PTF Impacts
Provost's Teaching Fellows have made lasting impacts in their departments, colleges and schools, all of the University of Texas, and even the broader scholarship of teaching and learning. Through both individual initiatives and university-wide programs, PTFs continue to serve as catalysts for positive change and further our campus culture of teaching and learning.
Displaying 1 - 25 of 38Teaching Climate Change Canvas Module
A campus-wide faculty learning community constructed a canvas sandbox website where we could share materials related to climate change, with annotations, with the broader UT community. We collected our groups materials, and tried to organize them in a useful way. This includes lectures, activities, quizzes, projects, pre/post tests, etc. We organize both by learning objective, and by course. Our website is now live. A publication on pre/post survey results is being prepared.
Bringing Introductory Astronomy to a Broad Audience via Web-based Instruction
In 2024, I piloted a new web-based version of Astronomy 301 (Introductory to Astronomy), and taught it a second time in 2025. I attempted to include best practices for active learning, which was a challenge in this environment.
Teaching Tips 2023-2024
Each year, the PTF Chair-Elect has the opportunity to share recurring Teaching Tips with the all faculty at UT.
Bridging Rhetoric and Engineering presentation and paper
“Bridging Rhetoric and Engineering: Qualitative Results from a Writing Center Program to Improve Engineering Undergraduate Writing,” Proceedings from IEEE ProComm, 2024. Pittsburgh, PA (July 14-17, 2024). I delivered this co-authored conference paper at the IEEE ProComm conference. See the link for the paper.
View the presentation slides here
For more information, you can access the article with the DOI: 10.1109/ProComm61427.2024.00034.
Be Well to Do Well (Signature Course Resource)
This video project was designed to be shown in all Signature Courses at UT. Together with a discussion prompt, the video aims to acquaint students with mental and physical health resources on campus, and to teach them strategies for success.
Teaching as Well Being (UT System)
3 different PTF projects presented:
Loescher project focuses on: Elevate excellence in the classroom through new strategies to understand, measure, and improve rigor in all courses
•each class is designed and delivered with the expectation of students learning at high levels •each student demonstrates learning at high levels
•each student is supported so they can learn at high levels
View the poster here
Bitmoji Database
As part of their PTF initiative's goal of creating protocols and resources to better streamline the creation and regular updating of course materials, Osier created this Bitmoji Database to keep track of the icons they use throughout their course materials and slides to create consistency and systematize their creation and editing processes. This Database can be used as a template for other instructors who are interested in using Bitmoji or other icons and symbols in their course materials, and once copied can be easily edited to fit the individual instructor's needs.
Engineering Sentences through the Texas Snowpocalypse: Results of a collaboration between a University Writing Center and an Engineering Writing Course (CCCC)
D'Arcy Randall gave a co-authored presentation about the program developed as part of her PTF Initiative at the Conference on College Composition and Communication on February 16, 2023 in Chicago, Illinois, themed "Doing Hope in Desperate Times." The presentation was part of a session featuring Writing Centers titled "Cross-Disciplinary Collaborations to Promote Transfer and Self-Efficacy," which was among hundreds of sessions of varied topics, formats, and scholarly approaches for over 1000 attendees.
Write from the Start in Engineering: Mixed-Methods Results of a Collaboration between a First-Year Biomedical Engineering Class and a University Writing Center (ASEE)
PTF D'Arcy Randall delivered a co-authored presentation at the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference in Baltimore, Maryland, on June 26, 2023.
Trauma-Informed Course Auditing Checklist
As part of their PTF initiative's goal of creating protocols and resources to better streamline the creation and regular updating of course materials, Nico Osier created this Trauma-Informed Course Auditing Checklist in Airtable to streamline the process of ensuring their lectures and course materials are responsive to research-backed best practices in trauma-informed teaching. Osier's Auditing Checklist was designed with Nursing and Health Sciences courses in mind, but can be adapted for instructors in virtually any field.
Teaching Tips 2022-2023
Each year, the PTF Chair-Elect has the opportunity to share recurring Teaching Tips with all faculty at UT. These messages cover a variety of topics, styles, and methodologies, from brief and practical classroom strategies to in-depth conversations with voices from across campus.
This year’s Teaching Tips were written by Chair-Elect Nina Telang, from the Chandra Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
Stock Images Database for Healthcare Representation
As part of their PTF initiative's goal of creating protocols and resources to better streamline the creation and regular updating of course materials, Osier created this Stock Images Database in Airtable to collect sources of free, online images featuring a broader spectrum of body types, skin colors, and other key elements which are vital to medical education.
University Writing Center Resources
D'Arcy Randall's PTF Initiative created a collaboration between the Cockrell School of Engineering and The University Writing Center to create resources and consultant trainings to better support STEM students in technical writing projects and assignments. As a result of the Initiative's work and findings, a number of STEM-specific UWC resources have been created and/or revised, which can be found on the UWC website.
The Evolution of Peer-Assisted Learning: From SI to PLUS (ASEE)
Former PTF chair Nina Telang co-presented this paper at the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference in August 2022.
National Science Foundation Grant
PTF Vernita Gordon was awarded a National Science Foundation Grant on April 1, 2022 as principal investigator. The research objective of the grant is to develop a predictive framework for understanding how bacteria use proteins in their cell envelopes to sense and respond to the mechanics of the surface to which they attach.
Supplemental Instruction (SI) Program for Electrical and Computer Engineering
For her Provost's Teaching Fellows initiative, Nina Telang developed of a Supplemental Instruction (SI) program in a sophomore-level Electrical and Computer Engineering course, EE319K: Introduction to Embedded Systems.
Supplemental Instruction (SI) study sessions to help students succeed in introductory courses by employing a peer teaching model. SI Leaders – TAs or peers who have already successfully taken the course – plan and lead two identical, voluntary SI sessions each week, which students can join at any point in the semester.
Creation and Use of a Stock Images Database (OpenEd 2022)
Nico Osier presented about the Stock Images Database developed as part of their PTF Initiative at the 2022 Open Education Conference. Themed Rise to Action, the conference took place on October 17-20, 2022 and was completely virtual. Osier presentation titled "Creation and Use of a Stock Images Database to Make Lectures More Diverse and Inclusive" and also featured several student researchers.