Improving Scientific Literacy and Climate Change Understanding for all UT Students
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Steven Finkelstein
In CNS we teach ~6500 non-science majors in our introductory classes each year (>2000 in Astronomy alone). These are the last science courses these students take, which presents us with an opportunity to make a lasting impression. I propose to lead a Faculty Learning Community (FLC) to design module focused on scientific literacy and the science behind climate change. This module will be based on active learning, making use of the abundance of research that shows students retain information better by doing rather than listening.
Mentored Research Learning: An Evaluation
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Michael Findley
Mentored research defies the traditional higher education approach, which separates research and teaching into distinct activities. Instead, mentored research fully integrates faculty research activities and student learning. In this approach, researchers do not simply carry out their research in isolation with a paid set of PhD-level research assistants. Further, students do not simply learn from in-class lectures or more traditional out-of-classroom experiences, such as study abroad.
Pharmacy Practice Lab Redesign
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Ashley Castleberry
The College of Pharmacy is embarking on one of the biggest curricular revisions in the past decade by creating a Pharmacy Practice Lab sequence spanning all six semesters of our didactic program. The course series will combine content from seven existing courses in order to decrease redundancy and duplication to create increased alignment and reinforcement. Rather than students learning content within “the silo” of a single course, students will be required to retain and apply their knowledge and skills throughout the entire curriculum.
Podcasting as Experiential Learning in Classics
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Deborah Beck
Students in pre-modern disciplines face greater challenges in finding productive and engaging avenues for Experiential Learning than students in fields whose connections to current events are more self-evident. Podcasting offers students of ancient Greece and Rome a way to connect with people outside their classrooms, both other students and interested members of the general public. It also requires them to hone their oral presentation skills and to think about how to present the same idea to different audiences, both of which are fundamental to critical thinking.
Facilitation of Student Success in Introductory Accounting
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Kristina Zvinakis
The students participating in this project are part of a group of students known as McCombs Success Scholars (MSS). Such students have been identified as potentially not as well prepared for academic success as some of their McCombs-school peers (i.e., they grew up in smaller cities/towns, their family’s socio-economic status tilts toward the lower end of the scale, they attended a small high school).
C3 - Cross-Cohort Community
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Katie Tackett
In my role as Undergraduate Advisor for the Department of Special Education, I oversee the five-semester Professional Development Sequence (PDS) for pre-service teachers majoring in special education. Students apply for this program in the fall of their sophomore year to begin in the spring with at least two courses taken as a cohort. Starting in the fall of their junior year, students take all their courses together as a cohort for their final four semesters. The cohorts create long-lasting professional and personal networks and –in my opinion –lead to stronger special education teachers.
Towards an Anti-Racist Climate in Nursing
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Danica Sumpter
(Project completed 2021) Systems of oppression gain their power from silence. Faculty in the School of Nursing and across the country are not always comfortable engaging in conversations about race and racism, but these discussions are necessary in order to address the disproportionately poor health outcomes experienced by BIPOC. In response to student and faculty concerns, this project seeks to move our school towards an antiracist climate by targeting multiple layers.
Difficult Dialogues Faculty Learning Community
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Pauline Strong
(Project completed 2021) Since its inception at UT in 2006, the Difficult Dialogues (DD) program has worked with over 40 faculty in 8 colleges or schools to develop Difficult Dialogue signature courses, i.e., introductory UGS courses that promote respectful and productive dialogue about difficult and controversial social issues, including race and ethnicity, gender and sexuality, religion, human rights, immigration, evolution, climate change and sustainability, and illness and mortality.
Valuing Humanities Education at the University of Texas
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Julia Mickenberg
For some time now the humanities have been “in crisis,” but the crisis is becoming acute: majors in nearly all humanities fields have been sharply declining, enrollments are down, hiring of tenure-track faculty is down, and, at some colleges and universities across the United States, whole departments are being eliminated. Here at the University of Texas, majors that are growing seem to be ones that promise a literal return on investment (invest money in a degree and get that money back, in the form of a well-paying job upon graduation) or at least suggest an obvious and practical use.
Building Information Modeling (BIM) as a Proxy for Project-Based Learning Integration across the Architectural Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Fernanda Leite
The University of Texas at Austin’s Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering (CAEE) department has taken several steps towards improving the preparation of Architectural Engineering students with respect to modern engineering tools, including the computing tools commonly used in engineering practice.