Individual Fellow Initiatives
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
From Putting in Time to Meaningful Civic Engagement: Transforming Service Learning in an Undergraduate Social Work Program
Cohort: 2016
Fellow: Vicki Packheiser
As a Provost’s Teaching Fellow, Vicki Packheiser is transforming Experiential Learning in Social Work’s foundational courses. This two-course sequence has long required 45 hours of service learning per course with a community agency. Social Work pre-majors contribute 10,000+ hours of service to the Austin community, serving as UT ambassadors while they gain experience that grounds their academics in future years. But the implementation has not lived up to the potential.
Thinking Beyond the Four Years: Assessing a Program for Coaching Career Success
Cohort: 2015
Fellow: Brad Love
The project is a longitudinal partnership with the Vick Center for Strategic Advising, College of Education faculty, Project 2021 staff, and other Longhorns to measure existing attempts to teach useful skills such as emotional intelligence so that students can make constructive decisions while at UT and then be prepared for the significant life transition that is one’s first career post-graduation. The key activities include semesterly surveys and interviews with students using Vick Center services such as in-person visits and online modules.