Congratulations to the Inaugural Faculty Fellows from UCLA’s Center for Diverse Leadership in Science

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The Center for Diverse Leadership in Science (CDLS) is proud to announce their inaugural faculty fellows. CDLS, created by Dr. Aradhna Tripati (Institute of Environment and Sustainability – IoES; Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences- AOS; Earth, Planetary, and Space Sciences – EPSS; and Institute for Geophysics and Planetary Physics), was created to recruit and retain underrepresented people in Environmental Science. In addition to providing research and outreach opportunities, CDLS brings faculty together to engage in professional development, including workshops offered by CEILS and BruinX. In this way, the center aims to empower their fellows in increasing diversity, equity and inclusivity in STEM and beyond. Twenty-two Faculty Fellows were selected across disciplines, for their dedication to implement inclusive practices and for their commitment to equity in the field: Alan Barreca (IoES), Daniele Bianchi (AOS), Jacob Bortnik (AOS), Justin Caram (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Kyle Cavanaugh (Geography), Robert Eagle (IoES, AOS), Jennifer Jay (IoES; Civil and Environmental Engineering), Peter Karieva (IoES), Abby Kavner (EPSS), Jasper Kok (AOS), Yung-Ya Lin (Chem & Biochem), Carolina Lithgow-Bertelloni (EPSS), Karen McKinnon (IoES; Statistics), James McWilliams (AOS; IoES), Jonathan Mitchell (AOS; EPSS), Stephanie Pincetl (IoES), Margot Quinlan (Chem & Biochem), Deepak Rajagopal (IoES; Urban Planning), Pablo Saide (AOS), Benjamin Schwartz (Chem & Biochem), Andrew Stewart (AOS), and Tina Treude (EPSS; AOS; Ecology & Evolutionary Biology).

The application period for 2019-2020 CDLS faculty fellows will open Spring of 2019. Please stay tuned to our website: www.ioes.ucla.edu/diversity for further details.

UCLA’s top teachers recognized at ceremony at Chancellor’s residence

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The recipients of UCLA’s highest honor for teaching, the Distinguished Teaching Awards, were honored by the UCLA Academic Senate at the Andrea L. Rich Night to Honor Teaching awards ceremony at the Chancellor’s residence on Oct. 25. The winners were selected in three categories: senate faculty members, non-senate faculty members and teaching assistants.

Recipients of the award are chosen from nominations by colleagues and leaders across campus, recommendations by students and their involvement in community outreach, along with many other criteria. The senate faculty awardees were professors Vilma Ortiz, Christopher Kelty, Lorrie Frasure-Yokley, David MacFadyen, Sarah Abrevaya Stein and Casey Reas.

View full article along with video interviews on UCLA’s Newsroom website.

OID Instructional Improvement Program – Fall Grant Deadline

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The Instructional Improvement Grant Program supports curricular experimentation and development and instructional improvement of undergraduate offerings. Projects may be initiated by faculty, departments, or larger units. Proposals should address the specific needs of an undergraduate course or curriculum and explicate an appropriate and cost-effective response to a clearly defined pedagogical problem.

Please note that IIP grants — as well as OID Mini-grants for guest speakers, media purchases, etc. — can be used to support issues of diversity and inclusiveness in the classroom. The IIP Committee believes these are important considerations for faculty in designing their curricula.

Please review the 2018-2019 Instructional Improvement Grant Program overview.

Online Application for Instructional Improvement Major Grants

Please be sure to download the Budget Worksheet that you must include in the application form.

To enable the Committee on Instructional Improvement Programs’ full deliberation, all proposals must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 9, 2018.

Research Deconstruction – A Classroom Approach for Engaging Students in Scientific Discovery

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Date: Friday, November 9, 2018
Time: 1:00 p.m. – 5:00 p.m.
Location: UCLA Hershey Hall 158

RSVP by Thursday, October 25th if you plan to attend
We invite you to this symposium at UCLA to learn about research deconstruction, a low cost, high impact pedagogical strategy developed at UCLA to engage novice undergraduate students in the process of scientific discovery. Research deconstruction requires no laboratory or textbook, making it affordable and sustainable for departments and students at a wide range of institutions, from R1 universities to 2-year colleges. Guided in‑depth analysis of a bona fide research seminar is used as a platform to teach fundamental concepts, experimental methodologies, and importantly, the logic of scientific investigation. Implementation over a 10-year period at UCLA suggests that research deconstruction is effective at both teaching students the process of scientific inquiry and increasing persistence in STEM. At this symposium, educators from UCLA, UC Santa Cruz, University of Toronto and Santa Monica College will share insights, challenges and best practices from their experience using research deconstruction. If you would like to learn more about this pedagogy and potential partnerships to assist with implementation, please consider attending. Educators at community colleges are especially encouraged to participate and we hope that Chairs will consider applying attendance of this symposium toward the professional development requirement (flex time). Please feel free to share this with any interested colleagues.

Writing Instruction + Research Education (WI+RE) has launched!

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WI+RE is a growing UCLA campus community of learners and teachers interested in designing new approaches to teaching and learning challenges. They host events and provide practical tips on research and writing collaboratively designed by students, faculty, librarians, and academic support staff across the UCLA campus. WI+RE sends out community update emails to share events, gather ideas and insights, and get the word out about our new creations. To receive announcements from WI+RE, visit their community sign-up page or follow them on twitter @WIREbruin. Visit the WI+RE website here.

Congratulations to UCLA’s Inaugural CIRTL-Certified Scholars!

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Congratulations to Jenny Link (top photo) and Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat (bottom photo) for completing the Scholar Level certification for UCLA’s Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) – a prestigious national program sponsored by UCLA Graduate Division in collaboration with CEILS supporting the professional development of UCLA graduate students and postdoctoral scholars. CIRTL Certification requires training and coursework in effective and inclusive teaching practices, culminating in a teaching-as-research projec

 

  

 

Jenny Link is a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Medicine and also a current UPLIFT fellow. Her teaching-as-research project is titled: “Recurrent and varied in-class activities help students retain information in a lower division evolution, biodiversity, and ecology course.”
 

  

 

Elizabeth Reid-Wainscoat is a Masters candidate in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology. Her teaching-as-research project is titled “Does temperament composition impact group dynamics in an upper division biology lab course?”. Both presented their work to the CEILS journal club this Spring.

Congrats, Jenny and Elizabeth!
Learn more about CIRTL and this prestigious credential here.

Grant Opportunity for UCLA Instructors using Kudu

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CEILS would like to take this opportunity to introduce you to one of our new collaborators in educational development, Kudu!

What is Kudu? Kudu is an online textbook/learning platform designed by Drs. Alex Kusenko and Warren Essey in UCLA’s Department of Physics and Astronomy. At the heart of Kudu is a passion for making textbooks engaging and interactive by incorporating high quality video– but most importantly affordable! Drs. Kusenko and Essey are offering a model for UCLA instructors to develop low-cost, customizable textbooks that would eventually be free for UCLA students in their courses. You can learn more and see some examples on their website: https://kudu.com/

CEILS is working with Drs. Kusenko and Essey to identify opportunities for UCLA faculty-led textbook development projects. Please reach out to us if you are interested in learning more and possibly developing, publishing, or licensing your own course textbook with Kudu.

Instructors using Kudu may also be eligible for grants through the UCLA Library’s Affordable Course Materials Initiative. Learn more about his initiative below.

UCLA Library – Affordable Course Materials Initiative

This Library initiative encourages instructors to use low-cost or free alternatives to expensive course materials, such as open-access scholarly resources, Library-licensed and owned resources in print or digital form, reformatted special collections items, and learning objects and texts that faculty create themselves. By more closely aligning Library collections, services, and expertise with instructional needs, it has helped lower the cost of course materials for thousands of UCLA students while achieving instructors’ educational objectives.

Awards pair instructors with a team of Library specialists who help them identify, access, adapt, and adopt alternative course materials. Award amounts are available of $1,000 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollments of fewer than two hundred students and of $2,500 each for instructors teaching courses with enrollments of more than two hundred students. Collection development awards may also be designated to build or enhance library collections in support of specific courses. The financial sums are meant to offer an incentive for the time it will take instructors to identify new resources, adjust syllabi, and modify assignments and can also be used to cover any actual expenses incurred by the instructor.

The initiative has been endorsed by the Office of the UCLA Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost and the UCLA Academic Senate.

Please note that the application deadline for Fall ’18 is May 21.
Learn more about the Initiative here.

2017-2018 Instructional Improvement Grant Program

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2017-2018 Instructional Improvement Grant Program, UCLA Office of Instructional Development
View more information on the IIP Grant Website.

The Instructional Improvement Grant Program supports curricular experimentation and development and instructional improvement of undergraduate offerings. Projects may be initiated by faculty, departments, or larger units. Proposals should address the specific needs of an undergraduate course or curriculum and explicate an appropriate and cost-effective response to a clearly defined pedagogical problem.

New this year are two initiatives aimed at spreading and sharing teaching improvements more broadly across campus:

  • Faculty Improving Teaching (FIT) Communities. These faculty communities of practice will be an opportunity for all grantees to receive ongoing feedback and support from fellow IIP-supported faculty members and OID consultants.
  • IIP Grantee Reporting. Every grantee will be expected to present their project in some venue (which could be quite informal). An additional reporting requirement is to provide a list of other instructors or courses which might benefit from similar teaching approaches.

All proposals must be submitted no later than 5:00 p.m. on Friday, May 4, 2018.

Join Project Bruin Strong!

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Project Bruin Strong seeks to normalize challenges, failures, and set-backs during the college experience and to build community amongst students so that they are aware that we have all dealt with failure, rejection or disappointment in a learning environment.

To reinforce these ideas, Bruin Strong would like to share stories of resilience from our faculty and staff. With your help, we can highlight that we have all dealt with obstacles and that we can grow from those experiences.

In order to participate and share your resilience story, please complete this online form: https://tinyurl.com/resiliencestories.

For more information, please go to www.bruinstrong.ucla.edu.

If you have any questions, please contact Pia F. Palomo, Academic Counselor in the College Academic Counseling, and Academic Advisor in Disability Studies at ppalomo@college.ucla.edu.