The goal of the Winter School is to provide introductory tutorials at all levels in topics that are new to the participants, who include CQN students, postdocs, faculty, CQN industry partners, other outside qualified persons (including students at non-CQN schools), and industry and government scientists.
Each course is co-developed and co-taught by two people – a lead instructor and a co-instructor. Co-instructors are graduate students and postdocs. This arrangement, based on a program developed a decade ago by Michael Raymer and Judith Eisen (The Science Literacy Program at University of Oregon, https://scilit.uoregon.edu), has two purposes: to mentor students who wish to learn best practices in teaching under the mentorship of an experienced instructor, and to improve the quality of the short course by adopting best practices in inquiry-based teaching with the active participation of the co-instructor.