Topics I am Willing to Discuss with Other Faculty:

• Managing Teaching, Research, and Service Workloads
• Developing courses that are meaningful and engage all learners
• Creating a Community of Practice with colleagues across disciplines

What Mentoring Means to Me:

Mentoring is a process of sharing, guiding, and mutual learning that leads to flourishing for mentor and mentee. Mentoring in the academy is especially important for those for whom academia feels like being a stranger in a strange land – unwritten curricula and norms, power dynamics and discourse can keep someone from feeling grounded and from progressing. Therefore, mentoring includes a kind of acculturation that is integrative – not a total assimilation to a place but a holistic integration that ensures one’s core identity and being are not just intact but can thrive.

Title: Director. Transdisciplinary Studies. Claremont Graduate University

College: Claremont Graduate University (CGU)

Department: Transdisciplinary Studies

Discipline: Transdisciplinary Pedagogy, Transdisciplinary Research, Arts Integration, Semiotics

Email: shamini.dias@cgu.edu

Faculty Profile Link: https://www.cgu.edu/people/shamini-dias/

Professional Experience:

Shamini founded and developed CGU’s unique Preparing Future Faculty program (now integrated with the Center for Academic and Faculty Excellence – CAFE) based on transdisciplinary principles that center joy, inclusion, and equity-minded principles for transformative education that puts learning and learners first. She continues this line of development in Transdisciplinary Studies, building curricula that expand transdisciplinary education as a co-creative process that prepares people to flourish in emergent and unpredictable contexts. Shamini is also the Editor of The STEAM Journal, a transdisciplinary open-access journal for boundary-crossing conversations and arts-science integration.