PTF Impacts

To learn more about the Rigorously Compassionate initiative at UT Austin, which focuses on combining empathy with academic excellence, visit their website:
Rigorously Compassionate Program

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.

Two promotional videos were created to highlight the impact of Pharmacy Practice Labs and collaboration with UT Athletic Training.

View the videos: Pharmacy Practice Labs and Partnership with UT Athletic Training

Dr. Accosta, Dr. Castleberry, and colleagues presented a poster at a national pharmacy conference on the relationships between a student’s perceived preparedness before and after Objective Structured Clinical Examinations (OSCEs), OSCE grades, perception of their performance, pre-pharmacy and pharmacy GPAs, composite Pharmacy College Admission Test (PCAT) score, and admission Multiple Mini Interview (MMI) scores.

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.

Dr. Accosta, Dr. Castleberry, and Dr. Davis presented a poster at a national conference describing the Pharmacy Practice Lab (PPL) sequence spanning all six semesters of the UTCOP didactic program to consolidate lab components and increase skills development while aligning with and reinforcing curriculum balance.

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.

“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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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. 

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.

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.

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. 

Former PTF chair Nina Telang co-presented this paper at the American Society of Engineering Education (ASEE) Annual Conference in August 2022.

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.

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 Jessica Toste, from the Department of Special Education.