Individual Fellow Initiatives
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
Centralization of UT Resources
Cohort: 2022
Fellow: Amy Kristin Sanders
Resources related to accessibility at UT-Austin are not centralized in a single location that makes them easy for
students, staff and faculty to find them. As a result, UT community members cannot efficiently access the
resources they need because numerous different departments and units are responsible for them. Thus,
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
One Book One School Community-Wide Reading Program
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Amelia Acker
(Project completed 2021) Reading in community broadens our understanding of how we belong and how we connect to one another. I propose to develop and execute a community-wide collective reading program including related events programming around one book that addresses topics related to diversity, equity, and inclusion issues featuring a topic around the design, use, and implementation of data-driven technologies at UT’s iSchool. Typical diversity and inclusion initiatives in iSchools focus on curriculum development.
Towards an Anti-Racist Climate in Nursing
Cohort: 2019
Fellow: Danica Sumpter
(Project completed 2021) Systems of oppression gain their power from silence. Faculty in the School of Nursing and across the country are not always comfortable engaging in conversations about race and racism, but these discussions are necessary in order to address the disproportionately poor health outcomes experienced by BIPOC. In response to student and faculty concerns, this project seeks to move our school towards an antiracist climate by targeting multiple layers.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.