Individual Fellow Initiatives
Offering Real-World Opportunities for Students Enrolled in Statistics and Data Science Undergraduate Research
Cohort: 2023
Fellow: Layla Guyot
There is a need for offering data analysis support to our local communities. While many undergraduates
enrolled in our courses have expressed interest in conducting data analysis research projects, our department
doesn’t currently have a systematic way to offer these types of experiences. Thus, the primary goal of this
community-based service project is to provide both experiential learning and research opportunities for
undergraduates while supporting the broader Austin-area. Specifically, this project will coordinate with local
Teaching Engineering through Murder Mysteries and Personalized AI Tutor
Cohort: 2023
Fellow: Krishna Kumar
CE 357: Introduction to Geotechnical Engineering is a third year required undergraduate course that has traditionally been a challenging course for students due to its abstract nature. The average course rating for CE 357 is 3.8 in the last twenty years. I have successfully transformed the lecture modules to achieve a significant increase in interest and students’ performance in the course. Although preliminary work looks promising, I want to scientifically evaluate the effectiveness of the course and publish the findings.
Teaching Law and Religion
Cohort: 2023
Fellow: Samy Ayoub
The aim of my proposed project is then the integration of the seemingly disparate studies of law and
religion. The study of both is an important branch of comparative law and global legal history that I aim
Strengthening the Sustainability Studies Degree
Cohort: 2023
Fellow: Jules Elkins
Sustainability Studies graduated its first sizeable cohort in 2022, and the program has yet to undergo a
comprehensive review. Conversations with students revealed their desire for better access to the professional
Imagery for Critical Thinking: A Pedagogical Approach for Engineering and Science Students
Cohort: 2022
Fellow: Navid Saleh
Most science and engineering courses are founded on abstract mathematical and/or analytical theories/concepts. Though the abstract concepts are essential to describe underlying scientific and engineering principles, the teaching pedagogy largely misses out on the utilization of imagery. We expect our students to master the subject we teach, but rarely do we provide them with the necessary tools to synthesize their acquired knowledge. Innovation gets stifled in the maze of abstract theories.
Enhancing Assessment Practices in Large Physics Courses
Cohort: 2022
Fellow: Jonathan Perry
There exists a gap between instruction and assessment in large introductory physics courses. Recent
projects supported by the PTFs and the Texas Mindset Initiative have focused on classroom instruction and
Cola Interdisciplinary Program Instructors' Community of Practice
Cohort: 2022
Fellow: Elon Lang
There are two main issues that this project hopes to address. The first is the student and instructor malaise that
has been noticed by educators and administrators across our whole campus since the return to face-to-face
Longhorn Mindfulness Project
Cohort: 2022
Fellow: Tolga Ozyurtcu
This project focuses on mental health on campus. Specifically, the mental health and self-regulation challenges that mindfulness practices have been empirically shown to address: anxiety, depression, focus, and procrastination. There is strong empirical support for these benefits emerging around the 8-week mark of regular practice (10-15 minutes per day), which is feasible in the confines of the semester calendar.
Sync-Up - Teach-Up - Texas Teach-Up on Demand
Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Julie Schell
Educators need increased opportunities to participate in Texas Teach-Up in order to benefit from modeling teaching at UT Austin. This project will explore two specific elements of this problem. Currently you can only participate during officially scheduled time/dates, you cannot participate on-demand. This limits access to only those who can make it, or are a part of the university, during the on-schedule times and dates. Additionally, as an on-schedule event, seats have closing limits. Some people who want to participate may not be able to do so because the session is full.
The Compassion Project
Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Natalie Czimskey
In a Gallup poll of UT alumni (2014), only 15-17% of UT alumni strongly believed that faculty cared about them as a person. The Gallup report (2014) relayed information on various measures of alumni well-being. Gallup found that college experience was more likely to correlate to alumni well-being than the type of university attended. Having a professor who they believed cared about them as a person was the number one driving factor in alumni well-being. This means there is long-term impact to the short-term care of our students.
Digital Research Apprenticeship: Projects For Intersectional Justice
Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Tanya Clement
Research and scholarship in Digital Humanities applies technology to humanities questions and subjects technology to humanistic interrogation. DH pedagogy is difficult to develop because DH is inherently collaborative and interdisciplinary, crossing the humanities, archaeology, arts and architecture, computer science, film and media studies, information studies, geography, and the social sciences.
Internship in the Media Industries
Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Wenhong Chen
Internships have increasingly become a critical step in the college-to-career transition in the media industries and beyond.
Developing Experiential Learning in Organizations
Cohort: 2021
Fellow: Amy Nathan Wright
While there are a few internship courses offered by the College of Liberal Arts, and a handful of internship classes offered in individual programs and departments, most of these are web-based courses, and none seem to offer other organizational experiences, such as service or leadership experiences.
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).
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.
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.
Teamwork Makes the Dreamwork
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Madeleine Holland
While instructors across disciplines frequently rely on group or team projects in their courses, and the ability to work effectively in a team is a highly valued workplace skill, many courses currently lack explicit content or instruction focused on building skills related to teamwork. Students will be provided with a series of short (10-15 minute) pre-recorded videos, in which various aspects of working effectively in a team are taught. Students may be asked to complete short comprehension check or reflection questions related to these videos.
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.
Watering Two Plants With One Hose: Protocolization of Progress to Promote Practical Resource Sharing
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Nico Osier
When I first became faculty at UT Austin, I inherited an existing course; for a variety of reasons, I felt the need to overhaul all of the lectures. This process, however, proved time-consuming and I found myself unable to complete all of the lectures as originally planned prior to the start of the semester. Moreover, even the lectures that I did overhaul continued to have flaws and I was growing increasingly frustrated with the continued inadequacy of my lessons, despite devoting considerable time and energy to them. This was disheartening and my other responsibilities (e.g.
Race, Democracy, and Global Social Justice: How Studying Inequality and Vulnerability can Transform the World
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Peniel Joseph
My initiative will achieve better learning outcomes in undergraduate and graduate students in History and the LBJ School by examining the intersection of history and contemporary policy, specifically its disparate impact on communities of color. Currently, departments, centers, faculty and students work independently of one another and lack valuable opportunities to collaborate. Genuine collaboration has evolved into a rare and difficult concept.
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.
Student Success and Well-being
Cohort: 2020
Fellow: Nina Telang
My project is designed to support engineering students primarily in their freshman and sophomore years, when they struggle the most, resulting in high failing rates. Students do not always implement the best study strategies as they transition from high school to college, and do not prioritize their self-care and well-being. College level coursework is significantly more difficult compared to high school level courses and require more critical and abstract thinking.
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.
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.
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.