Shout-out for Alison Edwards

Alison Edwards

Sparked by a conversation with a colleague in DELTA, Alison brought an important idea to the Libraries: let's do more to support graduate student teaching assistants. Over the summer 2023 she did exceptional work to bring together colleagues from throughout the Libraries, DELTA, and the Graduate School to create the TA Toolkit, a suite of workshops to help graduate students as they develop skills and confidence with their teaching. She also led the effort to plan the TA Toolkit Open House where we welcomed more than 70 new graduate students with an opportunity to learn about cross-campus support for them as teachers. The event was a great success! Throughout this project, Alison demonstrated impressive strengths in leadership, creativity, collaboration, and diplomacy as she helped the cross-organizational planning team come to a shared vision and create something special for this graduate student population. There are already ideas floating around about ways to extend on the "Toolkit" model as well as evidence that the relationships that developed in the project team will lead to other fruitful collaborations between the Libraries, DELTA, and the Graduate School. Thank you, Alison!

- Kim Duckett, Sep 8, 2023