Student Learning Hub Makes Strides in Continuing Education

The C2SMART Student Learning Hub is an effort to provide free access to learning courses that can help students master research- or job-ready skills. As a University Transportation Research Center, it is part of C2SMART’s core values to ensure that we are building a diverse and well-prepared workforce of tomorrow. The SLH was launched as a way to give students the practical, hands-on experience they needed to be competitive upon graduation while simultaneously providing opportunities for researchers to improve their teaching skills.

It was the first of its kind among all UTC programs. The courses provided are multidisciplinary & field-ready – we aim to go beyond traditional transportation courses to engage students with interdisciplinary issues and questions, from cybersecurity in transportation to building Android apps.

The program also provides a great professional development opportunity to grow student and postdoc instructors’ teaching experience by sharing their expertise in short, hands-on projects.  These student instructors are given the opportunity to impact the lives of learners by sharing skills that can be applied immediately to learners’ research or careers. We engage instructors from a mix of programs and populations in order to provide a diverse learning experience for students: 15% of instructors are near-peer undergraduate instructors, 85% graduate instructors, and 30% female.