Teaching an Experience course can be exciting and overwhelming at the start. There is a network of support and many resources to help you connect with a community partner, find course resources, and troubleshoot any issues that come up.
Course Planning Resources
Ready to design an Essential Education Experience course? You're in the right place.
Experience courses offer faculty a unique opportunity to engage students in meaningful, hands-on learning that connects classroom knowledge with real-world challenges. These upper-division courses are intentionally designed to deepen students’ understanding of cultural, civic, and global issues while helping them develop key skills they’ll carry into their careers and communities.
Whether you’re starting from scratch or adapting an existing course, the resources below will help you meet the core requirements and plan a transformative experience for your students.
Faculty Experience Course Interest Form
Join the Experience Course Community of Practice
The Experience Course Community of Practice is a space for anyone interested in, or currently teaching, an Essential Education Experience to come together and learn from one another. We will meet twice a month during the Fall and Spring semesters, with themed conversations to support you in developing your Experience course.
Please email cmvandam@mtu.edu to get involved.
Experience Course Faculty Fellows - 2025-2026
The Essential Ed Experience Faculty Fellows are a select group of faculty who support their peers in teaching and developing Experience courses. They help lead Community of Practice meetings and create resources to guide successful Experience course implementation. You are welcome to contact any of the Fellows with questions about Experience courses.
Ann Hardin, Assistant Teaching Professor of Economics, College of Business
Ann Hardin is an assistant teaching professor of economics in Michigan Tech’s College of Business. Now in her third year at Michigan Tech, she has served on numerous Essential Education committees, including as a fellow for Essential Education Experience courses in academic years 2024–25, summer 2025, and 2025–26. She is currently developing an Experience course to be hosted by the College of Business. In addition, she has attended conferences at other universities focused on best practices for community-engaged scholarship.
Sarah Fayen Scarlett, Associate Professor of History
Sarah Fayen Scarlett is an associate professor of history in Michigan Tech’s Department of Social Sciences. She teaches in the Industrial Heritage and Archaeology graduate program and undergraduate courses in American history. Her 2021 book, Company Suburbs: Architecture, Power, and the Transformation of Michigan's Mining Frontier (University of Tennessee Press), received the Abbott Lowell Cummings Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum and the Fred B. Kniffen Award from the International Society for Landscape, Place, and Material Culture. She co-directs the Keweenaw Time Traveler, a community-engaged historical GIS deep mapping project supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities.
M. Bartley Seigel, Director, Writing Center; Associate Professor, Humanities
M. Bartley Seigel is the author of In the Bone-Cracking Cold (Wayne State University Press, 2025) and This Is What They Say (Typecast Publishing, 2013). He is a former poet laureate of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula and an Academy of American Poets Laureate Fellow. His poems have appeared in Poetry Magazine, Michigan Quarterly Review, About Place, Fourth River, and many others. He directs the Michigan Tech Writing Center and is an associate professor in the Department of Humanities.
