Teaching Effectiveness Award Essays

by Carly Trachtman, Agricultural and Resource Economics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 A key concept taught at the beginning of any development economics course is the social welfare function, as many poverty and inequality measures are examples of such functions. Specifically, a social welfare function is a function that takes Continue Reading >>

by Jonas Teupert, German Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 In my Advanced German courses, students learn about German culture and improve their writing and discussion competencies. The combination of content and language instruction overcomes curricular bifurcation and can increase learning effectiveness. Ideal for this approach are collaborative group projects, which Continue Reading >>

by Andrew Shi, Mathematics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 In Math 128A/B, students get their first exposure to mathematical problems that lack exact answers, where only approximate answers can be found. The course goes beyond just finding these answers; it emphasizes the design, comparison, and implementation of algorithms that find Continue Reading >>

by Kate Pennington, Agricultural and Resource Economics Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 Economists have an outsized impact on the policies that shape our society, but they don’t tend to be very representative of the people who comprise it. At Berkeley, women make up a smaller share of the faculty in Continue Reading >>

by Seiya Ono, Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 My first ever college class I walked into was a discussion section for EE16A, the introductory course into electrical engineering. Back then, I had no idea how challenging it was to introduce circuit design and analysis, concepts Continue Reading >>

by Maryam Moeini Meybodi, Graduate School of Education Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 At the first day of my Persian 11 series classes, designed specifically for heritage speakers, I ask my students what has motivated them to learn Persian. Ninety-nine percent of the time learning about the Persian culture/history is Continue Reading >>

by Haefa Mansour, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 Throughout my own experiences as a student, I’ve always been troubled by the seemingly gaping chasm between the problems taught in engineering classes and the real-world challenges they are supposed to emulate. Typical assessments of students’ understanding involve Continue Reading >>

by Samuel Kieke, Sociology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 Challenge: Over the past three semesters that I have taught social theory, I have noticed that most students come into the course with the expectation that they will not be able to understand the texts. Most recall horror stories from their peers Continue Reading >>

by Natalie Graham, Environmental Science, Policy and Management Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2020 For the fall 2019 semester course called Biogeography, I devised a new interdisciplinary learning experience across physical sciences, social sciences, and humanities. Biogeography was offered at UC Berkeley for the first time in many years in fall 2018. Continue Reading >>