Individual Fellow Initiatives

Displaying 1 - 17 of 17
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Peer Mentor Leadership Project

Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Gwendolyn Stovall

UT CNS Freshman Research Initiative (FRI) peer mentors are a critical component of FRI success! FRI peer mentors, many serving as student teachers, guide undergraduate students in scientific research activities. For many, that includes leading meetings, providing student feedback, creatively solving problems and helping students connect the dots, honing interpersonal social skills, effectively communicating, and more – all 21st Century skills (Trilling and Fadel, 2009).

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Making New Scientists: Supporting the Training of Incoming Science Majors

Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Ruth Shear

Traditional science degree programs concentrate primarily on content and are not known for preparing their graduates with other skills needed for scientific careers.

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Engineering Sentences: A Cross-Disciplinary Training Program

Cohort: 2020
Fellow: D'Arcy Randall

Although Cockrell School of Engineering (CSE) undergraduates take a required engineering writing class, which I teach for Chemical Engineering, they typically struggle with writing laboratory and long-form research reports. Helping CSE students to overcome this obstacle matters because writing technical reports prepares engineering students for the writing-intensive work of a professional engineer. Faculty teaching these classes would also benefit from higher quality student work.

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Being Human in Physics

Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Vernita Gordon

(Project completed 2023) At UT Austin, undergraduate women are about twice as likely to leave the physics major then are undergraduate men. This does not arise primarily from academic difficulties–women physics majors and men physics majors are dismissed (for academic reasons) or drop out at roughly the same rates. Rather, women are more likely to switch out of the physics major into other majors than are men.

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Personal Financial Literacy Among UT Undergraduates

Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Heidi Toprac

Everyone needs to understand personal finance. Sadly, a large body of research indicates that most American adults fail basic tests of personal financial literacy. This project aims to determine whether there is sufficient personal financial literacy education on campus, and, if not, how that problem can be corrected. 

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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.

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Strategic Course Redesign Focused on Professional Skills

Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Kristin Patterson

The goal of this project is to shift the focus of a set of introductory courses, that are heavy in disciplinary content, in order to make space for greater emphasis on professional skills, such as information literacy, quantitative reasoning, communication, and others. The main challenge in accomplishing the goal is that the particular courses involved have high-enrollment—2300 undergraduates enroll in each course each year and they are taught by a team of 13 faculty. Because many faculty teach the courses, it is difficult to standardize the curriculum and the expectations across sections.

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Data Analysis Tools: Integrating Computational and Statistical Techniques in the Environmental Engineering Curriculum 

Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Paola Passalacqua

The goal of this project is to train the next generation of environmental engineers in computing and statistical techniques to solve big data problems. Current undergraduate students in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering have little to no exposure to computational and statistical methods for data analysis (e.g., big data collected from sensor networks). I proposed to integrate computational techniques in several courses throughout the Environmental Engineering Degree.

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BA Colloquium in Theatre and Dance

Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Andrew Carlson

The BA program in Theatre and Dance lacks adequate faculty mentorship and an identity as a program. A recent poll of BA students in Theatre and Dance on strengths and weaknesses of the program revealed that many BA students see themselves as “second-class citizens” in a department that offers three highly structured and mentored BFA programs in dance, teacher certification, and acting.

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Performance Training for Instructors

Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Jen Moon

Currently, there is a lot of momentum to support instructors interested in employing evidence-based pedagogy in the classroom. However, a significant portion of the success of a course depends on the instructor’s ability to positively engage with students. Many (if not most) instructors have never been formally trained in effective communication methods that engage students and foster trust between students and faculty.

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Empowering Undergraduate Entrepreneurship at UT: The Longhorn Entrepreneurship Ambassador Program

Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Luis Martins

Austin is a hotbed for innovation and entrepreneurship, and yet, until recently The University of Texas at Austin provided few structured undergraduate programs focused intentionally on entrepreneurship. That realization propelled PTF Luis Martins to propose the creation of a minor in entrepreneurship as his PTF project. The Entrepreneurship Minor, offered by the McCombs School of Business and open to all undergraduate students at UT Austin, is now a reality, and began accepting applications in February.

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The Collaboratory: Interdisciplinary, Arts-based Pedagogy for Use in New and Emerging Learning Environments

Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Michelle Habeck

One of the top concerns from many employers is that college graduates lack the “soft skills” (collaboration, team-based skills)and professionalism they require. Collaboratory students will have the opportunity to master the latest skills in their field and develop “soft skills” like creative problem-solving problem solving and communication to help them thrive over the course of their careers.

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Teaching the University: Enhancing Student Understanding and Appreciation of the University

Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Hina Azam

My project is intended to address a lack of understanding among most undergraduate students of the university both as an institution and as a space in which intellectual life is pursued.  This lack of understanding among undergraduates is intertwined, I believe, with a broader lack of appreciation for higher education/academia in our cultural and civic life.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.