Jan 31, 2020

The Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation (DTEI) is dedicated to partnering with faculty, graduate students, and postdocs to maximize students’ academic success.

Mark Your Calendars for Celebration of Teaching

ballroom conference

DTEI invites all UCI faculty and staff to join us at the 27th annual Celebration of Teaching where we will be recognizing faculty and graduate students for excellence in undergraduate teaching. Winners will be announced in March. Celebration of Teaching will take place Thursday, April 23rd from 4:30 to 7:00 pm in the Student Center, Pacific Ballroom.

Need an external evaluator for your education grants?

student on tabletThe UCI Teaching and Learning Research Center is available for a wide variety of services, including assistance with experimental design or data analysis for education research projects, access to institutional data, or as an external evaluator for education grants.

Currently, we’re working with a variety of UCI faculty and staff to evaluate the effectiveness of their externally funded projects, including:

  • “UC Irvine Pathways to Engineering Collaborative” with Drs. Lorenzo Valdevit and Sharnnia Artis (Henry Samueli School of Engineering)
  • “Multidimensional Support to Increase Retention of Physics Majors” with Dr. Laura Tucker (Physics)
  • “The Chemistry Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (Chem-SURF)”, with Drs. Sergey Nizkorodov and Steven Mang

If you are interested in collaborating with the TLRC, feel free to reach out to Associate Dean of the Division of Teaching Excellence and Innovation and Interim TLRC Director, Brian Sato at bsato@uci.edu.

A Summer Stipend Program: The Program for Optimizing Learning Online (POLO)

Partnering with UCI’s Digital Learning Lab led by Dr. Mark Warschauer, DTEI is going to launch a summer stipend program, the Program for Optimizing Learning Online (POLO), for UCI faculty to redesign their online courses.

The faculty participating in the POLO program will have an opportunity to work with an assigned instructional designer to determine the needed redesign areas through a self-evaluation guided by a course design rubric.

For more information about this program, please contact Megan Linos, the Director of Learning Experience and Online Education at wlinos@uci.edu.


Introducing University Studies 390Z: Advanced Course Design for Instructors of Record (Grad & Postdoc)

woman taking notesConfirmed grad & postdoc instructors of record who have earned the Certificate in Teaching Excellence will design their course (syllabus, lesson plans, activities, assessments, assignments) using best practices in pedagogy. By the end of the course, participants have their full course mapped.

Prerequisite: Certificate of Teaching Excellence required, proof of instructor of record appointment required.

For more information, contact Matthew Mahavongtrakul at mmahavon@uci.edu


Grants up to $1,500 Available for Faculty Exploring New Educational Technologies

New educational technologies seemingly spring up overnight, but how many of them truly enhance teaching and learning? Faculty interested in piloting a new tool and helping answer this question are encouraged to apply for an eTech Mini Grant.

For Winter and Spring 2020, larger grants of up to $1,500 will be considered for proposals that establish a compelling case for increased funding. For more info on eligibility requirements and to apply, please visit sites.uci.edu/etechminigrants.


Congratulations to Our Faculty Fellows

students discussingCongratulations to our DTEI Fellow, Paul Spencer, and our Provost Fellows, Angela Jenks and Miryha Runnerstrom, who will all be presenting on teaching and learning at this year’s Lilly Conference in San Diego at the end of February. Their presentations are a result of their research and work with DTEI over the past two years on topics related to faculty and TA collaboration, retention of majors, and teaching second-language learners.

Grad & Postdoc Travel Grant Deadline and Recent Winners

a conference presentationCongratulations to our Fall 2019 DTEI Travel Grant winners: Katie Cox and Daniel Bergman!

Katie’s presentation, “Teaching Together: Supporting Faculty and TA Collaboration in Large Classes”, will be presented at the Lilly Conference, February 27-29, 2020, in San Diego, California.

Daniel’s presentation, “Increasing students’ conceptual understanding of linear algebra through active discussion sessions”, was presented at the Joint Mathematics Meeting, January 15-18, 2020, in Denver, Colorado.

If you are a graduate student or postdoctoral scholar interested in applying for the DTEI Travel Grant, the next application cycle deadline is March 24th for conferences held April 8th until October 31st, 2020.