Individual Fellow Initiatives
Clinical Advancement in Simulated Environments
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Courtney Byrd
Among the communication disorders considered to be fundamental to the scope of practice for speech-language pathologists, stuttering or what is also commonly referred to as a fluency disorder has historically been and continues to be the disorder for which most speech-language pathologists report minimal to no clinical or academic exposure and/or competency.
Animals, Sustainability, and the Environment: A Service Learning Model for the Humanities
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Janet Davis
This project has provided my students with an experience in hands-on service learning, thus fostering a synergistic understanding of historical analysis and community engagement. “Animals and American Culture: Select Historical Perspectives” is an interdisciplinary upper-division undergraduate seminar that attracts a diverse student body in the liberal arts and natural sciences. During the first week of class, students are required to contact one of two local organizations--or, with my permission, an organization of their own choosing.
Drama-Based Pedagogy: Refinement and Alignment for the University Context
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Katie Dawson
Active, embodied learning and creative teaching is needed in higher education, yet many faculty struggle with how to take up the approach. My PTF project engaged six faculty members from across UT - American Studies, Biology, Art/Design, Classics, Education, and Theatre- in a 15 week faculty learning community focused on active and creative teaching strategies. Through the project, faculty members explored active and creative teaching methods in monthly meetings, and re-designed at least two lectures to use active/creative teaching approaches.
Peer Learning Assistant Program Guidelines and Curricula
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Cynthia LaBrake
The Peer Learning Assistant Program within the Department of Chemistry is a program developed with resources from the Provost Teaching Fellows program to enhance the educational experience of students taking general chemistry by training and employing Peer Learning Assistants (PLAs) to service large blended general chemistry courses. The large (300 –500 students) blended courses have replaced the straight lecture model with active, student centered, learning. Active learning requires coaching and in a large class it is impossible to implement with only one instructor and one tea
McCombs Student Journal
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Sanford Leeds
The McCombs Business Journal was an effort to give students an opportunity to read and write about research. We recruited students, worked with the students to establish an organizational structure, set expectations for members, and selected student leaders. Students read a significant amount of research and wrote summaries, focusing on how that research impacts the real world.
Thinking Beyond the Four Years: Assessing a Program for Coaching Career Success
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Brad Love
The project is a longitudinal partnership with the Vick Center for Strategic Advising, College of Education faculty, Project 2021 staff, and other Longhorns to measure existing attempts to teach useful skills such as emotional intelligence so that students can make constructive decisions while at UT and then be prepared for the significant life transition that is one’s first career post-graduation. The key activities include semesterly surveys and interviews with students using Vick Center services such as in-person visits and online modules.
Professional Development for Undergraduate Students Majoring in the Biological Sciences
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Christopher Shank
I seek the opportunity to create a professional development curriculum that would provide students a structured vehicle for developing professional confidence and self-awareness, and facilitate early success in an increasingly competitive ‘real-world.’ My desire to work on this idea as a Provost Teaching Fellow stems from the overwhelmingly positive student response to professional development activities that I have incorporated in several of my courses.
Freshman Introduction to Research in Engineering (FIRE)
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Carolyn Seepersad
The goal of this initiative is to establish a freshman research program for mechanical engineering students that can serve as a template for an engineering-wide freshman research program. Many first-year students express an interest in participating in engineering research early in their college careers, but the perceived barriers can be high. It can be difficult for first-year students to navigate the research enterprise, and many professors are hesitant to hire first-year students. The potential advantages of freshman research, however, are much greater than the barriers
Nutrition in the Kitchen
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Lydia Steinman
Compounding the challenge of consuming a healthy diet is the fact that many students have little or no familiarity with preparing their own food. The result is inadequate diets that do not support optimal health and academic performance.
Bevosourcing: Tools to Involve Students in Citizen Science and Online Data Publication
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Adam Rabinowitz
Digital archives and the internet have made it possible for non-experts to make major contributions to research through crowdsourcing and citizen science. UT has fascinating and important collections of primary sources for the humanities, many of which have been digitized. But before my PTF project, there were no digital tools at UT to facilitate crowdsourcing as a pedagogical strategy, engaging students with historical documents while enriching the collections themselves. The project therefore proposed to develop two UT-based crowdsourcing platforms.
Graduate Student Training and Support in Lower-Division Literature Classes
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Brian Bremen
Because there is only one other required course for English majors (the research seminar), E314 is taught with special attention to the skills and experiences UT English majors need for their later coursework. All E314 classes have the dual tasks of introducing students to our discipline and preparing them for success in upper-division courses. All E314 courses also emphasize the teaching both of critical methods and of critical writing and revision.
Peer Evaluation of Teaching: Policy and Process
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Keith Brown
A primary tool in helping instructors improve their teaching skills is a careful assessment of the strengths and weaknesses they exhibit in the classroom environment. While end-of-semester student evaluations can offer valuable feedback on these matters, the numerical summaries and written commentaries those evaluations provide are often too unfocused to help teachers progress at their craft from one semester to the next.
Peer Teaching Observation as an Essential Element for Faculty Development
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Patrick Davis
Based on a long-standing interest in peer observation in my own college, the intent of this project was to foster a broad campus discussion on the importance of this collegial practice for improving teaching and learning and enhancing faculty development.
Transforming Health Professional Education through Collaborative Inter-professional Learning
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Carol Delville
With the much-anticipated addition of a medical school on The University of Texas at Austin campus, we have an ideal opportunity to reexamine health-professional education, and plan for a more collaborative interprofessional education approach to address the future health-care needs of Texas, the United States and world health. The goal of an interprofessional education approach is to prepare health professional students to deliberately work together with the common goal of building a safer and better patient-centered and community/population oriented health care system.
Identifying Successful Learning Strategies in Online and Blended Classrooms
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Jen Ebbeler
In order to better advise students, we need to have a fuller understanding of how individual students learn in various environments; what strategies tend to work best in online vs blended classrooms; and what types of students are going to profit most from the advantages—and be harmed least by the disadvantages—of each learning environment. The project will use the accompanying grant to fund a study that compares student learning strategies and success in the online and blended versions of Introduction to Ancient Rome (CC 302).
Communication Scholars Program
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Mike Mackert
The primary purpose of the Health Communication Scholars Program was to improve training of graduate students interested in health communication to engage in interdisciplinary collaboration and secure grant funding for research projects. More structured education and experience with this process as graduate students would better prepare these students for expectations they will face as junior faculty–to work with colleagues in other fields, find creative ways to align research interests, and propose projects for competitive funding.
Integrating Computational Techniques in the Engineering Curriculum
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Rick Neptune
Many engineering systems are too complex to be studied with experimental or analytical methods. Thus, computational techniques are an essential element in the engineering profession. The current mechanical engineering curriculum introduces these tools during their sophomore year in ME 318 – Engineering Computational Methods, but there is limited opportunity for “spiral learning” to reinforce the concepts and techniques learned.
Transforming the Classroom: Engaging Faculty Step-by-Step
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Penne Restad
Often when faculty express an interest in exploring and adopting new teaching, they ask: Where should I begin? What should I do? How will it help? If an instructor will take even a small step, the next may be easier. Education specialists advise us to create multiple, low-risk settings that encourage students to try new ideas and test new skills. It would seem that the same advice applies to developing one’s own teaching practice and in encouraging useful change among colleagues.
CS Studio: Teaching Introductory Programming to At-Risk Students in a Small Class Structure
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Michael Scott
CS312 is the introductory programming class for computer science majors. It teaches students structured programming: designing and implementing computer programs that solve nontrivial problems. CS312 is the first required course for Computer Science majors. It is part of the four course pre CS program. CS is different than many of the other disciplines in the College of Natural Science. Most students have some exposure to math, chemistry, biology, and even physics during their secondary education. And some have the opportunity to take Computer Science courses.
Foundations of Data Analysis:A Transformative Dual-Credit Course to Prepare Texas Seniors to Succeed in Higher Education
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Cathy Stacy
SSC 302 is an introductory course that blends the skills of data analysis, basic modeling techniques and inferential statistics. Many UT students complete this course to satisfy their core math requirement. I believe the content of SSC 302 should be made available to students prior to their enrollment here at UT, both to accelerate their preparedness for college and to help inform their choice of major trajectories once they are here.
COLA’s Teaching Mentor Program
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: Sean Theriault
New faculty hires have many resources at their disposal to improve their teaching. In fact, so many resources exist that it can be paralyzing. What I propose is not an investment in offices or institutions, but rather in people. By virtue of completing a dissertation, most Ph.D.s are proficient at research. Regrettably, the correlation between research and teaching is not perfect; though a perusal of the teachers in the Academy of Distinguished Teachers shows that a strong correlation very well may exist. Teaching, regrettably, usually only becomes a problem when it is a problem.
Data Drive Course Design: Differentiation of Chemistry Concept Retention between Standard and Hybrid Courses
Cohort: 2014
Fellow: David Vanden Bout
To date, we have had a number of sections of CH301/CH302 that have utilized the hybrid framework to varying extents. In this new hybrid model, the in-class learning is supported by a significant set of online resources to support independent learning outside of the classroom. This approach marries the flexibility and customized nature of web based learning modules to deliver the factual knowledge and procedural knowledge with relevant, engaging classroom based instruction that will serve to motivationally engage the students.