Individual Fellow Initiatives

While the U.S. is more racially open and culturally diverse than at any other time in its history, intolerance and marginalization—often around issues of race, culture and difference—continue to exist. This is punctuated in university settings where students of color find more access to opportunity, yet encounter socially and intellectually non-inclusive environments. UT-Austin stands at the forefront of concerns around race and equity, most recently with the Fisher decision and the current state lawsuit against UT-Austin regarding race discrimination in admissions.

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.

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.

This project started out with a simple idea: From my original proposal, we noted that “Current historical timelines are not interactive, nor do they enable students to understand connections between different events. They are good at showing chronology, but are not good at illustrating how specific events are influenced by a whole host of different historical factors.”

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.

The Peer Learning Assistant Program within the Department of Chemistry is a program developed with resources from the Provost Teaching Fellows program to enhance the educational experience of students taking general chemistry by training and employing Peer Learning Assistants (PLAs) to service large blended general chemistry courses.  The large (300 –500 students) blended courses have replaced the straight lecture model with active, student centered, learning.  Active learning requires coaching and in a large class it is impossible to implement with only one instructor and one tea

Active, embodied learning and creative teaching is needed in higher education, yet many faculty struggle with how to take up the approach. My PTF project engaged six faculty members from across UT - American Studies, Biology, Art/Design, Classics, Education, and Theatre- in a 15 week faculty learning community focused on active and creative teaching strategies. Through the project, faculty members explored active and creative teaching methods in monthly meetings, and re-designed at least two lectures to use active/creative teaching approaches.

Among the communication disorders considered to be fundamental to the scope of practice for speech-language pathologists, stuttering or what is also commonly referred to as a fluency disorder has historically been and continues to be the disorder for which most speech-language pathologists report minimal to no clinical or academic exposure and/or competency.

Mastery of the use and interpretation of statistical techniques requires a lot of practice. Similarly, statistics is only mastered with a lot of practice. However, instructors unfortunately only have a finite amount of time available to create an endless supply of new problems and associated answers. They also do not have an endless amount of time to provide hints to help students find their own way past their misconceptions. In addition, it is very difficult for students to receive immediate feedback to understand what they are doing and what they need to do.

The College of Pharmacy curriculum is designed for the students to begin with a foundation of knowledge that they then practice in a laboratory setting followed by application in a real world setting. This project will provide students in the Nonprescription Pharmacotherapeutics/Self-Care sequence opportunity to gain constructive feedback and more consistent practice of their skills prior to moving on to the Community Pharmacy - Introductory Pharmacy Practice Experience in their third year and Advanced Pharmacy Practice Experience in their fourth-year.

The McCombs Business Journal was an effort to give students an opportunity to read and write about research. We recruited students, worked with the students to establish an organizational structure, set expectations for members, and selected student leaders. Students read a significant amount of research and wrote summaries, focusing on how that research impacts the real world.