Brown Teaching Grants support innovative undergrad teaching

Innovative undergraduate teaching is once again getting a boost from the Brown Teaching Grants Program at Rice. Seven 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.

Among the projects green-lighted are printmaking that gives art students the chance to move beyond the flat surface and into three-dimensional works, a merit-badge system that will certify engineering undergraduates’ commitment to developing proficiencies in engineering-related skills and hands-on activities that allow students to work with archaeological materials and collect data for class projects.

“The Teaching Committee considered 19 different faculty proposals this year for Brown Teaching Grants,” said Geoff Winningham ’65, professor of visual and dramatic arts, who chairs the Committee on Teaching.  “They ranged across all academic disciplines, from a studio art course in three-dimensional printmaking to introducing digital technologies in the teaching of physics. All 19 were good proposals for worthwhile causes. What distinguished the seven proposals that the committee selected for funding were, more than anything else, innovation and the number of students that would be affected.”

Below are the winning proposals for 2012-13 with their faculty sponsors and academic departments:

“Sculptural Printmaking: Non-edition Printmaking.”
Karin Broker, Visual and Dramatic Arts.

“Course Module on Embedded Electronics Systems for Multidisciplinary Senior Design Projects.”
Gary Woods, Electrical and Computer Engineering; Marcia O’Malley, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science; Maria Oden, Bioengineering and the Oshman Engineering Design Kitchen.

“Development of a Student-driven Badge-based System to Certify Prototyping Skills and Proficiencies.”
Matthew Wettergreen and Maria Oden, Bioengineering.

“Enhanced Learning in Physics: Breaking a Performance Barrier with Digital Technologies.”
Dario Martinez, Physics and Astronomy.

“Integrating Video Technology Into Chemistry Laboratory Courses.”
Kristi Kincaid and Carrie McNeil, Chemistry.

“Materials for SCALE-UP Coursework in Introduction to Archaeology.”
Jeffrey Fleisher, Anthropology.

“Classroom Demonstration Tools for Engineering Mechanics.”
Andrew Dick, Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science.