On Friday, December 4, 2015 we heard from some of our future faculty graduate student instructors (FFGSIs). (https://sites.lsa.umich.edu/csie-um/program-features/graduate-students/) These individuals took advantage of the opportunity to use half of their teaching appointment to work on an education-related project with a faculty advisor.
Jacob Lutter (video) presented the work he did with Ginger Shultz to investigate the pedagogical content knowledge (PCK) of our organic chemistry lab GSIs. They designed a survey tool to probe both the GSIs’ content and pedagogical content knowledge. They found a positive correlation between semesters of teaching experience and PCK. They are working on developing additional professional development opportunities to increase PCK in this GSI population.
Kyle Williams and Alicia Welden (video) presented their Compute-to-Learn project (http://umich.edu/~pchem/compute-to-learn.html) from the CHEM 260 Honors Studio. The studio was an optional activity that CHEM 260 students can engage for honors credit. In their project they worked with student leaders to help students develop modeling projects of physical chemistry concepts. At the end of the semester, check out their website (http://umich.edu/~pchem/compute-to-learn.html) for links to the finished demos posted publically to the Wolfram Demonstrations Project site.
Jessica Rabuck-Gibbons (video) presented her work developing special labs for the biomedical analytical chemistry lab course. Her work focused on incorporating labs that use mass spectrometry into the curriculum. Jessica gave examples of two projects which used instruments in Prof. Rutolo’s research lab, are well-studied, and do not require expensive reagents. Students will do these experiments in the upcoming weeks at the end of this semester and we look forward to hearing how they go.
Jieming Li (video) presented her work with the Single-Molecular Analysis Research Laboratory (SMART) (https://singlemolecule.lsa.umich.edu/) to develop a research program for undergraduate students. The idea is have upper-level undergraduate students enrolled in a course-based research project. They would have a month of classroom work followed by two months of experimentation in the single-molecule lab with a capstone presentation. This work could be expanded to form the basis of training for graduate students.
Nate May (video) presented his work in the general chemistry lab sections doing authentic research with snow chemistry. Nate has been working with his graduate advisor, Prof Kerri Pratt, on the authentic research connection project (http://sites.lsa.umich.edu/arc/chemistry-125126-fall-2015/) where first semester freshmen are involved in real, publishable research projects. This semester student with Nate and other GSIs and student leaders to learn general chemistry knowledge and skills through the theme of snow chemistry. It was clear that while it was a time and labor-intensive job, Nate thoroughly enjoyed mentoring these students in research related to his doctoral work.
We thank these six presenters and look forward to hearing from other FFGSIs in future project updates!