Freshmen, often overwhelmed by perceived barriers of time, motivation, and knowledge don’t remain active, leading to weight gain and associated physical and emotional issues. Regular physical activity directly and positively impacts physical and emotional well-being and transfers to better scholastic outcomes. KHE majors need practical experiences to develop skills to develop programs that match personal goals and fitness levels. This project was unique in that it meets an identified need for freshmen and KHE majors.

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.

This project entailed the creation of a curricular context and physical space for collaborative interdisciplinary teaching and research for faculty and students interested in Russian, East European and Eurasian studies. This was achieved in two ways. First, I transformed the required gateway course to our major, “Introduction to Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies,” which had been a disjointed “parade of faculty” course with disconnected guest speakers.

Currently, there is a lot of momentum to support instructors interested in employing evidence-based pedagogy in the classroom. However, a significant portion of the success of a course depends on the instructor’s ability to positively engage with students. Many (if not most) instructors have never been formally trained in effective communication methods that engage students and foster trust between students and faculty.

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.

One of the top concerns from many employers is that college graduates lack the “soft skills” (collaboration, team-based skills)and professionalism they require. Collaboratory students will have the opportunity to master the latest skills in their field and develop “soft skills” like creative problem-solving problem solving and communication to help them thrive over the course of their careers.

Each semester in CMS 330:Interpersonal Health Communication, students ask excellent questions that have not been answered yet in the academic literature. My project proposal is to give students the opportunity to collect high-quality survey data that would help students answer their questions. Students would create interpersonal health communication survey that would be administered by a research company to gather nationally representative data on important health communication topics that have currently been unexamined.

Despite ample evidence that implementing active learning methods in the classroom leads to better outcomes, most courses in Biology continue the use of traditional lecturing. Anecdotal conversations with many of my colleagues who teach upper division biology courses indicate a widespread perception that the traditional lecture is the most effective way to transmit information to students.

This PTF project was designed to transform a basic science course from lecturing to active learning in a semi-flipped classroom model and to develop a “toolbox” to help facilitate similar transformations across campus. The flipped classroom model has proven effective in motivating and engaging students and improving their retention of materials learned. However, there were two common myths about applying flipped classroom models in large classes (e.g.

Hands-on research experiences for undergraduates offer unique active-learning experiences with real-world questions. These experiences create communities and improve 4-year graduation rates. They may also help create a student body and alumni population that recognize the importance of the research mission of large R1 universities.