Chemistry & Chemical Biology

Sam Veroneau

Last year, our department critically reflected on how our pedagogy course could better meet the needs of incoming graduate students. Based on feedback we collected, we consolidated our course to: (i) focus more on specific and practical elements of being successful educators and (ii) provide more opportunities to practice teaching with peers. The reception to these changes was overwhelmingly positive and we have already observed Teaching Fellows regularly implementing lessons from our course. Relatedly, we have begun discussing how to more regularly collect feedback from graduate student Teaching Fellows to improve courses throughout our department, a project which will hopefully be continued by next year’s Pedagogy Fellows.

View Sam's capstone project.

Dave Song

As a PF in Chemistry and Chemical Biology my role has been facilitating the growth of our G1s as reflective educators as well as serving as a liaison between members of CCB and the Bok Center. This year, I focused on enhancing the quality of microteaching, incorporating an inclusive and equitable teaching for chemistry workshop with Ashlie Sandoval, garnering actionable mid- and end-of-year feedback from students, implementing minor modifications to the Chem 301 curriculum to fulfill requirements of the Bok Teaching Certificate, and improving CCB/Bok Center engagement interactions. This CCB PF Capstone Space presents the highlights of some of these efforts.

View Dave's capstone project.

Sam Veroneau

This year we sought to critically reflect on the pedagogy practicum in the chemistry department: gauging graduate student interest while assessing which course components were the most relevant to their future teaching responsibilities. We approached this through both anonymous surveys for graduate students–collecting specific information on each course component–and through conversations with current teaching fellows and course heads. Through these efforts, and after thoughtful internal discussions, we have focused the aims of our course, offloaded certain components to more relevant offices in the chemistry department, and hopefully tailored our practicum to better engage future cohorts.

View Sam's capstone project.

Emily Kerr & Maggie Klureza

The Chemistry and Chemical Biology PF positions are focused on assisting in the smooth running of the fall chemistry pedagogy course, serving about 30 first-year PhD students (G1s), as well as the observation and support of the G1s first semester teaching in the spring. This year, we added a teaching as performance workshop (in collaboration with Dana Mirsalis, BPF), an active learning workshop, and a diversity and inclusion workshop to the Chem 301 curriculum and spring training. The capstone highlights the timeline of different trainings, workshops, microteachings, and meetings that the Chemistry PFs facilitate for G1 TFs.

View Emily and Maggie's capstone project.

Emily Kerr & Paloma Tuttle-Vasseur

This year the chemistry CCB pedagogy fellows focused on supporting TFs throughout their progression from novices in the fall G1 pedagogy course through their upper level or head TF positions later in graduate school. This work included assisting organizing and teaching the pedagogy course, rethinking how we give feedback and do observations partway through their G1 spring as they develop more skill, authority and autonomy in the classroom, and surveying and meeting with head TFs and upper level TFs to understand what challenges they face and what support the teaching faculty and PFs in the department could provide.

View Emily and Paloma's capstone project.

Emily Kerr & Liz Johnson

One of our key responsibilities is to help run the G1 pedagogy course and support their first teaching assignments. Last year, we refined the process of giving feedback using a Google Form and matching feedback guidelines and saw a positive response to this structure both years. Building on this, we wanted to expand our efforts to support TFs in later teaching terms, including upper level course TFs and head TFs. We had the opportunity to assist all TFs with the transition to remote teaching by creating a repository for helpful resources and helping organize the distribution for online teaching hardware.

View Emily and Liz's capstone project.