Miller Undergraduate Fellowship Instructional Design
Instructional Design
As an Undergraduate Fellow, you will participate in small discussion-based classroom Seminars. These Seminars take up topics related to our weekly learning themes. They are oriented to “texts,” (anything from a book or a poem, to a photograph or a map, to a film or a song) which focus our attention on those themes. Seminar discussions interpret and analyze these texts, as well as the ideas and issues they present. But what really energizes our discussions are the diverse experiences and perspectives that you bring to our interpretation and analysis. Although we all see the same thing, we each see it differently and distinctly. This diversity itself becomes part of the content of our Seminars. We learn as much with and from one another as we do from the texts we discuss.
In our practice-based experiential Exploratorys we encounter places where these ideas and issues impact local communities and shape society. Exploratorys are like a laboratory, but take place out and about in real world contexts. Fellows travel by foot and by bus to a broad range of neighborhoods where they engage with a wide array of community partners. Our partners include religious congregations, community organizations, and cultural institutions across the city of Pittsburgh. Wherever they are located, and however they are constituted, these partners are working for peace, justice, and flourishing in their communities. Through their work and witness we experience and experiment with different ways to love God and serve neighbor. We learn how our aspirations to make a difference and change the world can be put into practice in ordinary life and everyday work.