Reflections on the First CMSE Curriculum Development Sprint

This past summer, organized by CERL members Devin Silvia and Sona Chitchyan, we ran the first-ever CMSE Curriculum Development Sprint — a collaborative work week that brought CMSE faculty and graduate students together for five days of focused, hands-on curriculum work in the STEM building followed by a summer of continued collaboration. Building on insights from two rounds of focus group discussions, the sprint was designed to be low-stakes and high-impact: people joined for as much or as little as their schedules allowed, and the emphasis throughout was on making concrete, lasting improvements to how we teach.

How the sprint week worked

The sprint ran June 8–12, with sessions each day from 10:00 am to 4:00 pm. We opened by revisiting the themes that surfaced in the focus groups and used them to identify projects worth pursuing. From there, participants formed teams around shared interests and spent the rest of the week developing materials and approaches together.

Woven into the week were dedicated professional development sessions on instructional design and pedagogy — including backward design and assessment, creating actionable feedback, and Universal Design for Learning and accessibility. These gave participants practical frameworks they could apply immediately, both to their sprint projects and to their own teaching.

The projects

Three teams formed and carried their work forward through the summer:

• CMSE 201 Content Refresh — a focused effort to revisit and clean up the content of our introductory course.
• Community-driven AI Guidelines — developing shared guidance for how generative AI is used in our courses. The draft guidelines that were produced were then shared for community feedback.
• Out-of-classroom Support and Student Belonging — exploring ways to better support students beyond the classroom and strengthen their sense of belonging.

Each team presented their work at a showcase event on August 18, 2026.

Looking ahead

The sprint was a first for us, and it reinforced how much can happen when people are given structured time and space to work on teaching together.

Several of these projects are ongoing, and we’re already thinking about how to build on this momentum. If you’re interested in getting involved, reach out to Devin Silvia or Sona Chitchyan.