In student-faculty pedagogical partnerships, student consultants work up to seven hours per week in the paid role of pedagogical partner to a faculty member. Through this partnership, consultants analyze, affirm, and, as appropriate, support the revision of classroom practice in the context of one of the faculty partner’s courses with the goal of maximizing engagement and learning for all involved. Student and faculty partnerships take a range of approaches to their collaboration, starting with a focus on classroom practice and often expanding to consider curriculum, assessment, and other dimensions of pedagogy.
Artwork by Lauren Lattimore, Bryn Mawr College ’21
This experience has made me increasingly alive to both the professor’s perspective and to my own responsibilities as a student in creating and maintaining a positive and effective learning environment for all members of the class.
Student Consultant
Qualifications of Student Consultants
Student Consultants are resources and dialogue partners; they bring their own individual perspective as a student (not an omniscient or representative student perspective), and they bring
skills to engage in discussion.
In the SaLT Program at Bryn Mawr and Haverford Colleges, student consultants must:
- be a Bryn Mawr or Haverford student
- be a sophomore, junior, senior, post-bac, or McBride
- have taken at least one education course in the bi-co or have had experience in an educational role, such as through PLI or the Writing Center or as a Peer Tutor or a Hall Advisor, in which you critically considered and discussed issues in learning and teaching
- be willing to commit to and follow through on the responsibilities inherent in the role (see list below), communicate with honesty and courtesy, reflect on this work using the means provided, uphold the privacy of your partner, and keep strictly confidential what is discussed between you and your partner and at meetings.
Responsibilities of Student Consultants
- Attend and participate in weekly, semi-structured, one-hour discussions focused on what is happening in the faculty partner’s classrooms and how to support faculty exploration, affirmation, and revision of pedagogical practices
- Visit the faculty partner’s class once each week and taking detailed observation notes focused on pedagogical issues identified by the faculty partner
- Type up observation notes each week and deliver those to the faculty partner in a timely manner
- Meet weekly with the faculty partner
- Offer mid-semester and end-of-semester feedback