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2003 Director's Award for Distinguished Teaching Scholars Awardees
May 1, 2003
David P. Billington is the Gordon Y.S. Wu professor at Princeton
University's Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Billington intends to develop teaching materials for beginning
engineering students and the general student body that introduce
students to major engineering innovations of the 20th Century,
and the thinking of outstanding engineers, and demands visual
understanding, numerical work and expository writing, in order to
demonstrate that efficiency, economy and ethical and aesthetic
choices are all intrinsic to engineering design.
Daniel J. Klionsky is a professor at the University of Michigan's
Department of Molecular, Cell and Developmental Biology, and
professor of Biological Chemistry in its medical school.
Klionsky aims to reform the introductory biology curriculum at
the university by adapting techniques used by smaller colleges,
including strategies that implement group learning exercises in
lecture settings. His goal is to transform lectures from
vehicles for delivering information to interactive discussions of
the ideas, principles and problem-solving, which are the essence
of science.
Mary Lee S. Ledbetter, a professor with the College of the Holy
Cross's biology department, will expand research opportunities
for undergraduate students in genomics and bioinformatics, mentor
a post-doctoral fellow in the supervision of undergraduate
research and the development of undergraduate courses, and mentor
undergraduates in communicating the excitement of their research
projects to local secondary and elementary school students.
Chris Rogers, a professor with Tufts University's Department of
Mechanical Engineering, intends to investigate how students at
all levels learn engineering. Desiring to teach through
research, Rogers is providing hardware and software tools he has
developed that allow students to predict, investigate, test and
better understand mathematics and science. Rogers hopes to
increase the engineering literacy of all college graduates and
bridge the gap between engineering and liberal arts courses by
fostering collaborations with institutions interested in using
open-ended research problems to increase the effectiveness of
teaching and learning.
Henry L. Shipman, the Annie Jump Cannon Professor at the
University of Delaware's Department of Physics and Astronomy,
will lead K-12 teachers, and undergraduate and graduate students
in the development of an extensive set of hands-on, problem-based
learning exercises that incorporate current research (mostly in
astronomy). The modules will be suitable for use in a general
science course for nonscientists or in the standard introductory
astronomy course.
Lee Spector, Dean of the School of Cognitive Science and an
associate professor of Computer Science at Hampshire College,
intends to develop software that will provide a laboratory
environment of research opportunities for fields ranging from
evolutionary biology to optimization theory. The software would
both simulate evolutionary processes, and evolve and improve
itself, based on Darwinian principles. The project integrates
research with teaching by providing a research-grade laboratory
environment that can also be used in inquiry-based science
education, and by developing and implementing courses in which
students use this laboratory for research.
See also: NSF PR 03-48
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