By Anna Scharnagl, Integrative Biology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2025 It is not commonplace for the position of GSI to be involved in curriculum redesign or other changes to a course’s structure, but I have been fortunate enough to be able to teach courses here at UC Berkeley…
By Emily Thompson, Anthropology Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2025 One of the central challenges I encountered while teaching The Image and the Archive: The Power and Politics of Visual Anthropology was helping students develop critical reading and writing skills in response to visual materials.
By Anahit Manoukian, Spanish and Portuguese Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2025 One of the most challenging aspects of teaching a second-semester reading and composition course is introducing students to secondary sources. When I designed my “Letters from the Hispanic World” course, I intentionally focused on primary texts to…
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 Clarissa Towle, Materials Science and Engineering Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2019 Challenge: MSE 45L is an intense materials science laboratory course for which I was a GSI in the Fall of 2017. This was the first university-level class that most of my students had taken, as many of them…
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 Sonia Travaglini, College of Engineering (Home Department: Mechanical Engineering) Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 Working to support the Masters of Engineering capstone projects, my hardest challenge was teaching students to communicate the value and significance of their highly technical work. Students had to learn science writing; how to use…
by Abigail Stepnitz, Legal Studies (Home Department: Jurisprudence and Social Policy) Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 We often ask students, either as part of a discussion or on an exam, to express an opinion on a complicated topic. What we’re hoping they’ll do is develop and defend a position based…
by Julia Lewandoski, History Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 After several semesters as a GSI and Reader for history classes, it has become clear to me that a concise, clear, and specific thesis statement is essential to a successful student paper. Developing a strong thesis statement enables students to frame…
by Kathleen Cruz Gutierrez, South and Southeast Asian Studies Teaching Effectiveness Award Essay, 2018 The annotated bibliography is an important component of a research-based undergraduate course. But in most of my experience as a student and as a teacher, I found the exercise to complete it empty. Even after providing…