Teaching Effectiveness Award Essays

By Yicheng Zhu, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 How can we enhance student engagement and cultivate genuine interest? I asked myself this question before serving as a Graduate Student Instructor (GSI) for EE 113/213A: Power Electronics, an upper-division/graduate-level course centered around circuit analysis and design. Continue Reading >>

By Karen Villegas, Education Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 As an undergraduate student, I remember dreading group work and public presentations. As a doctoral candidate, I came to value the experience of collaborating on research projects and presenting our findings at academic conferences. There was something special about genuine collaboration, Continue Reading >>

By Darcy Tuttle, Ancient History & Mediterranean Archaeology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 Before taking their first college history course, many first-year students have limited experience engaging with primary sources and lack confidence critically evaluating secondary sources written by experts. For my R1B course, “Conversations with the Dead in Ancient Continue Reading >>

By Matteo Tranchero, Haas School of Business Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 Case-based teaching is the primary pedagogical approach used in postgraduate business education. Most classes in the Master of Business Administration (MBA) involve the in-class discussion of case studies based on real-world situations where managers must make complex decisions. Continue Reading >>

By Alex Ramiller, City and Regional Planning Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 One of the most challenging aspects of teaching U.S. housing policy is conveying the complicated progression of events and policies that contributed to the contemporary housing policy landscape. It is impossible to discuss housing policy without wading into Continue Reading >>

By Nicolette Puskar, Chemistry Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 The reality that humans can only see the world at the milliscale level is an unfortunate tragedy for chemists who long to witness the nanoscale building blocks of matter they aim to study. Relegated to using theoretical models and molecule building Continue Reading >>

By Madeleine Levac, Philosophy Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024             The launch of ChatGPT in 2022 introduced new challenges for educators, several of which were front of mind as I prepared to GSI a philosophy course last fall. There was the obvious issue of academic dishonesty. We lack a surefire Continue Reading >>

By Thomas Lee, Political Science Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 Many students in my political theory courses every semester would come to my office hours distressed about how they should go about writing their political theory papers. While the wide-ranging possibilities of political theorizing reflected in the paper questions were Continue Reading >>

By Britt Leake, Political Science Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2024 Teaching Middle Eastern politics to students is difficult in the best of times. Teaching a class entitled War in the Middle East recently at UC Berkeley is perhaps uniquely challenging. Our students have to learn about a dizzying array of Continue Reading >>