What is TNP all about anyway?

​TNP recently celebrated our 1-year anniversary! We are constantly humbled by the overwhelming support we receive from the wonderful twitter and teaching conference communities!

With this milestone behind us, we thought this was a good time to properly introduce ourselves to our new readers or maybe remind some of our return readers of what we’re all about!

The Novice Professor was started by Ciara during her first year as an assistant professor. She started the blog with the intention to document her experiences as a new professor. The blog also served as a platform to promote the idea that we are all "novice professors" in that we are forever learning and adapting to the ever-changing landscape of higher education. In her original opening blog post, here is how she described the goal for the blog:

"What is the novice professor? Well that’s me, fresh out of graduate school starting my first year as an assistant professor on the tenure track. It’s also a reflection of my teaching philosophy. I strive to learn new techniques, tweaking my approach, and tailoring courses to fit each group of students. So, while in 6 years I may be starting my first year as a tenured professor, I will still be a novice, the picture of the clichéd 'life-long learner'."

We do our best to embody this philosophy in all of our posts. And we do our best to make our posts applicable to a wider audience. All of our regular contributors are in Psychology, but we hope our topics apply more generally to higher education.
 
In terms of our post topics, we try to run the gamut across teaching in higher education. Some of our previous posts have covered subjects such as flipped classrooms, ethical considerations in SoTL research, applying to graduate school (for students), work-life balance, grading, being on the job market, how to make the most of the first week of classes, and favorite in-class activities. We also do recurring post topics like SoTL digests where we review the latest and greatest articles from teaching journals. More recently we’ve also started doing our best to provide conference coverage via tweets and blog posts.
 
One more way we’re expanding our blog is through compiling resources. We have a few put together already, but we want to do more in the future. Currently we have two major categories: resources for instructors and students. For instructors, we have compiled a lists of podcasts and videos you can use in your courses, and some websites, podcasts, and blogs that may be useful for you to follow. For students, we put together resources to help students develop better study habits, apply to graduate school, and prepare for their careers.
 
This is the blog in a nutshell. If you want to know more about who is actually doing the writing, go to our meet the authors page.
 
Thank you to all of our readers for a great first year, and we hope there are many more to come!
 
​
written by Jen Blush