by Ellis Kennedy, Materials Science and Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 Materials Science & Engineering 104 is a laboratory course taken by not only materials science and engineering students, but also international concurrent enrollment students and students from other majors because it offers hands-on exposure to techniques that are…
by Skyler Wang, Sociology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 In a 2020 midterm evaluation form I sent to my students, I included the question: “What makes writing a course paper challenging for you?” Aside from the usual suspects such as work overload, lack of motivation, procrastination, etc., I noticed a…
by Ashwin Mandakolathur Balu, Public Policy Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2021 Using experimental methods to establish causal relationships has been the holy grail of research in social sciences. However, it is a challenge to teach these concepts since it requires knowledge about sampling methods, statistics, and probability, as well as…
by Lise Gaston, English Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 My course “Introduction to the Writing of Verse” had a twofold aim: for students to cultivate a variety of poetic techniques and to develop the art of constructive criticism. While every student had experience writing poetry (they had to submit a…
by Anamika Chowdhury, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 “I practiced all the homework questions, attended all classes, and even went over lecture notes multiple times… still failed to score well. I give up!” I was rather perplexed to hear such distraught statements from several students in…
by Clare Ibarra, History Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2017 The reality of teaching History at the university level is that the professor and the student walk into the lecture hall with two totally different expectations of what it is they will accomplish in that space. While students believe they will…
by Leila Mansouri, English Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 Engaging with scholarly criticism for the first time is daunting for undergraduates. Accustomed to thinking of academic books and articles as authoritative, students often struggle instead to point out what scholars have misunderstood or overlooked. Likewise, unsure who (aside from their…
by Rajan Kumar, Materials Science and Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 In Spring 2015, I served as the GSI for Properties of Materials (E45), an introductory materials science and engineering course usually taken by freshmen and sophomore students. My primary responsibility for the course was to lead the lab…
by Eduardo A Escobar, Near Eastern Studies Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2016 The problem of translation remains one of the most enduring challenges for scholars of literary cultures. Translating texts from any historical period can be a challenge, but reading texts from the “dead” civilizations of the ancient world, including…
by Shelly Steward, Sociology To make theory a way of seeing and understanding the world, [students] needed to be reminded of it outside of lectures, sections, and assignments. How could I insert sociological ideas into students’ everyday lives beyond the classroom? My strategy to address this problem was to create a course Twitter account.