For the last 10+ years, Gwen Stovall has worked as a biochemist and aptamer researcher in the CNS Freshman Research Initiative, where she leads a Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE) to identify aptamers, understand the underlying mechanisms and parameters of aptamer selections, and investigate aptamer specificity. As an educator, Gwen is committed to student empowerment and success, and seeks to improve student outcomes by mentoring, teaching, challenging, and engaging students.
Michael Starbird is a University Distinguished Teaching Professor of Mathematics at The University of Texas at Austin. He has been at UT his whole career except for leaves, including to the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New Jersey and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He has received more than fifteen teaching awards including the Mathematical Association of America's 2007 national teaching award, the Minnie Stevens Piper Professor statewide award, the UT Regents' Outstanding Teaching Award, and most of the UT-wide teaching awards.
Shelly Rodriguez is a Professor of Practice and instructor for the UTeach program in The College of Natural Sciences. She also directs UTeach Maker, a micro-credentialing program that helps preservice teachers bring innovative, project-based maker practices into their STEM classrooms. As a PTF, she is passionate about improving the career experiences of professional faculty at UT Austin.
Ruth Shear is a Professor of Practice in the Chemistry Department, and a Research Educator of the Urban Ecosystems research stream in the Freshman Research Initiative (FRI). After a PhD in Chemical Physics from Griffith University (Australia) and postdoctoral work at Stanford and Cornell, she started as a lecturer at UT Austin in 1996. After running the physical and analytical chemistry teaching labs for 10 years, she helped create FRI in 2006. She has been teaching Research Methods in various forms ever since.
I did my undergraduate work at Vanderbilt, with a double major in physics and math, and my Ph.D. work in physics at Harvard. At both institutions, I saw and experienced the positive difference that caring, committed instructors and a nurturing university community can make in students' lives. I have been a faculty member in the Physics department at UT Austin since 2010. I have taught introductory calculus-based mechanics for Physics majors, a Plan II Physics course for liberal arts honors students, and an upper-division course on Biological Physics.
Steven Finkelstein is a Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He received his B.S. degree from the University of Washington in 2003, his PhD in 2008 from Arizona State University, and from there he took a postdoctoral position at Texas A&M University. In 2011 he earned a Hubble Postdoctoral Fellowship which he took to the University of Texas in Austin, where he was hired on as faculty in 2012. His research focuses on the formation and evolution of galaxies in the early universe, and the interplay of these sources with reionization.
