University of Colorado
President's Teaching Scholars Program

Scholars’ Engaged Learners Project Descriptions

INDEX
1999

Gene Abrams – Interdisciplinary 401: The Honors Senior Roundtable

Brian Argrow – Mentoring

Bob Averbach & Don Kleier – Mentoring Program in Endodontics

Marty Bickman – Director of Graduate Student Teacher Education and Denver Summerbridge

Bill Briggs & Mitch Handelsman – Studies of Student Engagement

Doug Burger – Pedagogical Projects

J.J. Cohen – The CU Mini College

Anne Costain – Women’s Studies Program Advisory Board

Alex Cruz – Mentoring Students

Mike Cummings – Pedagogy Seminar

John Falconer – Making thermodynamics more visual and engaging students in the classroom

Laura Goodwin – Mentoring Program

Clayton Lewis – Redeveloping Undergraduate Computer Science

Wes Morriston – Teaching with Technology Program and Mentoring

Mike Shull – Mentoring to new Assistant Professors and Development of a new Astronomy Major

Nort Steuben – Mentoring and Technology in the Classroom

John Taylor – CAPA, “Modern Physics”, and “Classical Mechanics”

Rick VanDeWeghe – Teaching Committee

Don Warrick – Director of Teaching Development for UCCS College of Business

Denny Webster – Vietnam Friendship Bridge

Professor Gene Abrams
Department of Mathematics
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

Interdisciplinary 401

The Honors Senior Roundtable

Sharing Passions, Sharing Perspectives

Catalog Description: Seniors in their graduating semester will reflect on and share with others their passion for their major field, and perspectives as to why this field is important in the context of both the university and society at large.

Students submit one 5-10 page paper, submit a 3-6 page follow-up paper, make one 20 minute presentation, and make one 5-10 minute follow-up presentation. The topic of the 5-10 page paper: 'What I've learned about my discipline, and what people outside my discipline should know about it.' Possible 'points of view' for this paper: What is it about my major field that excites me, and how can I share it with others who are not in my field? What things in my major field should be understood by every well-educated person? Why is my major field important in the grand scheme of the university, and/or society at large? The topic of the 20 minute
presentation is the same as that of the 5-10 page paper. The presentations will be based on the papers. During those time periods when the class does not officially meet (e.g. throughout February, and early to mid April), students spend time working on their papers, and meet with the professor on an individual basis. 12 students maximum enrollment.

Professor Brian Argrow
Department of Aerospace Engineering
University of Colorado at Boulder

During the fall of 2001, Mary Ann Shea and I discussed the importance and influence of mentors in the professional and personal development of faculty. Specifically, we talked about the importance of the mentoring I received from Richard Seebass, former Dean of the College of Engineering and Applied Science, and former Chair of Aerospace Engineering Sciences. His lessons will always influence my decisions. Mary Ann recalled that the PTSP once had a mentoring program. We both agreed that if there was any group in the CU System that could significantly reach out to developing faculty, it is the President's Teaching Scholars. We then decided that starting this fall 2002, I will lead an effort to establish a new PTSP Mentor Program. Mary Ann has planted the seed among the Scholars and we have received commitments from several to help in the program development and to participate as faculty mentors. We anticipate a program that promotes and facilitates the mutual rewards of mentoring.

Professors Bob Averbach and Don Kleier
School of Dentistry
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

Mentoring Program in Endodontics
OVERVIEW

Drs. Bob Averbach and Don Kleier have been involved in mentoring aspiring candidates for postdoctoral training in Endodontics for the past ten years. This program evolved when recent dental graduates sought part-time teaching positions to gain experience that would help them with their clinical skills, as well as facilitate entrance to postdoctoral programs in endodontics. With the first dentists the program was informal but still effective. Over the years the program has become more formalized with a defined curriculum.

GOALS
The main goals of the program are twofold.

1. The dentists gain valuable experience and knowledge in adult education and the clinical specialty of endodontics. This knowledge and experience makes them superior candidates for acceptance into a postdoctoral program in endodontics.
2. The dentists are a valuable resource to the Department and the School of Dentistry while they are in the mentoring program, and after they return from their postdoctoral programs.

HOW THE PROGRAM IS STRUCTURED
Individuals who seek information on entrance into specialty programs come to us for experiences not available in the general practice of dentistry. This is one-on-one mentoring. The program is customized to address the strengths and weaknesses of the dentists involved but can involve any combination of the following:

• Setting of goals and desired outcomes for their mentoring program
• Experiences in advanced endodontic patient care under direct faculty supervision
• Didactic instruction
• Independent lecture preparation and delivery
• Clinical research, abstract and manuscript preparation
• Mentoring of predoctoral students in competency progression
• Team teaching with faculty in small group educational settings
• New techniques and technology
• Insights into administrative responsibilities in an academic institution
• Application process and interview strategies
  

OUTCOMES
This has proven to be a highly successful program. Since its inception many of our participants have gained entrance to postdoctoral programs, completed them, and returned to help support our teaching program. This has become increasingly important as a potential lack of dental educators looms on the horizon. This program, as many mentoring activities prove to be, has been a win-win endeavor.

Professor Marty Bickman
Department of English
University of Colorado at Boulder

Here’s a brief description of my ongoing projects related to teaching.

I am seeing through the press, namely Teachers College Press of Columbia University, a book whose subtitle is Recovering the Tradition of the Active Mind for American Education. I see this tradition as beginning with the Transcendentalists, especially Ralph Waldo Emerson, Bronson Alcott, Margaret Fuller, and Elizabeth Peabody, continuing through philosophical pragmatism, most notably with John Dewey, the experimental schools of the 1920s, the open classroom movement of the 1960s and 70s, and some present teaching structures, such as the Honors course Mary Ann Shea and I initiated, “The Experience of Education.” In short, this tradition views knowledge as provisionally constructed by the mind in perpetual interaction with the world. The end results of this process are generally cultural artifacts such as ideas, classifications, and formulae, works of literature—basically a body of knowledge that has been organized and divided as the curriculum. The worst mistake of conventional education is to overvalue and fetishize only these end products, and merely hand them over ready made instead of involving students in the entire process of reconstructing the world for themselves, of engaging in dialectical movements between experiencing and conceptualizing, acting and thinking, practice and theory. It is a practice and a philosophy that we would now term more constructivist, more student-centered, more meta-cognitive, engaging students more as culture-creating agents than as simply conduits for the transmission of culture. It is wholistic, focusing not on developing the intellect solely but integrating knowledge with the body and the feelings. While this tradition has generally been ignored or even repressed by American public edition, it is still available as a coherent and living tradition, and this book hopes to make it more widely known and available to teachers and other educators.

Trying to put these ideas into practice in my own department, I am director of Graduate Student Teacher Education. I teach a graduate course “Literary Theory and the Teaching of Literature,” that involves us all in teaching a laboratory section of an introductory course. Our own class meets in the period after this laboratory class, and we discuss what we have observed and what we plan to do in the light of theories of reading and writing, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. Our graduate students who want to teach have to take either this course or an informal non-credit pedagogy seminar run by our lead Graduate Teacher and supervised by me. I also do informal observations and consultations for our graduate students once they get into their own classrooms.

For the past two summers I have also done teacher training and supervisory work for Denver Summerbridge, a program where inner city middle school students are taught math and literacy in small classes by high school and college students.

Professor Bill Briggs
Department of Mathematics

Professor Mitch Handelsman
Department of Psychology
University of Colorado at Denver

with assistance from Nora Sullivan and Annette Towler

Studies of Student Engagement - Project Description

WHAT WE HAVE DONE SO FAR (SINCE AUGUST 2000)

• We started by listening to the stories of students and colleagues about what it means to be engaged, what engaged learners look like, and how students get engaged in a liberal arts mathematics class (Math 2000). We have about nine hours of audio taped interviews with students, in addition to responses to a variety of survey questions related to engagement, attitudes, and self-theories.
• We collaborated on the teaching of Math 2000 with special attention to classroom activities and policies that might enhance student engagement. A manuscript based on this experience is currently under review for publication.
• We designed and tested the Student Engagement Questionnaire (SEQ), which consists of 27 items. A manuscript describing the scale, along with validity and reliability statistics, is currently under review for publication.
• As part of our testing of the SEQ, we collected data from 267 undergraduates in six different classes—upper and lower division classes in mathematics, political science, and psychology. Along with the data from Math 2000, we were able to demonstrate relationships between engagement and (a) grades, (b) self-theories, (c) learning goals, and (d) class level.

DEFINITION AND MEASUREMENT OF ENGAGEMENT
Student Engagement is a Multi-Faceted Phenomenon

A factor analysis yielded SIX COMPONENTS OF ENGAGEMENT. Here we list each component and one or two representative items from the SEQ:

• Skills Engagement. “Sitting toward the front of the class, where it’s easier to pay attention.” “Taking good notes in class.”
  
• Emotional Engagement. “Applying course material to my life.” “Really desiring to learn the material.”
• Performance Engagement. “Getting a good grade.” “Doing well on the tests.”
  
• Participation Engagement. “Asking questions when I don’t understand the instructor.”
  
• Interaction Engagement. “Helping fellow students.”
• Fun Engagement. “Having fun in class.”

Important Aspects of Engagement are Not Necessarily Observable, But They are Related to Other Aspects of the Learning Process

Notice that emotional engagement, interaction engagement, and fun engagement are not easily observable by faculty. However, they (and the other components of engagement) are related to the following:

• Self-reports of engagement were related to emotional, interaction, and fun components of engagement. The self-reports were NOT related to the other, more observable, components of engagement. This is a prime reason why students and faculty may have different opinions about students’ engagement!
  
  
• Incremental and entity self-theories. Carol Dweck classified students according to whether they hold an entity or incremental theory of learning. Entity theorists believe they have a predetermined capacity for learning; the “container” may be large, but it is limited. Incremental theorists (who do better at various learning and life tasks) believe that the capacity for learning can be extended and that the container can be stretched in various directions. We found that incremental theorists were more likely to be engaged in terms of emotional and interaction engagement. The other components of engagement were not related to self-theories.
  
  
• Learning and performance goals. Dweck proposed that some students set learning goals that are related to increasing their competence, and that other students set performance goals that are more concerned with gaining favorable judgments of their competence (but actually hinder learning). We found that engagement is related to goals: Students whose primary orientation was performance were more performance engaged, while students with a learning orientation were higher in emotional, participation, interaction, and fun engagement.
  
  
• Students in upper-division courses were more interaction and fun engaged than students in lower-division courses. Clearly, engagement is different in different courses. We may also be seeing evidence of a developmental process whereby students master the more elemental aspects of engagement (e.g., participation, skills) in lower division courses, and develop other levels of engagement (e.g., their ability to relate to other students, relate to professors, and derive more fun from their courses) in more advanced courses.
  
  
• Is engagement related to grades? Yes. In the Math 2000 class we found that skills and participation engagement were related to grades on homework assignments, performance and fun engagement were related to midterm grades, and participation engagement was related to final exam grades. (Also, see below.)

Engagement is Not an Absolute Quantity

How engaged students tell you they are may not be as important as how engaged they are relative to other classes. For example, students may report a high level of absolute engagement in your class, but not look very engaged. This may be because they are relatively less engaged in your class than in their other classes. Thus, if they have an extra hour, they will spend it on those other classes.

• Students who were RELATIVELY more engaged in Math 2000 had higher grades. Interestingly, students’ self-reported absolute engagement did not correlate with final grades, but those who were relatively more engaged had higher final exam grades (M = 86.0) than did students who were relatively less engaged (M = 72.9). There was also a significant difference on final course grades between those students who were relatively more (M = 93.0) and relatively less (M = 87.4) engaged.
  

The Future: Thoughts and Plans for Next Year

Engagement is not a characteristic of an individual. It is a common mistake for us to over-attribute behavior to stable personality characteristics (in psychology, this is called the “fundamental attribution error”). Engagement may be more usefully thought of as a relationship among both internal and external factors, including:

• student, including internal attitudes, external behaviors, life situations, etc.
  
  
• faculty (who can also be characterized as having various levels of engagement)
  
  
• subject matter
  
  
• level of the class
  
  
• “context,” or learning environment
  

Engagement implies relationships among all these things. It could be that non-optimal learning takes place when there’s a discrepancy between what the students are engaged with and what the professors are engaged with. For example, some professors are very engaged with the course material, and they expect students to be as well. But some students are engaged with other students in the class or the class atmosphere, and are relatively less engaged with the material. Other professors are engaged on many levels in their teaching: with content, students, and methods.

We have begun to study FACULTY engagement. We have been collecting judgments, from faculty and students, about what characterizes a professor who is engaged in the class. We hope to develop a scale that reliably measures faculty course engagement.

Professor Doug Burger
Department of English
University of Colorado at Boulder

1. Over the years, I have served as mentor for a number of faculty members – both in and out of the English Department – who were concerned about their low FCQs. At the moment, I am not mentoring anyone, though I have a standing agreement with the Chair for consultation with any faculty about their teaching
   
   
2. My ongoing specific project has been to collect videotapes of Shakespeare plays, which students and I use in class. Comparisons between the versions are often useful in stimulating discussion about differences in character, tone, etc.; and the procedure is very helpful in preparing students for intelligent viewing of Shakespeare plays in the future.
   
   
3. Mary Ann also asked me to describe the customary technique I use in my classes. In virtually all my courses, I provide response/worksheet questions, which the students answer and send to me on e-mail the night before. I then shape the class discussion around their answers, printed copies of which I return to them at the beginning of the period. I start the conversation by calling on several of the students, and then usually and seamlessly afterward (though I keep in my mind a number of the students’ ideas, in case the participation falters). In this way, I can make sure that everyone in class participates, even the shy, and has a stake in our joint intellectual and interpretive enterprise. The sense of community that emerges is very useful and rewarding, and the ideas are often fresh and new to me (which keeps me engaged in material that I have often taught). Usually, I provide questions for almost every period during the semester, and the students are graded on the basis of how many times they respond (about 3/4 of the possible times for an A, etc.).
   
   

Professor J.J. Cohen
Department of Immunology
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

THE CU MINI COLLEGE
This program was patterned on the highly successful and widely imitated Mini Med School; that is, a weekly series of evening lectures for the general public that showcase creative work and teaching by faculty at the state’s leading research university (illustrating the Culture of Excellence). This kind of community outreach has a long and prestigious history, going back at least to Michael Faraday’s famous lectures for working people at the Royal Institution. Faraday also presented Christmas lectures for children, a tradition sustained by the CU Wizards series at Boulder. The subject matter for the Mini College can include all intellectual activity at CU. The plan is to recruit faculty from all four campuses (an example of the University Without Walls).

In the first 3 seasons of Mini College, the teaching input was coordinated by Mary Ann Shea and the President’s Teaching Scholars Program. It began in 1999 with a sold-out 5-lecture series in Aspen, on the theme “How Do We Know What We Know?” In 2000, there was a similar series in Vail/Beaver Creek, and another series was offered in 2001 in Grand Junction. Then it was suspended, due, we were told, to funding limitations.

We are proposing another Mini College series, to be held in Denver, probably, for logistic reasons at the HSC’s Denison Auditorium. The theme has not been chosen yet, although “Ways of Knowing” has been suggested as it exemplifies the work of the academic scholar. The HSC has been running the Mini Med School since 1990, and thus has the expertise to put on such a program. Decisions about content and lecturers would be made by an informal PTS committee; the HSC Public Relations Office would handle advertising and organization; and HSC’s Educational Support Services would provide media expertise.

Here are some variables: Advertise to the general community, or to CU alumni? Charge a nominal fee, or make the series free? Offer CE credit for the series? Leverage the series for CU Foundation purposes? Do it only locally, or add satellite sites? (the Mini Med School will be carried at 12 sites around Colorado this fall). When to hold it?

A program like this is not cheap, even with faculty donating their time and the university not charging for facilities; there are salaries of support staff, advertising, mailing, printing, and refreshments to be paid for. Nevertheless, as the Mini Med School experience has told us, the value received in terms of prestige and loyalty to CU is far greater than the costs. We see this Denver series as a chance to demonstrate to the CU family what can be achieved by this sort of community outreach, with the hope that eventually CU would establish a unique Center for Community Outreach Education that would explore a vast variety of ways to connect with the local, statewide, and national communities that support us.

Professor Anne Costain
Associate Vice President for Human Resources and Risk Management
University of Colorado System

I have accepted an appointment from Dean Todd Gleeson to serve as a member of the advisory board to the Women's Studies Program on the Boulder campus. This board has been charged with helping the department to adjust its curriculum, major requirements, mission and goals in light of significant and largely unanticipated personnel changes, leaving only a small number of predominantly untenured faculty members in the program. Because of my long-time teaching and research involvement in Women's Studies and my belief that women's and gender studies are of great importance to the intellectual life of the campus, my project in the coming year will be to mentor, counsel and otherwise assist in the preservation of this program.

Professor Alex Cruz
Department of Environmental, Population, and Organismic Biology
University of Colorado at Boulder

Philosophy. “I am a teacher at heart, and there are moments in the classroom which I can hardly hold the joy. When my students and I discover uncharted territory to explore, when the pathway out of a thicket opens up before us, when our experience is illuminated by the lightning-life of the mind – then teaching is the finest work I know.“ These words by noted educator Parker J. Palmer parallel my experience of what teaching is all about. The ability to explore uncharted territories and formulate new hypotheses and predictions happens not only in the classroom, but more frequently outside of the classroom when students are actively involved in “hands-on” scholarly work. It is under these circumstances that students have the opportunity to put into action what they have learned in the classroom setting and to gain not only experience but the confidence to consider different career options.

Activity. I am thus a strong believer in providing our students with a solid undergraduate education, reflecting not only a thorough understanding of the subject, both from a historical and a current perspective, but providing opportunities for our students to be involved in scholarly research. Thus, I consider mentoring students to be an important part of my teaching mission and my Presidential Teaching Scholar Activity. My goal is to enhance the undergraduate experience of students and to help them establish careers. I have been very active in providing research opportunities to our students, activities that enhance self-esteem, boost self confidence, and the ability to conduct original research. This experience increases the chances of students successfully applying to graduate school. An emphasis on the scientific research process enables the student to develop his or her own research in related or divergent fields in the future. My lab has had an excellent success in getting student projects published. Finally, I encourage students to present their results at professional meetings, at the EPOB research symposium, and for informal EPOB graduate-undergraduate student discussion groups.

In my career, I have mentored over 260 undergraduate students involved in scholarly research. In the last year alone, I sponsored 42 undergraduate students in independent research, honors, UROP, URAP, MASP, and the Hughes Biomedical Program. Last year one of my honors student, Lisa Cooper, was the recipient of the first ever Honors Program Senior Scholarship and the Achievement Rewards for College Scientists. Another student, Jennifer Jeffers, involved in independent research in my lab was one of two recipients of the Rolex International Underwater Scholarship.

Professor Michael S. Cummings
Department of Political Science
University of Colorado at Denver

In the fall of 2002, I plan to reinstitute my weekly pedagogy seminar in the CU-Denver Political Science Department. For three years in the mid-1990s, I facilitated discussions among mostly non-rostered faculty about what was working or not working in their classes. The format was free-flowing, and the results seemed positive. We learned from one another's successes and failures, trials and errors. Both new and continuing part-time faculty and T.A.'s felt that the Department cared about their development as teachers and that this process provided a kind of collective mentoring for them.

The pedagogy seminar occasionally attracted other rostered faculty (one in addition to me came regularly), as well as faculty from cognate disciplines such as history and anthropology. At least five participants subsequently won teaching awards, so at least the seminar didn't mess them up too much! Attendance at this weekly one-hour brown bag is entirely optional, and light refreshments are provided. I might add that facilitating these meetings is a minor consideration in my work responsibilities under the contractual agreement I reached with the Department and College upon leaving my long-time chairing position.

Professor John L. Falconer,
Department of Chemical Engineering
University of Colorado at Boulder

I have just started on this project after taking some time to think about the best way to utilize the funding from the PTS program. It will be implemented in fall 2002.

Making thermodynamics more visual and engaging students in the classroom
Two aspects of teaching the junior level chemical engineering course in thermodynamics will be changed in an effort to increase the understanding of the concepts and engage the students more in class.

• Making the important concepts more visual: Thermodynamics is conceptually more difficult than many engineering courses and I have developed a list of the most important concepts for students to understand. I am developing visual representations of these concepts that will be presented as color slides, PowerPoint presentations, and by other computer software in the classroom. I will also place these representations on the course web site and thus I have created a new web site for the course. I recently obtained a small grant from the College’s Engineering Excellence Fund to supplement the PTS funding so that I can hire a student to work on developing these visual representations this summer. This includes animated representations of the processes. I hope to complete much of this during the summer for use in CHEN3320 in the fall semester.
  
  
• Engaging students more in class: I have revised the thermodynamics class and will teach it in the fall using concept tests during each class. I am basically following the approach that Professor Mike Dubson of Physics has used in Introductory Physics classes. Periodically during class, a multiple choice concept test will be presented to the students based on understanding of what we have been discussing and what they have read. I will purchase IR detectors using PTS funds and funds from the Associate Dean of Engineering. These will be installed in the classroom in the summer, and will be connected to my portable computer during class. The students will purchase an IR transmitter at the bookstore so they will be able to instantaneously answer these concept tests, and the software will identify how each person answered. After answering, they will discuss their answers with their neighbors and then have the opportunity to change their answers. This idea of concept tests and peer instruction has been used successfully at many universities and it should involve the students much more in class. Since the results will be tabulated by the computer and can be graded, the students will have some motivation to participate. The main objective is to involve the students more in the classroom and engage them more in their learning. One other professor in the department has indicated he may also try this in his class if I have it set up for the fall.

Professor Laura Goodwin
School of Education
University of Colorado at Denver

During the 2000-01 academic year, I developed a proposal for a formal mentoring program for junior faculty in the School of Education (SOE) at UCD. I developed the proposal after conducting a fairly extensive review of the literature on faculty mentoring. The program is somewhat unique, I believe, for two reasons: it is based on a synergistic, co-mentoring model, and it is structured in such a way that it is "housed" in our doctoral "labs." The SOE faculty and administration adopted the program, and it commenced early in the 2001-02 academic year. Seven mentor-mentee pairs participated in the program this past year. Program evaluation data from the end of the first year showed positive benefits, to date -- with both mentors and mentees reporting joint collaborative research projects
completed or in progress. Everyone who participated in the program was enthusiastic about it and thought it was a good addition to our School.

I wasn't too involved in the program this past year since I was serving as the Acting Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs. However, this next year I will be the coordinator of the program. I plan on continuing to collect data on its effectiveness, as well. I am particularly interested in the long-range benefits of participating in the program for both the mentors and mentees.

Professor Clayton Lewis
Department of Computer Science
University of Colorado at Boulder

Redeveloping Undergraduate Computer Science
As Computer Science Department Chair, my top priority is strengthening our undergraduate program. Strategically, the foundation of all aspects of our department, including our research enterprise, will be support from alumni, and this support must be built on providing the best possible experience for our undergraduate students.

I have two personal initiatives in improving our undergraduate program. The first is adding project opportunities for our students at all levels. In partnership with the Faculty Teaching Excellence Program, I've created Educational Technology House (ETH), in which CS undergrads create technology for CU faculty to use in their teaching. Students can sign up for ETH as early as their first semester, and take it repeatedly for as long as they wish. This builds a mixed-level group of students that provides long-term social support for its members, as well as giving time for members to develop real depth in their skills. ETH is now entering its fourth year, and some of its participants are among the very best of the students we have had in CS.

My second effort is extensive revision of our introductory course for majors, CS1300. Over the years, we and other CS programs nationally found ourselves confronting two serious problems, frequent cheating and very low participation by women. These problems are not unrelated: the classroom climate created by cheating and the efforts to control it by ever more draconian policies was very unattractive to many women students.

Beginning last year, I developed a new version of CS1300 which eliminated these problems, and created an atmosphere in which students are encouraged, and indeed required, to work constructively together. At the same time, in response to research done here and nationally on the interests of women students, I have created new exercises for the class which make clearer the potential social benefits of computer technology. The result is a course whose appeal reaches beyond those students who are fascinated by technology for its own sake (a group that includes few women) to students whose interest is more in what technology can contribute to life. This year, CS1300 students will develop software which can be used to match the interests of students and faculty in the department, making a positive contribution to our department's culture. Thanks to a curriculum grant from Microsoft, students will be able to deploy their programs on the Web, giving them experience in their first semester with real-world software delivery.

Professor Wesley Morriston
Department of Philosophy
University of Colorado at Boulder

1. For several years, I have been my department's liaison for the Teaching with Technology Program. In that capacity, I have given seminars on the construction of web pages for classes. I have also been available as a consultant to faculty members who don't know how to do this or that with their computers. Yesterday, for instance, one of my colleagues asked me how to get his laptop to play a dvd on the overhead in one of our classrooms. Amazingly, I was able to tell him.
   
   Luc Bovens and I have also put together proposals for equipment purchases - a projector and a laptop - that we hope will facilitate the use of computer technology in the classroom both for faculty and GTPIs.
   
   This semester, I myself am finally getting ready to do simple PowerPoint presentations in my large lecture course. I expect that others will follow.
   
   
2. I am frequently called upon to evaluate the teaching of my colleagues - especially in tenure and promotion cases. I never say no.
   
   
3. Occasionally, colleagues consult me about teaching problems. I do my best to be helpful.

Professor J. Michael Shull
Department of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences
University of Colorado at Boulder

Your request for the CU teaching scholars to write down their formal "projects" sent me back to the letter I wrote at the time I was nominated to join this group. There, I stressed the importance of blurring the artificial distinction between teaching and research.

As Professor of Astrophysics, and Chair of the APS department
at the University of Colorado, Boulder, my efforts the past several years have involved two major "teaching/research projects":

1. Mentoring to our new Assistant Professors.
   Following our last departmental strategic plan, I was keen to recruit new faculty members who would help us implement our goal of developing a new undergraduate major in Astronomy and Astrophysics. I have served as APS departmental mentor to two of our latest hires, Dr. Nick Gnedin (theoretical astrophysics) and Dr. Jason Glenn (instrumental astrophysics), both of whom were selected and hired largely due to their impressive interviews and their promise to involve our graduate and undergraduate students in research opportunities in these strategic areas. Through one-on-one discussions about teaching and research proposals, and selective use of matching funds, both young faculty members have developed successful research programs, with key involvement from our students. Gnedin has been awarded 4 grants from NASA and NSF in the last four months, including the prestigious NSF Career Award (for both research and teaching innovation). Glenn has won two NASA grants for his instrumental work in far-infrared and radio astronomy, and is one of two CU nominees for the prestigious Packard Foundation Fellowship. Both have done well in their classroom teaching, and are widely sought as research advisors.
   
   
2. Development of a new Astronomy Major.
   In 1995, the APS Department at CU, Boulder was invited to develop a new undergraduate degree in Astronomy and Astrophysics. After two years of effort, our degree was approved by the CCHE and Regents effective June 2000. In the past two years, we have grown from zero to 90 undergrad majors, and over 25 minors. We graduated our first class of five BA students in May 2002. My ongoing project for the 2002-03 academic year is to bring our degree program to a steady state of approximately 100 majors, with approximately 20 graduates each year. I intend to make our program one of the top research opportunities for CU undergraduates, using a portion of the $14M in sponsored research funds in astrophysics and planetary sciences and our involvement with the Hubble Space Telescope, NASA's Galileo and Cassini planetary probes, and our new membership in the Apache Point 3.5-meter telescope as tools to employ our undergrads in
   observational, experimental, and theoretical research. I want to encourage sizeable numbers of our undergraduates to pursue a senior Honors thesis, working with one of our 25 faculty members and many other researchers within the institutes CASA, JILA, or LASP. Within my own research group, I am currently working with 4 undergraduates, one of whom recently won the Goldwater Fellowship for her work on data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the FUSE satellite.

Professor Norton L. Steuben
Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor Emeritus
School of Law
University of Colorado at Boulder

I retired from the University effective June 30, 2002. While I will be teaching one class in the spring semester, and I will “mentor” any of our new faculty here at the Law School who desire some advice and mentoring, I am really not in a position to implement a Teaching Scholars’ project at this time.

On the other hand, for the last three or four years I have experimented with using a computer in my tax classes. In order to focus the classes’ attention on the particular provision of the Internal Revenue Code with which we are dealing, I have “loaded” the Internal Revenue Code on the hard drive of a computer and then projected the relevant Internal Revenue Code section on the screen at the front of the room.

Having the relevant Code section projected on the screen allowed me to “literally” point out the wording in the Code section that affected the analysis that I and the class were working with.

I found that the experiment had a couple of positive results. First, it focused the entire class’s attention on the particular Internal Revenue Code section being discussed. Second, it gave me the opportunity to literally underline the words that might control the analysis with which the class and I were dealing. The major disadvantage of this experiment was that there was a lot of class down time while I was getting the appropriate Internal Revenue Code section projected on the screen. All in all, I think the experiment was positive and I probably will use this technique when I teach in the spring.

Professor John Taylor
Physics Department
University of Colorado at Boulder

My student Andi Pascarella just finished her Ph.D. with a thesis that studied the effectivenenss of the computer-based homework system called CAPA, which we have been using in the inroductory physics coursed for the last 4 or 5 years.

Now that the project is complete, my main activity (and an all consuming one) is to finish the second edition of the Taylor-Zafiratos book on "Modern Physics" and the 1st edition of my book on "Classical Mechanics," both of which are supposed to de done by the end of this school year.

Professor Rick VanDeWeghe
Director, Denver Writing Program
University of Colorado at Denver

In the English Department on this campus, I chair a Teaching Committee that supports junior faculty development of their teaching. We meet regularly to view videotapes of these faculty in the classroom and discuss our observations. We also share written materials, such as FTEP publications and guides to preparing a teaching portfolio that enrich our understanding of teaching.

Professor Don Warrick
College of Business
University of Colorado at Colorado Springs

PTS PROJECT: DIRECTOR OF TEACHING DEVELOPMENT FOR UCCS, COLLEGE OF BUSINESS
As part of my service requirement I am serving as the Director of Teaching Development for the UCCS College of Business. I work closely with Dean Joseph Rollo and Associate Dean Jeff Ferguson and Teaching Development Team chartered in September 2001 to fulfill the following vision and mission:

1. Vision: To develop outstanding state-of-the-art teachers in the College of Business.
   
   
2. Mission: To be a catalyst and advocate for teaching excellence, innovation, and continuous improvement in the College of Business.
   

Our team is on the agenda for the fall and spring College of Business Faculty Retreats, plans 1-2 faculty teaching excellence luncheons sessions each semester, and seeks and allocates funding for teaching development activities for faculty. We are also available for coaching and mentoring, facilitating sessions for part-time faculty, coordinating faculty visits to the classes of other faculty members, and communicating valuable information about teaching.

Our first session was held in October of 2001 and included ideas about teaching shared by President’s Teaching Scholars Gene Abrams, Bob Camley, and Fred Coolidge. We had a full room of full and part-time faculty who saw Gene Abrams make math interesting, Bob Camley use a pyramid illustration to captivate the audience on the value of physics, and Fred Coolidge stand on a table to make a point regarding psychology. The faculty members were fascinated to see how good teachers can make any subject come alive. Other sessions have included, for example, involving the faculty in identifying their needs and ideas regarding teaching development and training on teaching technology.

This approach has received the full support of the Dean and Associate Dean and has already had an impact on the interest the full and part-time faculty have in teaching excellence. The process has also brought to light many things regarding teaching excellence in the College of Business including the fact that faculty rarely see other faculty teach, have not until recently had a forum for exchanging information about teaching, and have not had a plan for involving and developing part-time faculty members. This has been an exciting and rewarding endeavor that I hope other President’s Teaching Scholars will initiate with their departments. Imagine the impact we could have on the University of Colorado if every major school had a Director of Teaching Development!!!

Professor Denny Webster
School of Nursing
University of Colorado Health Sciences Center

I will be a part of a group going to Vietnam with Friendship bridge later this month. We are teaching Vietnamese nurses info that prepares them to go to graduate school in Thailand. The course I will be involved with is advanced teaching strategies.