Brown Teaching Grants support innovative undergrad teaching

Innovative undergraduate teaching is once again getting a boost from the Brown Teaching Grants Program at Rice. Eight of 14 proposals submitted to Rice’s Committee on Teaching this year were selected to receive funding, which comes from a grant from Houston’s Brown Foundation Inc.

“The proposals came from a wide variety of academic disciplines, and they were all worthy of funding, so the committee — composed of 14 faculty, two students and one alumnus — had a difficult task in picking those to recommend for funding,” said Geoff Winningham ’65, professor of visual and dramatic arts, who chairs the Committee on Teaching.

The proposals that the committee selected for funding were most distinguished by innovation, worthiness and the number of students that would be affected, Winningham said.

Below are the winning proposals for 2013-14 with their faculty sponsors and academic departments:

“The Midsummer Night Project: Shakespeare’s ‘A Midsummer Night’s Dream’ Performed Outdoors on the Rice Campus”
Christina Keefe, Visual and Dramatic Arts.

“Expanding the Role of Emerging Visiting Artists in the Classroom”
Christopher Sperandio, Visual and Dramatic Arts.

“An Interactive Textbook for ‘Advanced Statistical Methods for Psychology Undergraduates'”
David Lane, Psychology.

“Structural Analysis in 3-D Modeling Programs”
Gordon Wittenberg, Architecture.

“Teaching Freshman Design Using a Flipped-Classroom Model”
Ann Saterbak, Matthew Wettergreen and Maria Oden, Bioengineering.

“Virtual Learning Environment for the Statistical Software”
John Dobelman, Statistics.

“Learning by Teaching, Student-Driven Contents for Bioengineering”
Renata Ramos, Bioengineering.

“BUSI 471: Strategic Management”
Anastasia Zavyalova, Jones Graduate School of Business.