Searle Fellows Program (Spring Retreat)
April 26, 2026
At the end of the fourth week of the spring quarter, the 2025–26 Searle Fellows Program hosted its full-day Spring Retreat at Northwestern’s Chicago campus. Since 1999, Northwestern’s Office of the Provost and the Searle Center for Advancing Learning and Teaching have convened early-career research and teaching faculty to foster a collaborative community dedicated to advancing learning and teaching. Searle Fellows participate in a year-long program that includes regular meetings, access to pedagogical resources, discussions, and activities centered on innovative educational practices.
The Spring Retreat was the gathering for Searle Fellows to present lightning talks on their projects. However, I was unable to attend the entire event because of my commitment to the Provost’s Office Spring Faculty Writing Group, which meets every Friday morning during the spring quarter. Therefore, I registered to deliver my talk in the afternoon session.
A primary goal of the Spring Retreat is to provide participants with an opportunity to share and learn about each other’s projects. To prepare, each Fellow was required to deliver a three-minute lightning talk summarizing their project to date. Those unable to attend in person were asked to submit three slides and a three-minute video. We were asked to talk about our process: what motivated our project, what we learned while working on it, what research informed our approach, any surprises we found, our end result, and how and with whom we plan to share our results. The time limit was strictly enforced; when the timer ended, the talk concluded, even if mid-sentence. Like many others, I exceeded the time limit.
In the afternoon, Kate Flom Derrick, the Searle Center’s assistant director of reflective pedagogy, led a small-group workshop on revising our teaching statements. Each of us paired up with another Searle Fellow to use the Story Teller and Interviewer method. We talked about our most memorable moment in the SFP and our best teaching and learning moment in the classroom. The Story Teller spoke for five minutes without stopping, while the Interviewer took notes without interrupting. The goal was to help the Story Teller see their teaching narrative through the Interviewer’s notes and reflections.
The next and final step in the 2025–26 Searle Fellows Program is to finalize our e-portfolios, which include a revised teaching statement and our fellows project. I am currently building my e-portfolio site on GitHub. I will integrate it into my academic webpage and continue to build on it over the years.