Course: CHEM 213 – Elementary Organic Chemistry

What do you enjoy about teaching? And why do you enjoy teaching this particular course? 

I enjoy working with young people and showing them the beauty of the natural world, on the atomic or molecular level. I also enjoy helping them prepare for their proposed careers.

What do you do to engage students in your classes? What are some of your signature pedagogical moves? 

I am the Chemical Demonstrator in the UD Department of Chemistry. Few things capture the attention of students better than a well-prepared and well-executed chemical demonstration.

Is there anything else you would like to share about you, your teaching, or this course? 

I am beginning my 38th year teaching at UD. I truly believe that I have the best job on campus. CHEM-103 is a General Chemistry course for science and engineering majors. CHEM-213 is a one-semester Organic Chemistry course for science majors, including students who are interested in careers in health care.

Course: ARTH153 – Introduction to Art History: Pyramids to Cathedral

What do you enjoy about teaching? And why do you enjoy teaching this particular course? 

I enjoy seeing students discover that artworks can be windows to understand the past–I like this particular course because it shows students the importance and functions of many famous monuments from the ancient past; how art historians conduct research about them; and that many features from ancient art are still used today.

What do you do to engage students in your classes? What are some of your signature pedagogical moves? 

I like to encourage student participation during my lectures–one of my signature moves is to show an intriguing object/image on the screen and start making basic questions, like what is depicted, what stands out about the way in which is depicted; I collect all the’ answers and start creating an interpretation of the piece by complementing student observations with my previous knowledge of the piece, and charting venues for future research

Course: CRJU 110 – Introduction to Criminal Justice

What do you enjoy about teaching? And why do you enjoy teaching this particular course? 

I enjoy engaging with students, even when it creates tension.

What do you do to engage students in your classes? What are some of your signature pedagogical moves? 

I like to use students in hypothetical examples. It makes them feel invested in the material and gives them a laugh. Even in big classes, it works to increase engagement.

Is there anything else you would like to share about you, your teaching, or this course? 

My teaching is very informal and is probably not an approach for everyone. However, since my approach to criminal justice is very critical, I find this generates “buy in” from students and makes my approach less threatening to them.

Course: HLPR/UAPP 211 Introduction to Public Health

What do you enjoy about teaching? And why do you enjoy teaching this particular course? 

Learning is life. It is how we grow as individuals and as a society. For me, the activities of teaching and learning are energizing, fulfilling, and reassuring. The Intro to Public Health course attracts a variety of students; everyone learns from each other.

What do you do to engage students in your classes? What are some of your signature pedagogical moves? 

I aim to engage students in a collaborative process of mutual learning. We share responsibility for creating a satisfying learning environment. Sharing my expectations of high-quality input for this shared responsibility lets students know that their engagement is vital to our mutual success.

Is there anything else you would like to share about you, your teaching, or this course? 

Public health is about populations, not individuals, and this class is designed to embody the core principles of public health.

Course: HIST 105 – US History until 1865

What do you enjoy about teaching? And why do you enjoy teaching this particular course? 

Teaching is an evergreen opportunity to see the things fresh, to get other folks’ point of view, as well as a chance to make new discoveries, together. HIST 105 is particularly fun to teach because, as an introductory survey and GenEd requirement, it attracts students from all over the university: future scientists and teachers, engineers and biochemists, dancers and musicians – just about every field of study and walk of life at UD is represented in the room. It’s also a space where diverse, different perspectives produce discussions that are original and generative.

HIST 105 is also a big class – well, big for UD – which means I can be a bit theatrical during lectures, and use my big actor’s voice for key dramatic moments, which appeals to my vanity.

Too, while I enjoy teaching a great deal, I also consider it a civic duty. The honest, up-to-date, and accurate history we teach at UD is under serious threat in many places: the primary sources and scholarship I share with my students is banned by several states, under penalty of fine and imprisonment, and less formally discouraged in many more. So I consider teaching American history both a privilege and an obligation, one that I owe to our students and our state, as well as to my colleagues working under unfree conditions.

What do you do to engage students in your classes? What are some of your signature pedagogical moves? 

I have two “signature” moves.

The first is music: I open my classes with a short piece of pop music, usually fairly recent, and use it to introduce the core question or theme of the session. For example, I use the oeuvre of Taylor Swift to frame the American Revolution. Which is a better representation of the fraught nature of the American revolt against British authority, “We Are Never Getting Back Together” or “You Need to Calm Down” – and why? Students’ opinions are usually divided; but their engagement is unanimous.

Second, is the use of primary sources – the raw materials we use to analyze and narrate the past. They’re puzzles: sometimes weird and sometimes well-known, but always fragmentary, specific to the point of view of the people who made them, and diverse in form and authorship. They can include documents like letters or newspapers, but also art, buildings, landscapes, and household goods, like a pair of shoes or a table. They offer multiple entry points for getting into conversation with the past. Analyzing primary sources is the core of doing history – and it’s very difficult. Luckily, it gets easier with practice. My “signature pedagogical moves” aim to support students wrestling with primary sources, themselves, and in conversation with me and their peers. It’s a way to help them get their “reps” in. I vary the scales of source exposure, from bite-sized to ten-course banquet. In almost every class session, we spend time analyzing a short source, together, usually after a bit of contextual lecture; I then put students into groups, where they puzzle out related or similar materials, before coming back to discuss their findings, and educate their peers. I also assign a lot of primary sources for reading at home, and ask students to prepare (very) short reports on them. Those are due before class, so that when we get together in the room, we can start moving from descriptive analysis (who created this source? what audience did it address? what genre of thing is it?) to more complex historical arguments (what bigger pictures does this source illuminate? what stories about the past can it support – and what stories does it refute? etc). Students expand on this in-class practice in larger papers and exams, moving from making small arguments to weaving big ones, all the while building up their skills as historians by doing what historians do: making evidence-based arguments from sources about change over time.

Is there anything else you would like to share about you, your teaching, or this course? 

Sometimes folks approach history like it’s a solved problem: “Everything happened already, what’s there to know?” – which is kind of like saying engineering is “solved” because we know about inclined planes, and other simple machines. It isn’t! We don’t know everything that happened! And even for well-known topics where we think we have the facts nailed down, our interpretation of those facts changes on account of new theories, new data, new questions, and the new realities of our present. There’s a lot of work to do!

Course: SCEN 101: Introduction to Physical Science & Astronomy

What do you enjoy about teaching? And why do you enjoy teaching this particular course? 

Teaching is like solving a puzzle with others. It is delightful discovering ways that work, and satisfying taming challenges with others. I enjoy many of the different ways my students relate and respond to the process. In SCEN 101 many of the students have never had a Physics class before, I enjoy the seeing collaborative learning in which students learn science by doing science. It is a joy to see the engaging and creative ways student groups apply the concepts and skills we learn to their everyday experience.

What do you do to engage students in your classes? What are some of your signature pedagogical moves? 

The first thing I do to engage my students is that I learn as much as possible who they are as learners, and I find out from them how prepared they are for my class. My signature pedagogical moves are use of humor, excitement and clever “hooks”. Hooks are connections between stories, experiences, and skills students have and the learning goals of my course.

Is there anything else you would like to share about you, your teaching, or this course? 

In teaching SCEN 101 I am surprised how often the lyrics of songs include science/physics concepts and terminology. I leverage the ease of remembering hooks in songs to assist students remember the physics concepts and skills we are learning.

Thank you for your interest! These events take a few months to plan but we intend to have an Open Teaching Day in week 3 – 5 of the spring 2024 semester. Please email us to let us know you’re interested at ctal-info@udel.edu.

Due to the limited number of seats in each course, only registered attendees who have received a confirmation email from CTAL ay attend classes. You must indicate your preference for the class sessions you would like to attend in the registration form. We will then email you your own class schedule with the meeting time(s), location(s), and anything else you need to know before attending class.