By: Cassidy Delamarter, USF College of Education
Born from research and reflection, a professional development workshop series hosted by the USF College of Education plans to expand this Fall, building on its first cohort’s momentum.
Launched in 2025 by the College with support from the Office of the Provost, the University of South Florida Educator Development for Growth and Excellence (EDGE) workshop series is designed to deepen reflection, connect educators across disciplines, and encourage growth.
The College of Education developed EDGE to offer a modernized professional development experience with hands-on learning, structured feedback, pedagogical strategies, curated resources and collaborative discussions.
“Unlike traditional models that separate teaching and learning into standalone units, USF is leveraging its greatest asset—faculty expertise,” said Provost and Executive Vice President Prasant Mohapatra. “Led by the College of Education, this program strengthens teaching excellence across the university."
To develop a flexible, evidence-informed program, Bárbara Cruz, professor in the College of Education, led a team to analyze faculty reflections, review instructional technology trends, and examine peer models at other AAU institutions. The result is a program grounded in meaningful peer teaching support to encourage participants’ professional growth.
Every seat for the first cohort was filled within three days of its launch. The 2025 EDGE program included five workshops covering positive learning environments, student engagement, online teaching, assessing learning, and becoming a reflective practitioner.
The EDGE team: Sanghoon Park, Paul Sauberer, Maggie Robertson Stemme, Bárbara Cruz, Mandie Dunn, Sarah Kiefer, and Clarence Walker.
“I highly recommend the EDGE program to any educator who wants to discuss, improve and understand the mechanisms of her teaching practice,” said Natalia Dame, assistant professor in the department of world languages. “The sessions are fun, personable, discussion-based, and result-oriented. I loved learning hands-on techniques on how to center my students by creating a positive learning environment and cultivating the ethics of care. I have successfully applied a variety of EDGE strategies in my classes to enhance my presentations and to ensure a multimodal, metacognitive assessment of my students' progress.”
Building on that momentum, registration is now open for the Fall 2026 series, which will again offer five sessions running from August through December. A limited number of spots remain.
- August 21: Creating and maintaining a positive learning environment
- September 18: Fostering student engagement
- October 16: Online teaching and learning
- November 13: Assessing student learning
- December 16: Becoming a reflective practitioner
Questions? Email edu-edge@usf.edu
EDGE celebrated its inaugural cohort with participants earning certificates of completion on April 24, 2026