FY 2021-2022
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Name: Dr. Josef Sifuentes |
Can you share a brief paragraph about your current role and past accomplishments?
I am an assistant professor in the School of Mathematical and Statistical Sciences (SMSS). My research area is numerical methods for problems applied mathematics. In addition to publishing work in this area, I have also published work on my approach to teaching and mentoring. This past year has been very rewarding in that my work in this area has been recognized by my colleagues and beyond. I was awarded the Outstanding Teaching award by the SMSS, the Faculty Excellence Award in Student Mentoring by the College of Science, and the Regents Outstanding Teaching Award by the University of Texas System Board of Regents.
Why is teaching important to you?
Teaching is important to me for many reasons. In a selfish way, its important because I thoroughly enjoy it. There is a joy in presenting mathematical ideas in ways that are accessible, exciting and capture the students imagination. But more importantly, it is crucial that we have a cohort of well-trained mathematicians and problem solvers coming out of the Rio Grande Valley. Historically, many of the students at UTRGV are underrepresented in STEM fields and industry and as educators we need to fill this gap. We need our students to be in the room when big decisions are made and have the expertise to help guide the discussion.
What are your beliefs toward teaching and learning?
I believe that everyone has the ability to learn complex ideas – the rub is that it takes time, and a lot of effort, for most learners to view the material in just the right way to unlock the seed principal. This is what I try to emphasize in my teaching what is the core principle and why is it straightforward? In what way can it be intuitive or aligned with our past experiences? I also believe it is important to illustrate how these central ideas connect to other subjects or corners of mathematics as well as how it connects to important problems beyond the classroom.
What type of learning environment do you try to create in your classroom?
It used to be that the environment was very performative with me at the board putting on an entertaining show.But I have found that students do better when the environment is more interactive, both between student and instructor as well as amongst students. For this reason, I have incorporated instances of active learning assignments and collaborative thinking sessions within the classroom. This environment puts more onus on the student to take an active role in their learning and engaging of course concepts.
What is your favorite teaching strategy to foster student learning
My favorite strategy, which I had never heard of nor employed prior to UTRGV, is active learning. My Intro to Math Software course now incorporates many instances of short, in-class coding assignments so that students can participate in putting a concept from that lecture into practice. It also gives me a chance address in real time any gaps in understanding. Furthermore, students have the opportunity to chat about the ideas with their neighbors about the low stakes, participatory assignment. I have taken this strategy even further in my Real Analysis course which is completely flipped. There the entire lecture period consists of group assignments, so that students are actively engaged with the material, their classmates and the instructor in completing the assignments.
What advice do you have for new UTRGV faculty members;regarding teaching?
Emphasize core concepts and connections. What is the core idea, and is it the core idea for other aspects of the material? How does the material connect to more than just completing the homework for example does it connect to more advanced courses? Active research? Hot areas in industry? I also highly recommend incorporating active learning and collaborative work elements into the course. I believe it really helps for the students to engage with the material in a non-passive way.
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Name: Dr. Teresa Feria Arroyo |
Can you share a brief paragraph about your current role and past accomplishments?
I am a full professor in the Department of Biology. I am currently serving as Associate Dean for Faculty Success, Diversity, and Inclusion at the College of Science and as a Faculty Success and Diversity Council member at UTRGV. I have also served as an International Fellow for the Office of Research and Sponsored Projects, Chair of the Women Faculty Network, UTRGV Senator, member of the B3 Taskforce, and more. When I reflect on my accomplishments, I think of my students. Several of them are working on their graduate studies. Others are already teaching or working for national agencies, industry leaders and NGOs such as USDA, the U.S. Fish Wildlife Service, Wonderful Citrus and American Forests, to name some. My accomplishments are all related to my involvement in student and faculty success.
Why is teaching important to you?
It helps me breathe! I teach because I want to inspire others to pursue their dream as I did. If I could do it, so can they! Teaching allows me to provide students with the tools that they may use beyond the classroom to succeed in their graduate studies and ultimately in the workforce, as well as in their personal lives.
What are your beliefs toward teaching and learning?
As a scientist, more than belief, we seek facts So, I like to be prepared to teach. I attend workshops, panels, conferences, and other activities that help me to be a better educator. I also like to learn new things, such as the use of the best social media formats to communicate with students. Teaching by example is one of the best things we can do.
What type of learning environment do you try to create in your classroom?
I like to create a learning environment of trust and safety. I am an ally of my students! I am here to help them to strengthen the academic skills that will allow them to thrive in a challenging world. I like to create an inclusive environment that allows everybody to succeed. I invite them to embrace diversity and to create a better world by being empathetic and resilient.
What is your favorite teaching strategy to foster student learning ?
My bilingual, culturally relevant pedagogy. I include several active learning methods: flipped classrooms, journal reflections -both still rarely used in sciences- mock exercises, lab, field, computer work, and recycling projects to name a few. I also offer different inclusive assessments. I am committed to providing different strategies for my students to succeed and empower their critical thinking and resilience skills. I love when students work with their families, friends, and local communities on topics related to the class. In my experience, this helps them to reinforce their sense of belonging.
What advice do you have for new UTRGV faculty members regarding teaching?
Be yourselves! Share your own experience as a student with your students. Invite them to reflect on their purposes of being in your class and how the skills that they are learning will help them to succeed in life. Use multiple active learning strategies to engage them in and out of the classroom. Use multiple assessments to give equal opportunity to succeed. Be inclusive. Attend workshops and faculty development programs that can help you to improve your teaching. Remember that you are a role model for your students. Teach by example.
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Name: Mary King |
Can you share a brief paragraph about your current role and past accomplishments?
I am currently a Lecturer III in the criminal justice program. I have been at the university for seven years and I teach both upper and lower-level undergraduate courses within the department and serve as one of the advisors for the Sigma Kappa Chi chapter of ACJA on the Edinburg campus. I have developed courses in several different modalities including traditional, hybrid, and large online. I received the UTRGV Faculty Excellence Award in online teaching in 2020 and have received several certifications in online teaching and instructional design. In 2021 I completed the ACUE Effective in College Instruction certification, the QM Peer-Review verification, and obtained an Online Instructional Designer Graduate certificate from UTRGV.
Why is teaching important to you?
Teaching is important to me because of how important my teachers were growing up. School was always the place where I felt most comfortable, and my teachers were there to support me when I needed that. Within my discipline, a lot of students are pursuing their majors for very personal reasons, and I love being able to help them figure out how they can focus their passion into something useful after they graduate. I really enjoy it when I get to see my students grow from taking one of my freshman-level courses to what they produce later in my upper-level courses.
What are your beliefs toward teaching and learning?
I believe that teaching is itself a learning journey. I am not the same teacher I was when I first started, and it has been through trial and error on my own learning journey that I have gained confidence in my teaching skills. Criminal Justice is interdisciplinary and constantly changing so it is important for my students, that I consistently try and learn new ways to teach them about this field.
What type of learning environment do you try to create in your classroom?
Currently, I teach all my courses online and this creates a challenge of creating a similar interactive environment that I would have with my students in a traditional classroom. This is where I have an interest in course design to help me learn how to best engage my students in an online environment, especially in asynchronous courses. When I look at my course in Blackboard I think of a storefront, if the showcase in the window is messy and disorganized how can I get anyone excited enough to come in. However, if I make the display organized, colorful, and efficient, I can get that initial spark of interest to get students engaged in the class just like I would on the first day of a traditional classroom.
What is your favorite teaching strategy to foster student learning?
Humor and highlighting student achievement. Part of fostering learning is getting students excited and comfortable enough to learn in the first place. In my videos and announcements, I use humor through memes and gifs to create a more relaxed atmosphere in an online environment. I want my students to feel comfortable enough to reach out to me to ask questions. I am also constantly trying to keep open communication and interaction with students using videos, different learning platforms, and announcements. I also use announcements to provide group feedback and highlight student work. I want students to know that I see them and see the effort they are putting into the course even in a fully online environment. I like to also highlight students who I feel have shown growth in the quality of their work throughout the semester.
What advice do you have for new UTRGV faculty members regarding teaching?
My advice is to not be afraid of failing when trying new things. Everyone has their own technique for teaching. Sometimes tools and tricks that work for one instructor can end in total failure for another instructor when they implement the same thing. Keep trying out new tools and techniques till you find what works for you. Also, do not be afraid to share these new adventures with your students. I think it is important to be transparent that you are trying something new, and you are going to figure out if it works as a class together.
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Name: Dagoberto Ramirez |
Can you share a brief paragraph about your current role and past accomplishments?
I am a UTRGV Lecturer III, and teach UNIV 1301 Learning Framework and UNIV 1101 Academic and Career Success. Additionally, I have also taught MASC 2301 Introduction to Mexican American Studies, EDBE 3323 Development of Bilingualism, LDST 2335 Leadership for Community Engagement, EDUC 1301 Introduction to Teaching Profession, EDUC 4306 Secondary Content Pedagogy, COUN 6301 Introduction to Research in Counseling, and EDCI 8325 Mentoring and Professional Development.
In my service to my department, college, and the UTRGV institution, I have presented strategies for academic success to students during lunch-hour sessions, met with parents of incoming freshman and first-year students during family orientation sessions, shared effective teaching strategies and activities with faculty colleagues via our CTE and multiple other venues, and have served on numerous committees including the University College Annual Review, Reappointment, and Promotion Committee, the UTRGV Awards Committee, and the UTRGV Faculty Development Committee.
Although as a full-time Lecturer III faculty member I am not required to conduct research, I am currently involved in two IRB-approved research projects, one on helping immigrant women living in a local housing authority surface their poignant, important literacies, and the other on the role that early childhood and adolescent experiences influence the development of leadership skills and styles of current and former Mexican American superintendents on the US-Mexico border in deep south Texas. Both of those research projects have yielded two book chapters and several peer-reviewed journal article publications.
Other accomplishments include: being invited to give keynote addresses at both the UTRGV Bilingual Education Student Association (BESO) fall 2017 ceremony and the Los Fresnos High School ELEVA (English Learners, Educated Voices for Advancement) fall 2017 Posada; getting accepted to present at the Texas Association of Bilingual Education (TABE) state-wide conference, the National Association of Bilingual Education (NABE) national conference, and the First Year Experience national conference; receiving the UT Systems Regents Outstanding Teaching Award (ROTA) for 2018; receiving the 6th Annual UTRGV Accessibility Excellence Award from the UTRGV Office of Student Accessibility Services on November 9, 2021; and, being selected to serve on the inaugural Faculty Success and Diversity Council (FSDC) for 2021-2022.
Why is teaching important to you?
Teaching gives me a platform from which to help young emerging scholars become the best scholars they can be. As I tell my students, no one does it alone, as we all stand on the shoulders of others that went before us. I want to be those shoulders to my scholars, offering them both the gentle, encouragement push and the embracing support system they will need as they learn to navigate the university systems in place at UTRGV. I facilitate my scholars learning process, while also acknowledging that they too teach each other in and out of our class. It is important to me that my students see all humans they encounter and have access to (including teachers, advisors, classmates, librarians, staff members at all offices on campus, our groundskeepers, administration, custodians, cooks, bus drivers, police officers, etc.) as holders of key knowledge that can help them in some teaching and learning relationship to be potentially used in some academic setting. Teaching in an experience-based hands-on approach and environment where students are encouraged to access experiential strategies and activities, is an important aspect of my teaching commitment. I develop and deploy learning experiences that take my students and me beyond the four walls of our classroom. We take campus field trips where we can access and reflect on those learning sites and places (including the Escandon statue at the northeast corner of campus, the facilities and available tools at the campus library, our organic vegetable gardens, etc.) where we allow these settings to speak to us as we connect our course work and student learning outcomes to those places. During the COVID-19 pandemic, I have grown in my capacity to develop and deliver on-line synchronous classroom experiences with my students. Helping young minds determine for themselves what they now want to passionately pursue as a direction, path, and career is a key portion of my teaching profession, and I welcome that responsibility.
What are your beliefs toward teaching and learning?
My beliefs towards teaching and learning are that the process is not a one-way street from teacher to learner. I see teaching and learning as a back-and-forth ongoing relationship-building dialog between the teacher and the student, constantly facilitating the learning for the student and the learning for the teacher. This relationship between teacher and learner is at its best when both participants view themselves as equal partners in the process. Additionally, I firmly believe that learning is a construction of newfound and newly created knowledge and is not a mere reception of previously developed knowledge that is out there already in existence to be placed into the learners brain to then be engaged by the learner. Because learning is creation, both the teacher and the student must be willing and able co-creators of that experience and knowledge that can lead both parties to wisdom. Teaching and learning is, therefore, not a stagnant event for single individuals, but rather, an exciting and dynamic process that has the potential to create and bring communities of teacher-learners and learner-teachers together.
What type of learning environment do you try to create in your classroom?
I create a positive, safe space in my classroom where students can experience the challenges of learning to learn in a nurturing environment that pushes them to thrive in the scholarly rigor required at this post-secondary level, while being supported in their inevitable moments of challenges. I often ask my learners,"So, do you believe that you are most likely to learn more from your successes or from your failures?." The reason I ask my learners the question is to try to help them dispel for themselves the myth that a student can only become an increasingly better scholar by only experiencing success after success, and that failure and setbacks are wrong and bad for any student. I believe that allowing students to stall, falter, and maybe even fail at some things can be the beginning of finding a better, new, different trajectory that can next lead to success. I seek to make my classroom that place of experimentation, imagination, and attempts at being new again. I tell my students that as a teacher, each interaction I have with my young, emerging scholars as they build upon successes and failures gives me a chance to learn from them, thus, a chance to be new again, even at my age of 65, and I often thank them for that.
What is your favorite teaching strategy to foster student learning?
Structured cooperative learning is my anchor teaching strategy that fosters in-depth student learning, as well as relationship-building opportunities for my students. I share with my scholars that here in our classroom, we will have the opportunity to first learn things together (in a respectful, collaborative, interdependent setting, that can also result in collegial, productive fun, as well) and then perform those things independently for individual accountability. Properly structured cooperative learning helps break the false narrative that the world of academia (and the workplace) is a purely competitive place where one can only advance successfully at the expense of others failing. Cooperative learning has the potential to teach that the world is, in fact, a collaborative, cooperative life laboratory where all participants can both teach each other and learn from each other as they navigate the worlds of academia and work. Yes, there are competitive struggles one must go through, especially in entering the arena getting accepted into school and securing jobs ; but once in the arenas, the worlds are much more collaborative than competitive. Teaching students this phenomenon, and teaching them the skills of collegial cooperation, helps them harness not only the material of any course I teach, but also the mindset and attitude of working together in many teams for many purposes.
What advice do you have for new UTRGV faculty members regarding teaching?
One first piece of advice I would share with new UTRGV faculty members is that viewing and embracing all students they meet as asset-bearing young, emerging scholars is the beginning of a successful teaching and learning relationship they can develop immediately. I have found that all students bring positive assets to the teaching and learning equation, and sometimes it is just a matter of conducting due diligence and looking closely in order to help uncover those key constructive properties that at times lay hidden, just below the obvious surface. A second piece of advice I offer is to never be afraid to ask others, if you are not sure of something, anything. There is always at least one someone that has the information, data, and experience he/she is more than willing to share. Just look around and ask. And a third piece of advice I would give to a new UTRGV faculty member is to wake up every morning and look forward to an excited, smiling, and happy mood to carry you forward in all UTRGV endeavors. Teaching at the university level can be such a positive, rewarding, and fulfilling endeavor, and it has great potential for making a tremendous difference in many lives about to embark on new directions and exciting careers. The key to all this advice here is to be ever-mindful of yourself and in the present moment. UTRGV is a world-class institution of higher education because it has attracted and fostered many focused, mindful, caring students and faculty, and it will continue to be a world leader if new faculty members follow this proven approach.
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Name: Cory Wimberly |
Can you share a brief paragraph about your current role and past accomplishments?
I started at UTPA in 2006, transitioned to UTRGV, and I am currently a professor of philosophy. I’ve won a number of teaching awards but the most prominent is the UT Regents Outstanding Teaching Award. The way I see it, my most fundamental ‘accomplishments’ are setting aside time to do formal training in pedagogy. Especially early on in my career, it was important to block out time to attend teaching workshops: during my first years I went two or three times to the University of Minnesota, for instance, to train for a week in Cooperative Learning. I had little formal training in teaching in graduate school (most of us don’t) and I required substantial training to give me tools to improve my courses. Training early is a bit like investment for retirement: the compounding interest of working on those early lessons during my career have added up over time. I continue to practice those lessons I learned and strive to get better at them, even as I add new ones.
Why is teaching important to you?
Most of us are researchers as well as teachers. Even so, the biggest impact most of us will have—outside of a very few outliers—will be on our students through our teaching. Put simply, teaching is important for me because it is one of the most important ways that I will have an impact in this life. Not to try do well at it feels dishonest with myself, my students, and a shirking of my duty to the future.
What are your beliefs toward teaching and learning?
I think those that look at teaching and learning as the dissemination of ‘content’ have a sadly impoverished view of things. Looking at things this way is drawn from business and its focus is on exchanges: person A delivers person B some educational content X at Y price. One of the many problems with this model is that it assumes that person B (the student) is a static subject: they come to the university to acquire ‘content’ to achieve some preset end they already have in mind at 17 years old when they go to the university. This just misunderstands almost every 17-year-old I have ever met.
Education is also fundamentally about growing the human being and changing and challenging students. Students do not just need to memorize content X, they need opportunities for transformation and growth—at the very least to become the kind of people who can use knowledge X. I try to make this present in my teaching in that my goal is not to get students just to memorize some philosophical content, regurgitate it on the midterm, and then forget it, leaving the course unchanged and none the better. My aim is to train philosophers, people who have the habit of examining their lives and living more critically, ethically, justly, and happily. My pedagogical practices begin from this question: how do I train philosophers? As opposed to how to convey philosophical content?
What type of learning environment do you try to create in your classroom?
I try to create an environment where students can practice doing philosophy, opposed to merely watching the instructor do philosophy. Perhaps I am influenced by my background in sports in this. You would never go to any sport for practice and just listen to the coach lecture about it; the majority of the time is spent practicing, even if the coach’s lessons were essential.
What is your favorite teaching strategy to foster student learning?
Cooperative learning: it is a methodology that allows students to collaborate with each other. Again, I value this because it gives students the opportunity to do philosophy, rather than just to be the passive receivers of ‘content delivery.’
What advice do you have for new UTRGV faculty members regarding teaching?
Developing your pedagogy is a long-term process. Find some summer workshops where you can really dive into methodologies that make sense to you, suit your personality and discipline, and spend enough time to develop a solid understanding. Then, work each semester—a little at a time—to really bring that pedagogy into your classroom. At least at the start, I think a longer workshop is beneficial to get a teaching base that you can add onto with smaller future workshops; most of us start with no formal training at all and have no real explicit methodology to draw on. Time is always an issue for faculty and to balance my course redesigning against my other priorities, I save all my ideas from my courses and edit them after every third time I teach them. This way I am not spending all my time on redoing my courses but it is still happening regularly. I wouldn’t make the mistake I made at the beginning of my career by completely redesigning courses after every time teaching them because we just have too many other priorities and duties to do that. Find a schedule where you can make continual improvements without sinking all of your other priorities.