Brokk Toggerson, Chris Ertl, David Nguyen, and Jake Shechter are currently presenting their work at the AAPT Summer 2018 Meeting in Washington, DC.
Chris Ertl, is presenting on the fully-online labs he has been developing for the online versions of Physics 131 and 132.
Brokk Toggerson is presenting a poster on Physics 131, a poster on P132, and a presentation on P390T.
Jake Shecter is presenting on Physics 691 on Graduate TA Training and Professionalization.
Brokk Toggerson, along with Lara Al Hariri, Caleb Rounds, and Adena Calden have been awarded a Mutual Mentoring Grant by the UMass-Amherst Institute for Teaching Excellence and Faculty Development (TEFD) to develop a mutual mentoring network to connect the, predominantly junior, faculty who are responsible for teaching the introductory sequence of courses for life-science majors. This collaboration would be truly interdisciplinary connecting faculty from biology, chemistry, physics, math, and kinesiology. The mentoring network will strive to develop a curriculum that is aligned both in content and skills, thereby helping students develop the tools of knowledge transfer and interdisciplinary thinking critical for a modern workforce. In addition, the network will also share pedagogical best practices particular to large-enrollment STEM courses.
Congrats to the group!
Well a new semester has begun at UMass-Amherst, and the group has lots of interesting new projects!
This semester, Brokk Toggerson has been nominated for the UMass distinguished teaching award for the second year in a row. The distinguished teaching award is only awarded to one faculty member each year, can only be won once in a lifetime, and is the only teaching award at UMass for which students are the only possible nominators. Heath Hatch, another of the P131 team, has already won this award.
The UMass College of Natural Sciences has setup a fund for the professional development of lecturer’s within the college. I plan to use these funds to present our work on self-efficacy at AAPT SM18. These funds mean that we will be able help support Jake to also attend to AAPT SM18 and talk about the graduate TA training course.
In addition, I also presented to the UMass faculty senate today on OER given our work on the P131 textbook. There seemed to be some positive feedback from the other faculty. I hope that other faculty on campus take up this charge. OER are something that we can do as faculty to help control costs for students and make materials that are perfectly designed for our courses.