I will be a 2019-2020 Center for Teaching & Learning Fellow

I am proud to have been named one of five inaugural Center for Teaching and Learning Fellows at Pratt Institute. I join Film and Video Professor Kara Hearn, Architecture Professor Jonathan Scelsa, Communications Design Professor Nida Abdullah, and Industrial Design Professor Matthew Hoey in the first cohort of Fellows working on pedagogical research projects supported by Pratt’s relatively-new Center for Teaching and Learning. Each of us will be working on a separate set of research questions, but we will also be leaning on each other for feedback, support, and ideas.

My project will seek to make connections between how the natural sciences are currently taught at Pratt, what our students need from their natural science education, and existing research on best practices for fostering natural science learning. Part of my research will involve diving more deeply into the pedagogical research on natural science teaching, something that I have wanted to do for years. But the other part of my research is highly social; I plan to conduct a series of interviews with faculty in my own Math & Science Department as well a few of the design majors, with students, and with the academic advisors.

I am hoping that the interviews will allow me to better see where our department can make stronger connections with our students and what they are studying in their majors. I also plan to mine the interviews for best teaching practices that are consistent with the pedagogical literature. The findings of these interviews will be shared through both an academic paper and a series of audio podcasts.

The final phase of the project will seek to implement some of the findings. I plan to collaborate with at least three of my fellow Math & Science faculty to develop new activities to be implemented in our classrooms.

I am lucky to be supported on this Fellowship by a single course release. Teaching two rather than the usual three courses in the Fall will give me adequate time to conduct my interviews.