Finding New Ways to Teach

Name: Shawn MillerPosition: Director, Duke Center for Instructional Technology  Years at Duke: 10

What I do at Duke: Deepen student learning and engagement through helping Duke faculty do different things with their teaching. Sometimes that involves technology and sometimes that involves what we call innovative pedagogies. We have staff that put on programs and events and we offer funding to support faculty and their experiments with new teaching approaches and new technologies. CIT staff will meet with faculty one-on-one and work with them on projects, and we also have a group that helps manage learning technologies at Duke, like Sakai. We also do most of Duke’s open online course production, especially massive open online courses (MOOCS), and we’ve worked with more than 40 faculty in developing courses in Coursera.

If I had $5 million, I would: travel. My wife and I haven’t been to Australia and we haven’t been to Japan. We just went to Iceland.

My first ever job: I painted houses when I was a teenager in El Paso, Texas. I was horrible at it. While I was in high school, I also got hired at night to manage their computer lab and be a writing tutor.

What I love about Duke: I’ve only been director for a little over two years. Part of why I came to Duke is to get experience working at a school like Duke so I could eventually become director of a center like this. A series of fortunate events led me to becoming the director here. Sometimes I still can’t believe it. I love working with so many amazing people, from so many different backgrounds. Nearly everyone you meet has an incredible story and is working on something interesting.

The best advice I ever received: A friend and mentor said, “Take the job at Duke.” It was a crazy risk at the time but it set a trajectory for me. (Miller was working at the University of Texas at El Paso and was working on his Ph.D.)

My dream job: I was a musician for a long time and I recorded bands back in El Paso. Doing music full-time would be awesome. Songwriting is really cool, and I love music production.

Something most people don’t know about me: When I lived in El Paso, I was in a few bands that toured the country. I played guitar and sang, too, and I recorded most of the bands I was in. The last band I was in was called “Fireland Ablaze.” (The name is from James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake.”)

When I’m not at work, I like to: We love to go see live shows. Our favorite venues are Cat’s Cradle in Carrboro, the Durham Performing Arts Center and Raleigh’s Red Hat Amphitheater.

If I could have one superpower, it would be: reading people’s minds. I think that’s what I try to do every day.

An interesting/memorable day at work for me: Any of our CIT Showcase days. We bring faculty and staff together to talk about the cool innovations they have done. I really like being able to personally see what Duke faculty and our staff have accomplished over the past year.