Teaching Resources

The IntroSems Program offers both financial and pedagogical resources to support faculty in creating active, engaging, and vibrant small seminars.

Pedagogical Support

IntroSems is organized around faculty teaching small seminars comprising first- and second-year students. To support faculty in developing their seminar—many of whom are making the transition from large lecture courses to small, discussion-based seminars—the IntroSems Program offers a range of pedagogical development opportunities, including but not limited to:

• One-On-One Consultations

  IntroSems faculty and instructors may consult throughout the quarter to discuss topics ranging from planning a syllabus to determining how to use course enhancement funds, to debriefing course evaluations.

• Workshops

  Offered exclusively to IntroSems instructors, these workshops are designed to address the specific needs of IntroSems faculty, and feature topics such as designing inclusive courses, planning active learning activities, and navigating unexpected classroom conversations or student concerns.

Academic Technology Support

A specialist in academic technology is available to work with IntroSems faculty on a wide range of projects, including designing interactive on-line discussion forums to implementing video annotation software to creating digital projects, such as podcasts and web pages. For more information about developing instructional technology tools, contact Hollie Collins at hollief@stanford.edu.

SIS maintains a loan pool of teaching and multi-media equipment as an extra resource specifically for instructors in SIS programs. See the equipment.

Faculty Review of Student Applications

When the IntroSems' VCA opens to faculty for student selection each quarter, instructors receive information from the program including system instructions as well as the deadline for making their selections. This email comes from introsems@stanford.edu with a subject line beginning, "Select IntroSems Students." If you cannot find that email or have general questions about the process, please contact Lindsay Garratt at introsems@stanford.edu or (650) 724-2405 during regular business hours.

In academic year 2025-26, instructors may select students for priority enrollment in the IntroSems' VCA during the following periods: