Our Crowdfunding Groups
This crowdfunding project has ended, but you can still support the ExCollege. Thank you for your continued support!
The Fellowship is assured for 2018 - on to 2019!
With a few days left to go in our campaign, the more than $27,000 raised to date will provide funding for the four Fellows selected to teach this fall. We met our initial goal quickly thanks to many generous donors. We are deeply grateful. Now we are looking ahead to ensure a full cohort of Fellows in 2019.
Help launch the next generation
The Fellowships provide advanced Tufts graduate students the opportunity to teach an original course while receiving guidance through the Experimental College. They also give our PhDs an essential competitive edge in the job market. We named the program for Robyn Gittleman, the Director Emeritus of the ExCollege, who dedicated her career to innovative education and student empowerment during her forty-four years at Tufts.
After Robyn retired in 2015, the ExCollege wanted to find a special way to honor her. At the same time, the ExCollege and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences (of which she is an alumna) began to collaborate on a way to help the next generation of university teachers. And so we came up with the Gittleman Fellowship. Selected grad students design and teach a course of their own in the ExCollege and meet together in roundtable discussions to consider trends in teaching and higher ed. The ExCollege's current Director, Howard Woolf, serves as guide and mentor. The Fellows are beyond excited to teach, and our ExCollege undergrads love the new energy and ideas that the Fellows bring to the classroom.
Our $10,000 goal and beyond
Our initial goal funded two fellows in the Fall 2018 semester. But with your support we quickly saw that a full cohort of four fellows was possible, and additional support funds the program into 2019!
The new reality for graduate students in the 21st century
The Fellowships address a new reality for grad students: teaching your own course is a must in order to be competitive in the academic job market. Those looking for their first faculty job now face a very difficult time even getting interviews without having designed and taught a course of their own.
After a successful pilot program, our goal is sustainability
The Fellowship program received seed funding through a Tufts Innovates grant in 2016 and 2017, with additional support from the Janover Family. Three cohorts of Fellows – fifteen in all – have already benefited from this initiative. Now the ExCollege and the Graduate School seek to continue the program this coming fall and into the future.
Your support honors Robyn Gittleman, whose vision made the ExCollege what it is today
Where else but the ExCollege could all this happen? If you had the privilege of working with Robyn, if you taught a one-of-a-kind course in the ExCollege, or if you had a transformative experience through a first-year Explorations seminar, here’s your chance to show your appreciation. Please join us to honor her impact on higher education by supporting this fellowship.
Robyn dedicated her forty-four years at Tufts to innovative teaching and empowerment of students. Carry on her twin passions through the Gittleman Fellowship.
Remember the class that changed everything? For undergrads, we bet it was an ExCollege class. Support more innovative courses designed and taught by students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences.
The Explorations program (Robyn's baby!) was the first teaching experience for hundreds of Tufts undergrads. Take the next step to help launch graduate students into university teaching careers.
Give Tufts graduate students valuable experience in the classroom and a competitive edge in the marketplace.
Tufts Graduate School of Arts and Sciences has grown to almost two thousand students. Support the next generation of university teaching faculty.
A donation in this amount will fully fund one Fellow.
