By Kay Xia, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2023 Current efforts toward increasing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in STEM fields generally focus on increasing the numbers of women and racial minorities in these fields, but only rarely do we pose the question of whether the existing ideals of scientific Continue Reading >>
By Enze Chen, Materials Science and Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2023 A hallmark feature of the Materials Science and Engineering (MSE) curriculum is the hands-on laboratory courses where students perform experiments using advanced scientific instruments. There have been numerous content enhancements over the years, but the assessment at the Continue Reading >>
By Leah Gulyas, Plant and Microbial Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2023 All classes have a personality: some are enthusiastic, some are curious, some are talkative. Others…not so much. Sometimes it can seem like a challenge to motivate student interaction. Long classes and odd timeslots present likely candidates for low Continue Reading >>
By Ethan Boynton, Plant and Microbial Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2023 While the return to in-person education was a welcome return to normalcy, it was a novel challenge for much of the student body. As an instructor, I sought to mitigate the negatives of hybrid-learning by encouraging low-stakes participation Continue Reading >>
By Mengxin Wang, Industrial Engineering and Operations Research Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 During my first remote teaching experience in the fall of 2020, I observed that without seeing students face to face, it is hard to monitor student learning and adjust the teaching pace and depth. Conventionally, an instructor Continue Reading >>
By Anna Tomi, Scandinavian Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 When teaching Reading and Composition, I often encounter a wonderful group of students enthusiastic to display their knowledge and engage with the instructor. But when it’s time for the students to talk to each other, they withdraw into silence. This is Continue Reading >>
By Danielle Spitzer, Molecular and Cell Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 Problem: MCB 141 (Developmental Biology) is an upper-division lecture course that covers fundamental concepts of animal embryonic development. The students learn about foundational experiments in the field which involve precise manipulations to animal embryos in three-dimensional space. They Continue Reading >>
By Laura Ritland, English Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 One of the most common pieces of advice undergraduates have absorbed before beginning their first Reading & Composition class is to avoid using “I” in their academic essays. The admonition against using first person in academic writing is a standard, useful Continue Reading >>
By Catherine Park, Education Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 The Education minor at UCB was developed to be taught online. I’ve taught and continue to teach ED140, “The Art of Making Meaning: Educational Perspectives on Literacy and Learning in a Global World,” where we combine the full capacities of digital Continue Reading >>
By Marcel Moran, City and Regional Planning Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 A fundamental challenge of teaching transportation planning is bridging the divide between abstract material and the realities (and messiness) of the profession itself. No textbook chapter, white paper, or academic article can fully convey the prospect of altering Continue Reading >>