Meet Our New Colleague, Ren!

Working at the CITL offers a unique opportunity to engage with instructors who share a passion for teaching and continually inspire me with innovative approaches. It’s even better when these connections evolve into new CITL colleagues! We’re thrilled to welcome Ren Maloney (she/her), our newest hourly Graduate Student Instructional Consultant, to the team. Ren brings a wealth of experience from her doctoral studies in Rhetoric and her teaching background in English courses across various universities in Georgia, along with her expertise as a writing center consultant. During her interview, Ren impressed us with her insights into increasing student motivation, her plans for a series of blog posts on game theory, and her experience in event planning. Ren will be working with us for at least 10 hours a week, providing invaluable support to instructors like you.

If you’d like to talk with Ren about their pedagogical interests and explore how it can enhance your classroom experience, don’t hesitate to schedule a consultation with her. Simply reach out to citl@indiana.edu to get started! To get to know Ren a little better, I asked her to answer the following:

Can you introduce yourself a little? What’s a hobby or two you enjoy? Tell me a little about your research. Bonus points if you can make it understandable to a novice 😊

Hi everyone! My name is Ren Maloney and I have just completed my first year in the rhetoric PhD program here at IU. I am also in the process of completing my graduate minor in college pedagogy.

My research is primarily concerned with how we educate instructors to teach—I am particularly interested in constructing courses to better prepare graduate students to teach for the first time. I want to create sustainable scaffolding for graduate students to foster an environment of support that extends past initial orientations and teaching seminars to prevent feelings of disconnect from their teaching experience. Through my research, I advocate for the implementation of additional instructor training protocols which focus on the more practical aspects of teaching (e.g., medical emergencies, safety protocols, technology training).

(If ya couldn’t tell, I like teaching. ☺)

Some of my hobbies include crocheting, kickboxing, and saving neglected plants from clearance aisles.

What’s a moment from teaching you’ve really enjoyed?

I think that one of my favorite recurring moments has been taking my students on our field trip to the library. During our research week, we go to the library as a class to find and check out books to use as sources for our annotated bibliographies and eventual research essays. I shake it up each time (last semester was a scavenger hunt in the stacks, this semester was a race to see who could find their chosen book the quickest…), but no matter how I structure our day at the library, students leave feeling empowered knowing they are able to find books on their own. Last semester, one of my students came up to me at the end of our trip and said that they had never checked out a book before in their life, but that now they wanted to come to the library for the books, not just the study spaces. Using my classroom as a way to encourage students to interact with resources on campus they will need for the rest of their academic career is one of the great joys of my job. This kind of activity is not just about the ability to check out a book or use a resource—it’s prioritizing the idea that students should be active agents in their education!

What’s a piece of teaching advice you’d give to a graduate student new to teaching at IU?

The best advice I can give is to rely on the support of the teachers around you and utilize available resources. If your friend has a great lesson plan for teaching body paragraphs and you have a wonderful lesson plan for peer review, swap those ideas like the valuable trading cards they are! Come visit the Center for Innovative Teaching and Learning (CITL) for help with activity creation, use Writing Tutorial Services (WTS) for your students and for yourself, ask your professors for advice for handling difficult situations. Being placed in a teaching role can make new teachers feel like you should be the expert in your field, and while you are getting there, it’s okay that we still have things to learn, too. Give yourself some grace. You’ve got this.

Also, on a student-to-student note, try to keep balance in your life. Hemingway can back me up here: “In order to write about life, first you must live it.” Keep up your hobbies! Go bowling! Spend time with your friends! Eat a breakfast sandwich! Experiencing life will make you a better teacher and a happier student. You can take that to the bank.

(Oh, and don’t schedule all of your classes on the same day. You think it’s gonna work in your favor and I can promise you that it does not.)

What are you looking forward to doing at the CITL?

I am most excited for one-on-one consultations for activity creation and lesson planning. I love brainstorming with instructors about how to bring games and unorthodox methods of learning into the classroom. I’ve found that students are more likely to engage in learning when they don’t feel like they’re learning. Peppering in activities that students don’t expect is a great way to get them to take an active role in their classroom experience!