Individual Fellow Initiatives
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.
Diversifying Our Course Materials
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Lee Ann Kahlor
(Project completed 2021) In my lectures, I rely on supplementary videos to break up the pace of the lecture and introduce new concepts. However, when I search for videos online, I have trouble finding a diverse representation. As a result, I end up with an oversampling of white male scholars in my course.
Facilitation of Student Success in Introductory Accounting
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Kristina Zvinakis
The students participating in this project are part of a group of students known as McCombs Success Scholars (MSS). Such students have been identified as potentially not as well prepared for academic success as some of their McCombs-school peers (i.e., they grew up in smaller cities/towns, their family’s socio-economic status tilts toward the lower end of the scale, they attended a small high school).
Increasing Geoscience Diversity Through Undergraduate Mentoring in Dual-Enrollment High School Introductory Earth Science Courses
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Joel Johnson
(Project completed 2021) Geosciences are one of the least diverse STEM fields in terms of participation by people from underrepresented minority groups. The problem addressed by my project is that Hispanic students in both high school and college not only have relatively little exposure to geoscience knowledge, but also have little exposure to geoscience career paths/opportunities, relatively few role models from similar backgrounds, and may feel like outsiders in geoscience departments at the university level.
C3 - Cross-Cohort Community
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Katie Tackett
In my role as Undergraduate Advisor for the Department of Special Education, I oversee the five-semester Professional Development Sequence (PDS) for pre-service teachers majoring in special education. Students apply for this program in the fall of their sophomore year to begin in the spring with at least two courses taken as a cohort. Starting in the fall of their junior year, students take all their courses together as a cohort for their final four semesters. The cohorts create long-lasting professional and personal networks and –in my opinion –lead to stronger special education teachers.
Global Learning Experiences
Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Stephanie Seidel Holmsten
Cross-cultural connections can deepen student engagement in the world around them and encourage their creativity about the course material. Such connections can happen in a UT classroom if the student body is particularly diverse, or if students participate in study abroad programs. Global connections are also being created through the Global Classrooms Initiative that connect UT students with students at universities from other countries through classroom activities, conversations and projects intentionally designed to encourage collaboration.
University of Texas Marketing Projects
Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Jade DeKinder
Marketing is inherently an applied science and, as a result, students learn the most when they can see marketing theories, constructs, and models in action. Marketing is at the intersection of so many academic disciplines—economics, statistics, psychology, sociology, organizational theory and decision science; and to see the way in which each of these disciplines influences marketing decisions requires the real-world dynamics of marketing-decision-making in a dynamic real-world context.
Integration of an Experiential Learning Module Into an Upper Division Science Course
Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Steven Vokes
Educational research has provided compelling evidence that science students learn most effectively when they are engaged in Experiential Learning, broadly defined as hands-on learning where students are doing meaningful work in their discipline under the guidance of experts. Ideally, students would be exposed to Experiential Learning at multiple stages. While programs have been successful in providing experiential approaches to underclassmen, no large-scale effort exists for upper division students at UT Austin.
Medieval Digital Research Lab: A Pilot Upper-Division Course
Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Daniel Birkholz
The idea for this pilot course grows directly out of departmental and university goals to increase opportunities for Experiential Learning and for new technology exposure in the Humanities; and to involve more undergraduate students in original faculty research.
STAMP of Success in Doctoral Education: Student Training, Advising, and Mentorship Practices
Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Jessica Toste
Success in a doctoral program can be captured by students’ adjustment to the academic community and their achievement. In recent years, growing concerns have been raised by media, policy makers, and academics about reported mental health issues amongst PhD students. Research suggests that the mental health of PhD students can be improved when there are available supports related to management of work-life balance, workload, decision-making, and leadership styles that lead to satisfactory and constructive work relations (Levecque et al., 2017).
Teaching in Real Time
Cohort: 2018
Fellow: Diane McDaniel Rhodes
We teach in challenging times. As the world, and our campuses, become more connected our students grapple with the impact of challenging events both on and off campus. Faculty have asked for support and guidance for how to proceed within the framework of semesters and syllabi in order to cope or respond. Our faculty needs resources to help recognize critical moments and support for our pedagogical resiliency.
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.
Curriculum Integration Through a 4-year Design Project and Cross-course Educational Tools
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Matthew Balhoff
In many curricula students find it difficult to understand the common thread and themes between their courses until near graduation (or ever). Thus, students are unable to benefit from the synergistic nature of a fully integrated program. Courses are taught by different instructors with different teaching styles and nomenclature (a potentially good thing), but all too often even the instructors are unaware of the material or educational objectives taught in complementary courses.
Teaching Patient Safety at the Bedside
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Chris Moriates
Creating a culture of patient safety in teaching hospitals results in safer care delivery. The many demands of the current clinical learning environment make it challenging to routinely and effectively include bedside teaching and role-modeling of patient safety. We used a “positive deviance” model, which has been applied in various settings to help change cultural practices, to identify clinical faculty who model and teach patient safety principles during direct patient care.
Sustainability Teaching and Research Network
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Lucy Atkinson
UT holds sustainability to be a core part of its mission and the Office of Sustainability is a central engine in incorporating issues of sustainability across “university policies, practices and curricula.” The university has taken important steps toward meeting these goals, yet these efforts are often isolated with little cross-campus conversation or exposure. My goal is to establish a network that serves as both an incubator and clearinghouse for sustainability-related teaching and research.
Collaborative Effort–Teaching General Physics
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Christina Markert
I have been teaching general physics for non-Physics majors since 2008. I have implemented interactive learning elements into my lecture and “real life” questions, which allows the students to have short (3-4 minutes) discussion in small groups to find solutions for the given questions. I have seen improvement in student engagement and finally in test scores, especially within the semester as the students embrace this style of teaching. However, in order to really affect improvement, I communicate with other physics faculty to reflect on the evaluation of successful teaching.
A Sustainable Way to Teach Data Mining and Mapping: Proof of Concept For a Flipped Computational Skill Instruction Module
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Lars Hinrichs
This project is directed at students with no prior knowledge of computer programming languages. When introducing complex and new skills such as computer programming in a classroom, teachers are often confronted with a lot of worried students and great numbers of very different questions, especially in humanities departments. The lecture setting is not well suited to address the needs of individual students.
Online Drivers Exercise
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Clint Tuttle
Since my first semester at UT (Fall 2011) I’ve taught about 10,000 students across all colleges. From this immense amount of student interaction, I’ve come to believe that many of our students lack the tools and techniques to define their own personal path to success and are not confident in how to best make decisions about their future. As a result of this, I believe many students are seeking what they see as a “safe path” (e.g.
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.
Freshman Opportunities for Research in the Geosciences (FORGe)
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Mary Poteet
I am working on a unique partnership between Austin Community College (ACC) and UT Austin to develop collaborative peer learning communities (PLCs) in the Geosciences with mixed cohorts of two-year college (2YC) and four-year college (4YC) students.
Race and Curriculum Revision Project
Cohort: 2017
Fellow: Keffrelyn Brown
While the U.S. is more racially open and culturally diverse than at any other time in its history, intolerance and marginalization—often around issues of race, culture and difference—continue to exist. This is punctuated in university settings where students of color find more access to opportunity, yet encounter socially and intellectually non-inclusive environments. UT-Austin stands at the forefront of concerns around race and equity, most recently with the Fisher decision and the current state lawsuit against UT-Austin regarding race discrimination in admissions.
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.
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.
Hispanic STEM Transfer Student Challenges and Resources
Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Maura Borrego
In 2012, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology documented the need to prepare an additional one million STEM professionals over the next ten years. To achieve this increase in STEM degree production, attention must be directed towards improving pathways for all students, specifically minority students who have been historically underserved. Research has indicated a need to focus on these underrepresented groups in STEM settings as enrollment patterns and access to higher education differs between groups of students.