Faculty Receive Student Success and Teaching Improvement Grants

The Wally Cordes Teaching and Faculty Support Center is pleased to announce the recipients of the 2023-24 Teaching Improvement and Student Success Grants.

The Teaching Improvement Grants are funded from the TFSC budget while the Student Success Grants are administered by the TFSC and funded by Global Campus. This year, the grant program awarded 12 different faculty teaching improvement grants totaling $20,000 and nine different faculty Student Success Grants totaling $30,000.

As a condition of the grants, recipients are required to share the results of their scholarly projects with faculty colleagues through Teaching and Faculty Support Center programs.

Recipients of Student Success Grants

Micaela Baranello, Department of Music
Will receive training in "Reacting to the Past," a roleplaying pedagogy that will enhance music history classes, $1,645.

Linyin Cheng, Department of Geosciences
Will provide Graphical User Interface of the Nonstationary Extreme Value Analysis model, which is designed for assessing risks of high-impact weather and climate events, $2,500.

Terrell Dionne, Department of Communication
Will develop a digital archive of recorded speeches about environmental racism that provides undergraduates with examples of how they can promote environmental justice through oratory, $2,000.

Dave Fredrick, Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Will visit Greek, Roman, Punic and Norman sites in Spain, Tunisia and Sicily to capture 360-degree video for use in producing three interactive, accessible, game-based applications to teach the cross-cultural history of the ancient and medieval Mediterranean, $1,391.30.

Sarah Hixson, Apparel Merchandising and Product Development
Will develop a module centered on criteria to pass the Adobe Certified Professional exam and offer the opportunity to students to prove the efficacy and necessity of this for AMPD students, $5,000.

Cengiz Koparan, Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology
Will provide capstone students with Unmanned Aerial Vehicle development kits to build, calibrate, test, evaluate and utilize for data collection for site-specific precision agriculture applications, and understand how sensors, controls and robotics are implemented in today's agricultural science, $5,000.

Peggy Lee, Eleanor Mann School of Nursing
Will use collaborative testing in course testing to decrease test anxiety, decrease cognitive overload and increase cognitive learning, $2,500.

Cory Mixdorf, Department of Music
Will purchase a contrabass trombone primarily for use in the U of A Trombone Ensemble, the RAZORBONES, $5,000.

Wyann Stanton, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Will leverage hands-on, instructional materials to improve elementary education pre-service teachers' preparedness for teaching early reading skills, knowledge of basic language constructs of literacy and attitudes towards code-based approaches to early reading, $4,963.70.

Recipients of Teaching Improvement Grants

Erika Almenara, Department of World Languages, Literatures and Cultures
Will design creative writing aspect in Spanish II course, $590.95.

Shanda Hood, Department of Mathematical Sciences
Will attend and present at the OLC Innovate Conference, $820.

Ali Ubeyitogullari, Department of Food Science
Will purchase equipment to demonstrate tempering chocolate for a course in the science of chocolate, $834.05.

Donald Johnson, Department of Agricultural Education, Communications and Technology
Will attend the Lilly Conference on Advancing Teaching and Learning, $1,675.

Austin Jones, Department of Entomology and Plant Pathology
Will purchase a chest freezer for use in undergraduate entomology lab courses that require humane insect specimen preservation, $1,700.

Lisa Bowers, Department of Rehabilitation, Human Resources and Communication Disorders
Will participate in virtual training sponsored by the Interprofessional Education Collaborative Institute, $1,700.

Alexandra Vasile, Department of Curriculum and Instruction
Will purchase Oculus virtual reality headsets and software, $1,880.

Kathryn Koziol, Department of Anthropology
Will participate in a teaching-related conference, $2,000.

Adnan Alrubaye, Department of Poultry Science
Will attend the Ireland International Conference on Education, $2,000.

Justin Hunter, Department of Music
Will attend Smithsonian Folkways World Music Pedagogy training workshop, $2,000.

Jennifer Acuff, Department of Food Science
Will purchase the 3M Luminometer for the Food Microbiology Lab to conduct environmental sampling, $2,300.

Joe Hatfield, Department of Communication
Will purchase screening rights to the documentary film Leelah's Highway, in addition to a recorded, hour-long conversation led by students at the U of A with the film's director, Elizabeth Littlejohn, $2,500.