Journal Club
2026-05-06 14:00 - 15:00 (America/Los_Angeles) | Terasaki Life Sciences 5100
Paper we will discuss on May 6th:

De Jesus, M et al. (2026). Equitable Group Work in Undergraduate Biology Courses: Leveraging a Complex Instruction Framework to Identify Pedagogical Strategies, CBE—Life Sciences Education, Vol. 25, No. 2.

About Journal Club:
The CEILS Journal Club is a collaborative space for faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral students to learn and discuss breakthrough STEM education research and its implications in your classroom.
Every session features a carefully selected article chosen for its relevance to teaching in STEM. This is paired with a one page summary on the article to facilitate discussion. We are making it easy to keep up with recent findings while exploring how this research can translate into your course. We encourage you to join and share your own perspective as an instructor in this space. Each meeting stands alone and welcomes new participants

Join us for May journal club where you will share and discuss common challenges in implementing groupwork and ways to mitigate those challenges.

Signup:

Registration Link
Zoom link for those not able to come in person

Soundbath: A CEILS-Cultural North Star Collaboration
2026-05-07 12:00 - 13:00 | Hershey Hall 158
CEILS is partnering with DGSOM’s Cultural North Star to host a sound bath workshop on Thursday, May 7, 2026 from 12 – 1 pm in Hershey Hall Salon (Room 158). RSVP here.
This professional development session offers instructors in the Life sciences, Physical Sciences, and Health professions a dedicated space for reflection and renewal. As the demands of teaching, research, and service continue to intensify, this session provides an opportunity to pause, reset, and reconnect with practices that can sustain attention, presence, and balance—both in and beyond academic work. Through guided, sound-based practices, participants will engage in an experiential approach to restore focus and supporting overall well-being.

Pedagogical Essentials: Writing better multiple choice questions
2026-05-11 13:00 - 14:15
Well-designed multiple-choice questions can do far more than test factual recall; they can reveal student thinking, diagnose misconceptions, and assess higher-order problem-solving skills. Yet writing strong questions is challenging. This interactive workshop is designed for STEM faculty who want to create more effective multiple choice questions that provide students and instructors with deeper assessment of learning. Participants will explore research-based principles for constructing clear, rigorous, and fair multiple-choice questions that align with learning outcomes. We will examine how to write plausible distractors based on common student errors, design questions that assess conceptual understanding rather than rote memorization, and ensure that items are more inclusive and free from unnecessary barriers. We will also discuss strategies for using student response data to refine questions over time and improve exam reliability and discrimination.
(in person, with Zoom option)
RSVP here

2nd Annual Teaching Celebration
2026-05-27 15:00 - 16:30
Location: Hershey Hall Inner Courtyard

We’re excited to invite all educators to our annual celebration of teaching to honor your dedication, passion, and engagement with CEILS this year! This year we have invited Creamy Boys Ice Cream to create an ice cream experience where you can mix in real-fruit and other delicious flavors! They will help us create fun memories and connect with each other as we celebrate and close the quarter. RSVP today to join the celebration on May 27th 3:00 – 4:30 pm.

RSVP Link: CEILS Teaching Day Celebration RSVP 2026

Journal Club
2026-06-03 14:00 - 15:00
Paper we will discuss on June 3rd:
June 3, 2026 (In-Person & Zoom) Nørgård, R. T., Toft-Nielsen, C., & Whitton, N. (2017). Playful learning in higher education: Developing a signature pedagogy. International Journal of Play, 6(3), 272-282.

About Journal Club:

The CEILS Journal Club is a collaborative space for faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral students to learn and discuss breakthrough STEM education research and its implications in your classroom.
Every session features a carefully selected article chosen for its relevance to teaching in STEM. This is paired with a one page summary on the article to facilitate discussion. We are making it easy to keep up with recent findings while exploring how this research can translate into your course. We encourage you to join and share your own perspective as an instructor in this space. Each meeting stands alone and welcomes new participants

Signup:

Registration Link

Pedagogical Essentials: Encouraging Student Engagement Through Playful Approaches to Teaching workshops
2026-06-09 14:00 - 15:30
Are you curious about using play or playfulness in your teaching? Incorporating playfulness can encourage your students to actively engage using the intrinsic motivation baked into the fun of playing.
But how to start? In this workshop we will go through the process of creating a playful activity that starts with your student learning outcomes or a specific topic. We will briefly discuss a framework for approaching activity design and then we will dive right into a collaborative space of brainstorming and creation while exploring what implementing playfulness in the classroom could look like. Every classroom and instructor is different though so you will also have time to playfully create an activity or approach to use that is specific to your teaching.
Roll the dice and come join us to learn about playfulness in the classroom!
RSVP Now!

CEILS Annual Faculty Workshop
2026-08-25 08:00 - 17:00
This year, our annual workshop will focus on supporting you in creatively responding to the changing institutional environment while maintaining your well-being. Our goal is to provide you with resources, concrete strategies, and practices to maximize or maintain student learning.
We invite you to join us and engage in any or all of the experiences described below:

Hear from experts on AI about maintaining academic integrity in the age of AI
Learn about strategies for designing an inclusive syllabus and creating community on the first day of class, helping your students learn how-to learn, and reimagining your course with reduced TA support.
Get to know folks from the UCLA Disabilities and Computing Program and learn about making your course materials more accessible.
Engage with invited faculty, who will present lightning talks followed by roundtable discussions, each led by one of the invited faculty.

All are welcome to join this community of caring instructors who are excited to talk about teaching! We especially encourage instructors who either are relatively new to college teaching or who have instructional responsibilities in large enrollment gateway courses for science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) majors.
Date: August 25, 2026.
RSVP: Coming Soon!
