Alison Norman

A headshot of Alison Norman, a white woman with dark brown hair, smiling in a green cardigan.

Associate Professor of Instruction

Initiative Focus

Dr. Alison N. Norman is an Associate Professor of Instruction and the Associate Chair for Undergraduate Education in the Department of Computer Science at The University of Texas at Austin. She is also a UT Austin Provost's Teaching Fellow, a 2019 Regent's Outstanding Teaching Award recipient, a 2017 President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award recipient, and a 2017 College of Natural Sciences Teaching Excellence Award recipient. Alison works to improve the experience of students in computer science. As a Provost's Teaching Fellow, she developed a series of micro-workshops to help faculty better understand the experience of their underrepresented students. The materials for those workshops have now been shared across the campus.

Department
Logo of PTF acronym

Creating Climate Change: Busting Bias and Creating Welcoming Environments

Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Alison Norman

My belief is that many faculty want to create a welcoming environment for all students, but they just don’t know how, don’t realize that they are not already, or don’t understand the student interactions in their classes that are problematic. I believe the first step to remedying the problem is education, so that the faculty may first correct any of their own behaviors and then provide leadership to the students and help guide them away from inappropriate behavior.