The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) is proud to celebrate the completion of the 2025 RISE Program (Resources and Insights for Starting Educators), a dynamic summer experience for early-career faculty at UT Austin. Now in its second year, the RISE Program continues to cultivate a supportive community of educators while empowering participants with teaching strategies, practical resources, and renewed confidence for the academic year ahead.
This year’s RISE participants, 20 tenure-track and professional-track faculty in their first five years at UT, represented a wide range of disciplines and departments across campus. Over five summer sessions, they engaged in interactive workshops, small-group discussions, and open conversations around five topics:
- The UT Teaching and Learning Ecosystem
- Course Design
- Assessment of Learning
- Engagement
- Course Culture
Each session blended structured, research-informed content with informal opportunities to build relationships and share ideas with colleagues. The sesions were designed to be welcoming, reflective, and energizing, making space for faculty to explore new approaches and connect with the broader UT teaching community.
RISE participants left the program with fresh perspectives and actionable teaching tools—ranging from new approaches to learning outcomes and rubrics to strategies for keeping students engaged.
“The learning outcomes of my course will include attitude-related goals, such as building professional values, ethical behavior, teamwork, and a positive mindset for learning and personal growth.'
“The types of rubrics we were shown—and how to match them to my field—were so helpful. I also learned to include ‘attitude’ learning outcomes in my course design.'
“I have a large class of 80 students and am really worried about keeping student engagement high - I'm excited about the idea to have students break into small groups and answer questions using ABCD cards.'
Participants summed up the energy of the experience with satisfaction and gratitude:
“I truly enjoyed the experience and found it very engaging.'
“I really liked learning with professors across disciplines. The course was really structured and very creative. I liked the diversity of engagement strategies and every speaker was so approachable and knowledgeable.'
“I want to express my appreciation for the hard work y’all put into the program! 😊'
Congratulations to the 2025 RISE Cohort
Dianne Armstrong
Kcie Driggers
Mary Faria
Anna Finger
Sara Haq
Mayan Herman
Muhammad Jawad
Hyunju Kim
Anna Mendoza
J Marcos Palacios
Elesha Roberts
Becca Robertson
Steven Rossmann
Lesley Sarkesian
Farhana Sarower
Anastasia Schauer
Luz Alvarez-Sims
Amanda Stallings
Evgenia Wilkins
These educators are now equipped with new tools, connections, and momentum as they prepare to lead transformative learning experiences in their classrooms this fall. Their commitment to thoughtful and engaging teaching reflects the best of UT’s learning community.