Teaching Discovery Days for Faculty & Instructors: Day 2 with Reception

Established in 1927, the Priscilla Pond Flawn Child and Family Laboratory (UT Lab School) is one of the oldest and highest-volume laboratory schools in the country. As a laboratory school, the PPFCFL employs exemplary educational practices and provides a setting in which University students may observe, participate, and study children under the supervision of highly trained educators. It also serves as a site for innovative research. Visitors will have the opportunity to experience our very unique laboratory. They will see undergraduates from a variety of courses learning experientially through interacting directly with young children and conducting research under the guidance of lab faculty. They will see students from other courses studying children and collecting data from our observation booths. Finally, visitors will have a chance to hear about recent research projects and community engagement initiatives that are extending the impact of the PPFCFL beyond the University.

Dr. Amy Bryan holds degrees in Early Childhood Education, Clinical Social Work, and a doctorate in Human Development and Family Sciences. She has had successful careers in teaching, school counseling, and social work, and currently serves as the director of the Priscilla Pond Flawn Child and Family Laboratory. Her research focuses on early childhood development, education, and mental health, with a particular interest in caregiver-child relationships.

This is a large, introductory class for non-Astronomy majors. It fulfills a QR requirement and enrolls majors from many departments across the campus. Visitors will observe a course in which lecturing is interspersed with activities such as polling and think-pair-share. You will also observe variety of methods for calling on students in a large class.

Mike Boylan-Kolchin is the Samuel T. and Fern Yanagisawa Regents Professor in Astronomy. His research centers on galaxy formation, cosmology, and dark matter physics. He has recently explored the cosmological consequences of massive early galaxies discovered by JWST and has offered a novel proposal for the mechanism underlying their unexpected properties. He received his PhD in Physics from the University of California, Berkeley and spent time at the University of Maryland, the University of California, Irvine, and the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics before coming to Austin.

This is a large section introductory chemistry course for STEM and pre-health students. Most of the students are in their first year of college. Thursday the 24th is the last day before the exam and is a review. Dr. Laude will spend most of the class time offering tips to students on how to prepare for a multiple choice exam and how to avoid making mistakes on the exam. There will be a great deal of interactive work on content as well.

Dr. Laude is a Professor of Chemistry and Distinguished Teaching Professor. He has taught at UT Austin for 37 years. His currently focus in on large lecture courses and teaches the 500 student section general chemistry course to STEM and pre-health students. Student success is his primary motivation and he rages against an universal assessment structure that favors the affluent. The course he teaches is a flipped class model in which most of the time in the course is spent motivating students to study and then providing the students with the tools to be successful on exams, regardless of background. His goal is to one day teach a rigorous chemistry course in which every students earns an A. He is getting there.

This is an upper-division advanced macronutrient metabolism course for nutrition majors. Visitors will observe an interactive lecture about nutrient utilization and metabolic pathway regulation during the fed-fast cycle.

Dr. Lashinger is an Associate Professor of Instruction, Associate Chair of Undergraduate Studies, Director of the Online MSNS Program in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, and NTR Chair of Curriculum Committee. She received a PhD in Cancer Biology from UT MDACC Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences, a BSN from UVA, and a BS in Psychology/Biology from ODU. She currently teaches Advanced Nutritional Sciences (graduate/undergraduate) and Study Design and Research Methods (graduate/undergraduate) courses. Her research interests included understanding the connection between energy balance and pancreatic cancer progression as well as determining effects of macronutrient intake timing on cardiometabolic outcomes such as insulin sensitivity and fat deposition.

This course has 52 students enrolled. It is the first required SDS course for SDS majors, only SDS majors are allowed to take it. It essentially introduces them to R coding, but we also generally introduce them to the field of data science which is the intersection of computer science, statistics, and communication. This particular day they will be learning how to manage strings in R. 

Layla Parast is an Associate Professor in the Department of Statistics and Data Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Her statistical research has focused on developing robust methods to evaluate surrogate markers, robust estimation of treatment effects, and developing and evaluating risk prediction procedures for long term survival. Her applied research has focused on measuring and comparing health care quality, and survey design and analysis for health care related surveys in a variety of settings including the emergency department, inpatient hospital, hospice, and pediatric setting. Prior to joining UT Austin, she was a senior statistician at the RAND Corporation and co-director of RAND's Center for Causal Inference.

This is a large, introductory applied statistics course required by most CNS majors. We break up the lecture with active learning where students work in small groups on practice problems and activities. Students are also informally assessed in a variety of ways, including being called on randomly, via a shared slide deck, and with volunteers coming up to the board.

Sally Ragsdale joined the Department of Statistics and Data Science in the summer of 2012 and is the course coordinator for SDS 320E Elements of Statistics as well as the undergraduate minor and certificate faculty advisor. Her teaching awards include the President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award (2021), the College of Natural Sciences Foundation Advisory Council Teaching Endowment Award (2018), and the Natural Sciences Council Faculty Service Award (2015).

This is a medium-sized introductory nutrition class designed for nutrition majors. The class session includes a blend of lecture and small group work, where students collaboratively apply their knowledge to real-world scenarios.

Krystle is an Assistant Professor of Instruction in the Department of Nutritional Sciences, with over 8 years of experience in higher education, including previous teaching at Texas State University. She is a board-certified oncology dietitian and owner of Cancer Nutrition HQ, a private practice and social media platform dedicated to sharing evidence-based nutrition information for cancer survivors. Krystle integrates her clinical experience into the classroom, helping students translate complex science into practical applications in a world filled with misinformation. Her goal is to empower future health professionals to make informed decisions that support health and well-being.

This is an introductory course on design thinking, hands-on learning, fabrication, and electronics. Visitors of all experience levels will explore a variety of topics, from 3D printing and laser cutting to machine learning and programming microcontrollers.

This is a practical research methods course, taught in a computer lab. It is aimed for early astronomy majors, though the class has a number of juniors and seniors (and other CNS majors) as well. Each class period typically has a small lecture (~20-35 minutes), discussing some science, then introducing a practical concept. Following this, students work on an activity on their computers to put their new knowledge to use.

Steven Finkelstein is a Professor and the Director of the Cosmic Frontier Center in the Department of Astronomy at the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a BS from the University of Washington, and a PhD in Physics from Arizona State University; he has been faculty at UT Austin since 2012. His research focuses on the discovery and characterization of the most distant galaxies in the universe, with an emphasis on studying their evolution from that distant epoch to today. He is the Principal Investigator of two major early JWST programs.

Students watch pre-recorded lecture videos and read assigned sections of the textbook before coming to class. Most of the class time is spent in student-led, interactive problem-solving. This is intended to be a step toward helping students learn how to think about and use physics concepts to solve problems independently. The next step of this you won't see, because it is students solving problems in small groups, with the help of a TA and LAs, in discussion sections.

Vernita Gordon does experimental research in biological physics. She has taught PHY 301 a lot, because she really likes classical mechanics and she thinks the material is neat. This semester and last semester, she has been trying some new things by providing supplementary tutorials on mathematics and by addressing mindsets through things she learned as a Physics Mindset Initiative Fellow.

This is a large, upper division laboratory class that enrolls BIO majors. Visitors will observe 1-2 lab sections of this course (16 students each). This week, students will be working in the lab on a DNA sequencing project analyzing fish sold at local grocery stores. They will also be starting a DNA forensics experiment where students process and then analyze their own DNA.
The first 20 min will be a laboratory observation where visitors will see students engaged in group lab work and the remaining time will be a discussion with the class instructor covering the class curriculum and structure.

Katie Bruner is an Associate Professor of Instruction in the Biology Instructional Office and the Department of Molecular Biosciences. She received her PhD in Cellular and Molecular Medicine from Johns Hopkins University and her research background encompasses viral genetics and assay development for HIV-1. She teaches genetics laboratory (BIO325L) and enjoys showing students how genetics intersects with our everyday lives. She emphasizes that it is more important to understand ‚ why you are doing something in the lab rather than just how. She received the College of Natural Science teaching excellence award in 2020 and the President's Associates Teaching Excellence Award in 2023.

This is a large, introductory class for neuroscience majors. Visitors will observe an interactive lecture punctuated with individual and group active learning exercises, as the class discusses a challenging primary research article which students will have already read and engaged with on their own.

After majoring in neuroscience at Oberlin College, Dr. Corfas joined the laboratory of Dr. Leslie Vosshall at Rockefeller University for his Ph.D. In the Vosshall lab, he studied how mosquitoes use thermosensors and search strategies to 'heat-seek' towards warm-blooded host. Next, as a postdoc in the laboratory of Dr. Michael Dickinson at Caltech, he investigated neural and behavioral mechanisms of path integration and navigation in the fly, Drosophila melanogaster. During his time as a graduate and postdoctoral researcher, Dr. Corfas became increasingly drawn to teaching and mentorship. Since joining the University of Texas at Austin in 2021, he has turned his attention entirely to neuroscience pedagogy. As an Instructional Faculty and Neuroscience Educational Fellow, Dr. Corfas teaches introductory courses for neuroscience majors and works with the Neuroscience Department to develop and redesign undergraduate curriculum.