More than 250 faculty members from the George Washington University will discuss ways to re-think the way they educate on Friday during the first GW Teaching Day.
The Fall Teaching Day will focus on the toughest teaching challenges facing universities like GW and promising strategies for responding.
Carl Wieman, Nobel laureate and associate director for science at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, and Josipa Roksa, co-author of the 2011 book Academically Adrift: Limited Learning on College Campuses, will lead discussions on how to better engage students in the classroom.
Dr. Wieman, who was a distinguished professor of physics and presidential teaching scholar at the University of Colorado before coming to the White House, received the Nobel Prize in physics in 2001 for the creation of a new form of matter known as “Bose-Einstein condensation.” Dr. Wieman also received the Carnegie Foundation’s U.S. University Professor of the Year Award in 2004 and the American Association of Physics Teachers’ Oersted Medal in 2007 for his work on science education.
Dr. Roksa, an assistant professor of sociology at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia, was named a 2008-2009 University Teaching Fellow and a 2010-2011 Mead Honored Faculty. Dr. Roksa, whose research has been published in several education journals, also serves as a fellow of the National Forum on the Future of Liberal Education.
“Teaching excellence is just as important as excellence in research, and the two are closely related. We can’t stand still in the ways we teach, any more than we can in our research fields,” said Stephen C. Ehrmann, vice provost for teaching and learning and an associate professor for educational technology leadership in GW’s Graduate School of Education and Human Development. “Professor Roksa will describe some recent research about how surprisingly little students may be learning in college, and Nobel laureate Carl Wieman will illustrate how faculty can use their research skills to figure out how to improve the learning of their own students.”
Teaching Day, which will be held in the Jack Morton Auditorium, is sponsored by the STEM Education Group at GW and GW’s new Teaching & Learning Collaborative. The STEM Education Group is made up of faculty interested in innovative STEM education initiatives at the undergraduate level. The STEM Education Group is also sponsoring three other nationally renowned STEM educators as part of a seminar series this academic year: Robin Wright (Nov. 4), Karl Smith (Jan. 27) and Besham Shakhashiri (April).The Teaching & Learning Collaborative (TLC) is a faculty-driven center for teaching excellence, a signature initiative of the newly-created Office of Teaching and Learning. TLC’s mission is to help faculty improve student learning. Some of the priorities for the TLC and the new office will be described at Fall Teaching Day, which will be the first of many Teaching Days to come.
Both President Steven Knapp and Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Steven Lerman will deliver remarks at Teaching Day.
“Teaching Day is the start of an important and exciting new tradition at George Washington,” said Dr. Lerman. “This series of lectures and discussions demonstrates the university’s dedication to excellence in teaching and to bringing in thought leaders who will inspire our faculty members to view their teaching from new perspectives."