Teaching Effectiveness Award Essays

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 >>

By Taormina Lepore, Integrative Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 Teaching is most effective when it reaches students in an equitable way. One issue I’ve encountered in my teaching is that individual accommodations are provided for disabled students, but very often, disability accessibility isn’t included as a core facet of Continue Reading >>

By Dhruva Karkada, Physics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2022 Physics students often struggle to voice their confusion when presented with challenging material. In my experience, both as a student and as an instructor, this hesitation is often deeply rooted in a sense of shame: asking questions, especially in front of Continue Reading >>