A range of offices, centers, and programs at the University offer resources and services relevant to teaching and learning in the Core. Some are important sources of support for students, while others provide opportunities to enhance and develop faculty and instructor teaching. While not exhaustive, see below for information on campus resources that are particularly relevant to teaching in the Core. We will continue to add to this list as more entries become available.

Academic Technology Solutions

Academic Technology Solutions’ support includes instructional designers available to assist with your implementation flexible teaching. We can help you with projects big and small, including redesigning your course or using Canvas, Panopto, Zoom and other digital tools effectively. Visit our In-Person or Virtual Office Hours for help with using technology for teaching and learning. You can find the Zoom link and the most up-to-date schedule of our Office Hours as well as workshops on the ATS Workshop Schedule. To learn more or request a consultation, visit our Instructional Design page. For assistance with using classroom audio-visual equipment, contact our AV Services group. For guidance on digital accessibility, including information on accessibility for content creators, visit the Center for Digital Accessibility.

Center for College Student Success

The Center for College Student Success (CCSS) provides support for First-Generation, Lower-Income – also known as FLI – students in the College. CCSS staff are available to consult with faculty and instructors on specific resources (including the FLI Network and emergency financial resources offered through the University) and we also encourage instructors to make direct referrals to the services on our website. For more information about CCSS, click here.

Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning

The CCTL fosters pedagogical reflection, innovation, and community through an array of programs and services. We provide a number of modes for engagement, from one-on-one consultations, to workshops and reading groups, to year-long pedagogical communities organized around particular issues. All of our work aims to cultivate dialogue and sharing among faculty and instructors and to inform those discussions with relevant pedagogical literature, with the goal of advancing student learning and promoting inclusive learning environments. A schedule of upcoming events is available at teaching.uchicago.edu. Contact the CCTL at teaching@uchicago.edu.

Chicago Studies

Chicago Studies makes it easier for instructors and students in the College to study, teach about, and collaboratively learn from our amazing city. As part of the Office of Research and Teaching Innovation in the College Dean’s Office, we help faculty and course instructors integrate Chicago content and experiences into all aspects of their teaching and mentorship of students’ research. We offer one-on-one course design and experiential pedagogy consultation; financial and logistical support for experiential learning in the city; assistance identifying relevant Chicago content, archives, and datasets; and course-aligned, para-curricular programming focused on Chicago.  Visit our faculty website or meet with a member of our team for more information.

College Academic Advising Office

Academic Advisers in the College work with students throughout all four years of their education, provide guidance on their curricular plans, and connect them to relevant resources on campus. Faculty and instructors are encouraged to reach out to a student’s Academic Adviser should they have any questions or concerns. For more information, consult this brief overview of the office and this description of key College policies.

College Center for Research and Fellowships

The College Center for Research and Fellowships (CCRF) promotes academic excellence by empowering undergraduates to pursue two transformational experiences: undergraduate research and nationally competitive fellowships. CCRF’s Quad Faculty and Quad Undergraduate Research Scholars programs are the signature grants that fund faculty-mentored undergraduate research in the College. Likewise, the College Summer Institute in the Arts, Humanities, and Social Sciences (CSI) offers an intensive summer program for students engaged in faculty research projects. Student research is also celebrated at the annual UChicago Undergraduate Research Symposium, which showcases hundreds of student projects from all disciplines. In addition to providing administrative leadership for the Inquiry and Research in the Humanities major, CCRF leads the Common Year Program, which offers seminars on learning in community, undergraduate research, and student wayfinding. Beyond fostering academic excellence at the national level by providing comprehensive support to undergraduates who apply for nationally prestigious fellowships such as Fulbright, Truman, Marshall, and Rhodes, CCRF stewards the highest honors bestowed by the College, such as the Student Marshal awards, the Cathey Fellowships, and the Sonnenschein Medal of Excellence.

College Writing Program

The College Writing Program (WP) offers writing instruction to all students in the College, primarily through Humanities Core courses, in collaboration with Core course faculty. For the Humanities Core, the WP trains, supervises, and supports full-time Writing Specialists, who work with Core instructors to set learning goals for writing. They offer writing seminars and provide feedback on student writing, and can meet with students individually. The WP also trains and supports College Core Writing Tutors, who offer 40-minute individual meetings with students enrolled in any Common Core course. Tutors ask the student what help they seek, read the student’s draft, and help students build skills to analyze their drafts and make decisions about revision. With our colleagues in the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning, we offer professional development workshops for graduate students and post-docs as part of the College Teaching Certificate with emphasis in Writing Pedagogy. The WP also provides consultations to instructors and faculty as they design learning goals and writing assignments for their courses. We welcome you to visit our website for more information about who we are and what we do to support writing. To find out more about College Core Writing Tutors and appointments, check this page.

English Language Institute

Through academic, professional, and intercultural programming, the English Language Institute (ELI) supports individuals for whom English is an additional language at the University of Chicago. We serve the linguistic and cultural needs of multilingual students and scholars, empowering them to raise their confidence and English proficiency to new levels. The ELI offers an array of Academic courses, extracurricular activities, tutoring, and individualized instruction to meet the diverse needs of English Language Learners in The UChicago community.

Inclusive Pedagogy Guidance

Developed with the assistance of UChicago instructors and students, in partnership with the Office of the Provost and the Chicago Center for Teaching and Learning, the inclusive pedagogy website provides a resource for academics to improve skills in inclusive teaching.

Smart Museum of Art

The Feitler Center for Academic Inquiry at the Smart Museum of Art regularly supports the use of art as a pedagogical resource by incorporating the Museum’s exhibitions and collections into curricula across campus. Teaching with art has significant rewards. It is a mode of inquiry that complements text-based pedagogy, fosters attention to the material world, and strengthens critical thinking across disciplines. There are many different approaches to teaching with art objects, and our staff of trained art historians is eager to offer whatever support you might need. Please email feitlercenter@uchicago.edu to begin a conversation about integrating the Smart Museum’s resources into your syllabus.

SOSC Writing Program

The SOSC Writing Program works with instructors by helping them align their writing assignments with their course objectives and supports SOSC students with the mechanics of writing and argumentation. Our program presently offers instructors in Classics, Democracy, Mind, PIR, and Religion the chance to have a Writing Advisor integrated into their section. Assigned advisors hold regular office hours and can tailor small-group workshops for the course. A cornerstone of the SOSC Writing Program is that we do not aim to teach writing in the abstract; the exercises that our Writing Advisors deploy and the workshops that they conduct are a chance for students to work on drafts of their own written work.  Students enrolled in any SOSC sequence are also welcome to schedule a consultation with one of our Writing Advisors, who can work with them on aspects of rhetoric, structure, the use of evidence, and strategies for revision. Visit our website SOSC Writer for more information about our program and services.

Student Disability Services

Student Disability Services (SDS), among other functions, determines whether or not a student qualifies for a disability accommodation and provides written notification of approved accommodations for eligible students. SDS also provides a wealth of information pertaining to disability accommodations, accessible teaching strategies, and popular faculty resources such as an accessible syllabus statement, a faculty FAQ, and an accessibility checklist for courses.  SDS staff are available to consult and/or answer faculty questions about accommodation implementation and ways to make the course more inclusive for students with disabilities.

UChicago Student Wellness

UChicago Student Wellness provides students access to coordinated and comprehensive medical care, counseling, psychiatry, and health promotion services targeted at building and maintaining overall well-being. Faculty and instructors may be particularly interested in how the office provides student mental health services. In an effort to expand care options, additional on-demand and scheduled virtual services are available to students through TimelyCare. Students who are eligible for the services offered by UChicago Student Wellness can receive free virtual mental health care through TimelyCare. For more information and guidance on supporting student mental health, click here.

The University of Chicago Library

The Library provides many services to support College teaching. Within Canvas, the Library offers access to instructional materials including course reserves, help guides, videos, and learning modules. Librarians can teach students effective research skills, designing programs in consultation with instructors to support specific assignments or course goals. Instruction can be provided during class time, at workshops, or via asynchronous programs. Librarians can also provide examples of research assignments or class projects that make effective use of the Library’s digital and print collections, including the Hanna Holborn Gray Special Collections Research Center. For more information, visit the Library’s Teaching and Learning website.

Visual Resources Center

The Visual Resources Center creates high-quality images and provides an array of services and resources for instructors and students in Art History and the Humanities. The VRC manages LUNA—the main database for art images used for teaching at UChicago—and maintains several collections of art images for teaching and research based on instructor and student requests. You can use LUNA to create image groups and export them directly to PowerPoint or embed them into Canvas Modules and Assignments. In the past, Core instructors have requested scans of images to create sets of images related to assignments and class discussions. While the VRC officially serves the Humanities Division, the office may have capacity to take on requests from the Social Sciences, too. To place a free request for image digitization or digital image sourcing, please visit the Image Order Form. To reach Bridget Madden and Allie Scholten, VRC staff, please write to visualresources@uchicago.edu. For more information, see this flyer.