Individual Fellow Initiatives

We teach in challenging times. As the world, and our campuses, become more connected our students grapple with the impact of challenging events both on and off campus. Faculty have asked for support and guidance for how to proceed within the framework of semesters and syllabi in order to cope or respond. Our faculty needs resources to help recognize critical moments and support for our pedagogical resiliency.

The goal of this project is to train the next generation of environmental engineers in computing and statistical techniques to solve big data problems. Current undergraduate students in the Department of Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering have little to no exposure to computational and statistical methods for data analysis (e.g., big data collected from sensor networks). I proposed to integrate computational techniques in several courses throughout the Environmental Engineering Degree.

Cross-cultural connections can deepen student engagement in the world around them and encourage their creativity about the course material.  Such connections can happen in a UT classroom if the student body is particularly diverse, or if students participate in study abroad programs. Global connections are also being created through the Global Classrooms Initiative that connect UT students with students at universities from other countries through classroom activities, conversations and projects intentionally designed to encourage collaboration.

The BA program in Theatre and Dance lacks adequate faculty mentorship and an identity as a program. A recent poll of BA students in Theatre and Dance on strengths and weaknesses of the program revealed that many BA students see themselves as “second-class citizens” in a department that offers three highly structured and mentored BFA programs in dance, teacher certification, and acting.

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.

I am working on a unique partnership between Austin Community College (ACC) and UT Austin to develop collaborative peer learning communities (PLCs) in the Geosciences with mixed cohorts of two-year college (2YC) and four-year college (4YC) students.

UT holds sustainability to be a core part of its mission and the Office of Sustainability is a central engine in incorporating issues of sustainability across “university policies, practices and curricula.” The university has taken important steps toward meeting these goals, yet these efforts are often isolated with little cross-campus conversation or exposure. My goal is to establish a network that serves as both an incubator and clearinghouse for sustainability-related teaching and research.

My belief is that many faculty want to create a welcoming environment for all students, but they just don’t know how, don’t realize that they are not already, or don’t understand the student interactions in their classes that are problematic. I believe the first step to remedying the problem is education, so that the faculty may first correct any of their own behaviors and then provide leadership to the students and help guide them away from inappropriate behavior.

Creating a culture of patient safety in teaching hospitals results in safer care delivery. The many demands of the current clinical learning environment make it challenging to routinely and effectively include bedside teaching and role-modeling of patient safety. We used a “positive deviance” model, which has been applied in various settings to help change cultural practices, to identify clinical faculty who model and teach patient safety principles during direct patient care.

I have been teaching general physics for non-Physics majors since 2008. I have implemented interactive learning elements into my lecture and “real life” questions, which allows the students to have short (3-4 minutes) discussion in small groups to find solutions for the given questions. I have seen improvement in student engagement and finally in test scores, especially within the semester as the students embrace this style of teaching. However, in order to really affect improvement, I communicate with other physics faculty to reflect on the evaluation of successful teaching.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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