Sahar Zavareh was in the 2015 cohort of the GCCUT program. She concurrently earned her MS in Geography and the Water Conflict Management and Transformation Certificate in 2015. After completing her program at OSU she enrolled in the PhD program for Economic Geography at LMU Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität München (University of Munich). She currently works as a GTA there.

Q&A with Sahar Zavareh

Please briefly describe your teaching responsibilities at the University of Munich?

I have a GTA appointment in the Economic Geography department and teach a field course in New Zealand called the Geography of Tourism.

How has taking part in the GCCUT program affected your current teaching position at the University of Munich?

I developed the course material for our field course with the support of my PhD advisor after he learned that I completed the GCCUT. It has been an interesting process navigating the German university system for many reasons. One of them being that they do not use syllabi and our department does not actively use the learning management software, Moodle at the university. With the support of my professor and some feedback from students in other classes, I have begun to introduce many of the things we learned from GCCUT and from our American university system such as course goals, learning outcomes, formative and summative assessments, rubrics, and many of the teaching theories we learned into our experiential learning coursework. I also have tried to encourage more inclusivity and diversity into the classroom with our students. I also try to adapt what we have learned in GCCUT into our teaching and learning environment in our department by encouraging and sharing course material with other colleagues.

What specific aspects of your participation in the GCCUT program changed your thinking about teaching, learning, or higher education in general?

I try to examine what role I should or can play in teaching in learning for our students and how I can I use the resources I have learned from GCCUT to facilitate this process. I also feel confident in the role of teaching with students having completed the GCCUT program.

Is there anything else you would add about your GCCUT experience that you think would interest prospective students?

Not only do achieve the learning outcomes set-forth in the GCCUT program, you gain an amazing support system and cohort that remain with you long after you have completed the program. I cherish the wonderful memories, friendships and experiences I have from my time in the GCCUT program at OSU.