Individual Fellow Initiatives

Digital archives and the internet have made it possible for non-experts to make major contributions to research through crowdsourcing and citizen science. UT has fascinating and important collections of primary sources for the humanities, many of which have been digitized. But before my PTF project, there were no digital tools at UT to facilitate crowdsourcing as a pedagogical strategy, engaging students with historical documents while enriching the collections themselves. The project therefore proposed to develop two UT-based crowdsourcing platforms.

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

Compounding the challenge of consuming a healthy diet is the fact that many students have little or no familiarity with preparing their own food.  The result is inadequate diets that do not support optimal health and academic performance.

This project has provided my students with an experience in hands-on service learning, thus fostering a synergistic understanding of historical analysis and community engagement. “Animals and American Culture: Select Historical Perspectives” is an interdisciplinary upper-division undergraduate seminar that attracts a diverse student body in the liberal arts and natural sciences. During the first week of class, students are  required to contact one of two local organizations--or, with my permission, an organization of their own choosing.

The goal of this initiative is to establish a freshman research program for mechanical engineering students that can serve as a template for an engineering-wide freshman research program.  Many first-year students express an interest in participating in engineering research early in their college careers, but the perceived barriers can be high.  It can be difficult for first-year students to navigate the research enterprise, and many professors are hesitant to hire first-year students.  The potential advantages of freshman research, however, are much greater than the barriers